Special Educational Needs: support in England

Government white paper and reform (February 2026)

The government’s schools white paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, was published on 23 February 2026. The white paper included major reforms to the system of support for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England.

Alongside the white paper, a consultation on the SEND proposals, SEND reform: putting children and young people first, was also published. The consultation was open until 18 May 2026. The government has not yet published a response.

The King’s Speech in May 2026 included an Education for All Bill to take forward the legislative aspects of the government’s plans.

A separate Library briefing, The Schools White Paper 2026: Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Reform, discusses the white paper proposals.

Background to the current system

The Children and Families Act 2014 provides the statutory basis for the system for identifying children and young people (age 0-25) in England with special educational needs (SEN), assessing their needs and making provision for them.

The statutory Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND): Code of practice, first published in 2014, sets out detailed information on the support available for children and young people aged 0 to 25 under the 2014 Act.

Broadly, there are two levels of support:

• SEN Support, provided to a child or young person in their pre-school, school, or college
• Education, Health, and Care Plans (EHCPs) which provide a formal basis for support for children and young people who need more support than is available through SEN Support

Education is a devolved policy area and this paper applies to England only.

How many school pupils have SEN?

In January 2026, there were over 1.8 million school pupils in England with identified SEN (20.8% of all pupils).

Of these pupils with identified SEN, around 1.3 million were receiving SEN Support, and around 0.5 million had education, health, and care plans.

Pressure on local authority finances

In recent years, numerous reports have described increasing pressure on local authority finances relating to SEND, with EHCP numbers rising sharply and increased costs in other areas such as transport.

In January 2025, the Public Accounts Committee said the system for supporting children with SEN “is reaching, or, arguably, has already reached, crisis point” despite significant extra funding being provided.

Under the Conservative government, Safety Valve and Delivering Better Value programmes were implemented to attempt to manage local authority finances, although these have proved controversial. The Safety Valve arrangements were ended by the Labour government by the Labour government in February 2026 and replaced with a grant funding scheme.

Since 2020, a ‘statutory override’ has also been in place that allows local authorities to exclude any deficits on their Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) spending from their main revenue budgets, meaning that local authorities’ DSG deficits could be separated from their wider accounts. This override has been extended to 2028 under the current government, pending wider reform of the system.

The autumn 2025 Budget said SEND spending would be covered by central government budgets once the override expires in 2028. This means local authorities will not be expected to fund future SEND costs from general funds.

In 2026/27, the DfE is making funding available to local authorities to pay down 90% of their high needs-related deficits as they stood at the end of March 2026. This will be paid via a High Needs Stability Grant, conditional on the local authority submitting a SEND reform plan, and this being approved by the DfE.

Education Committee report

The Education Committee published a report on Solving the SEND Crisis in  September 2025. The report was extensive and contained a large number of recommendations, proposed ahead of the expected schools white paper later in the year.

The report said that there should be no withdrawal of statutory entitlements for children and young people, and focused on inclusivity and early intervention to support children and young people as a way to restrain EHCP numbers and associated costs.

The report’s other recommendations included national standards for ordinarily available provision and SEN support, a review of SEN funding, and mandatory teacher training on SEN.

The government’s initial response to the committee’s report was published in December 2025. The response did not provide detailed answers to the committee’s recommendations, ahead of the planned white paper on reform that was later published in February 2026. In June 2026, the government published a final response to the committee’s report. The response accepted most of the committee’s recommendations, at least in part.