What the UK SEND reform whitepaper means and what it might take to deliver it

The Government’s SEND white paper promises consistency, earlier support and billions for mainstream inclusion. The harder question is whether tribunals, funding and frontline capacity will match the ambition — and what that means for families already fighting for provision, warns Marco Previero

Last week, the UK Government released its SEND reform white paper, “Every child achieving and thriving”. The paper aims to treat special educational needs and disabilities as a system-wide priority. At its core, it sets an ambition to unify education, health, safeguarding, and family support into a single, cohesive system. Like most of these types of documents, it promises aspiring targets and a huge amount of spend, with fewer details on how Government will seek to access substantial capacity required, funding, and credible implementation to deliver at such scale.

Reading the consultation paper alongside the white paper raises concerns about how far support will remain individually tailored. The emphasis on a “universal offer” and reduced reliance on statutory routes may limit flexibility in provision and alter the role tribunals play in resolving disputes, depending on how the proposals are translated into law.

What ultimately matters is how these reforms translate for children who rely on additional support — whether they strengthen meaningful entitlement in practice and equip young people for independent, fulfilled lives, rather than narrowing success to exam outcomes alone.

My daughter Millie benefitted from a comprehensive Education and Health Care Plan (EHCP) for eight years following her brain tumour diagnosis when she was seven, in the context of the current SEND system. As her father I was particularly interested in how the white paper might position special educational needs on a go-forward basis, and what proposals are included to improve on it.

In our case, the hardest part wasn’t identifying or sourcing the right support. Although it wasn’t easy either. Generally, schools, clinicians, and specialists could describe what would help Millie. The main challenges were twofold: getting the council to accept, first, that she needed an EHCP at all (having just received invasive treatment to the brain to include chemotherapy, three brain operations and proton beam radiotherapy); and then, having accepted that in principle, to agree what should actually be written into it, what educational support might be required, and which local school would be able to implement provisions. 

In our experience, initial responses were frequently refusals, requiring formal challenge before support was agreed. I took the council to court twice, and on both occasions the matters were resolved shortly before the hearings. Had I not had the means, time and confidence to pursue those challenges, my daughter would not have secured the level of support she required to address the gaps that brain cancer and its treatment had created.

Importantly, currently, the law is a law. And it doesn’t care whether a council is under financial pressure. It cares only for the child’s needs and applies a functional test in order to assess what support is required, not a moral one. I had the choice to appeal. I do worry that the current white paper may limit the role of tribunals in this context. 

“The much harder question is how it will be delivered in practice to ensure it addresses all needs fully”

Three proposed changes away from the current system stand out in the white paper. It keeps EHCPs, but proposes nationally-defined, evidence-based “specialist provision packages” as the basis for future EHCP, aimed at reducing postcode variation (which we experienced) and making entitlements more consistent.

Instead of having to prove support, mainly through statutory processes, as was the case with us, the proposal introduces a duty to create digital ISPs (Individual Support Plans) for any child with identified SEND, setting out barriers, provision, adjustments and outcomes. This is intended to make support available earlier than would otherwise be the case, and delivered with a greater degree of clarity through key educational stages.

Finally, the plan shifts capacity into mainstream education, as opposed to specialist or private, through a new £1.6bn “Inclusive Mainstream Fund” and £1.8bn “Experts at Hand” (i.e. speech and language therapy, educational psychology, occupational therapy – all of which Millie needed throughout her education). The aim is to reduce dependence on statutory routes, by making specialist input more available earlier and closer, if not integrated, to schools. This is very much how private special educational needs settings tend to operate, with usually relatively good outcomes for pupils.

That is the theory. The harder task is implementation — making sure the reforms function on the ground and meet children’s needs properly. The question is whether “early, local, fair” becomes a workable standard, or joins the long list of compressed political slogans — from “Get Brexit done” to “Brexit means Brexit” — that reduced complicated reform to three-word reassurance.

The white paper goes on to explain that implementation will be framed as three overlapping phases: alignment to best practice (2025/26), preparation for SEND and curriculum reforms (2026/27) and full implementation (2028/29).

The pace will hinge on new legislation, capacity across health and education, and sector readiness. The challenge to deliver seems to me to be on an astronomical scale. In order to support and monitor progress, an independent expert panel will define standards and accountability, with an emphasis on quality and outcomes, rather than just compliance to the plan. 

“The question now is whether Government can rise to that promise, and whether it has the will to sustain the effort over the long, hard road to full reform”

The annex to the white paper gives us an insight into how the Government plans to measure success. “Ambition 1: higher standards for all” will aim to raise the national Attainment 8 average to 50 (current national average is 45.9), indicating a desire to improve results across the GCSE-equivalence grades. This is explicitly framed as a “system-wide” target rather than a school-by-school measure, essentially requiring schools to lift performance collectively in order to meet the target.

The second ambition “Ambition 2: Halving the KS4 disadvantage gap,” will aim to see an additional 30,000 disadvantaged students passing English and maths at grade 4+ each year. These have widened considerably since 2019, and possibly tied to the learning loss over the pandemic, rather than a system-failure as such, so I am slightly baffled here about the cause and effect embedded in this metric, given all things being equal, it should improve regardless. 

Additionally, an ambitious attendance improvement target has been set, with every school expected to monitor belonging and engagement. Finally, a national Enrichment Framework will set benchmarks for strong extracurricular and cultural activities, while School Profiles will provide families with a more holistic view of what schools offer beyond formal academic metrics (arguably the most important ones in order to lead a successful life).

Perhaps this is why the latest measure appeals to me the most, and I sense this is an ambition that would not be out of place for every child, not just children with special educational needs. As a nation obsessed with how good the next generation will be at maths or English, my daughter’s EHCP process, and the broader SEND system that surrounded it, mattered beyond academic content. It facilitated a path to self-advocacy, independence, helped her understand how to form meaningful relationships with peers, and sustained her interest and participation in school life despite her medical conditions.

The reforms’ emphasis on belonging, early identification of needs, and consistent access to health and educational professionals reflects the lived reality that education is a social enterprise if not more so than a cognitive one. And a plan that promotes the idea that education should ultimately be to encourage and celebrate an ability to see potential in ourselves, how best to choose a career, how to engage successfully with others, and what it would take to be happy, certainly gets my vote.

The question now is whether Government can rise to that promise, and whether it has the will to sustain the effort over the long, hard road to full reform — and avoid creating a system that, in practice, could narrow funding per child or make it harder for families to challenge decisions made by local councils operating under financial pressure.

Marco Previero is a health-innovation commentator and patient advocate specialising in survivorship, rehabilitation and user-centred models of care. His perspective is informed by twelve years navigating paediatric oncology as the father of a childhood brain cancer survivor, with experience spanning acute treatment, long-term follow-up across multi-disciplinary specialism (specialist rehabilitation, neurocognitive support, endocrinology, and psychosocial services, education support), and the systems that shape recovery. A former founding Trustee of SUCCESS Life After Cure Ltd and a named contributor to a 2025 North Thames Paediatric Cancer Network and Great Ormond Street Hospital study, he writes for The European on patient experience, survivorship, health innovation and the future of care pathways.

READ MORE: ‘The new 10 year National Cancer Plan: fewer measures, more heart?‘. Marco Previero, whose daughter survived cancer at seven, welcomes the Government’s 10-year plan and its overdue focus on children and young people. Writing from experience, he argues that its success will be measured by how well it supports not only diagnosis and cure, but the quality of life young survivors are able to lead afterwards.

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_{Main image: A small-group session in a mainstream classroom. The Government’s SEND reforms place greater emphasis on earlier intervention within ordinary school settings — the real test will be how consistently that support can be delivered in practice. Credit: Ksenia Chernaya/Pexels}