The Question She Still Won't Answer: SEND Reform and the Minister Who Can't Say "No Child Will Lose Support"

There is a deceptively simple question at the heart of the government's long-awaited SEND reform. It is the question every parent of a child with special educational needs has been asking for months, and the one Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson was still conspicuously failing to answer on Laura Kuenssberg's BBC programme just hours before the Schools White Paper landed.

Will my child lose support?

Today (Feb 23), we finally got the White Paper itself. And while the government is hoping that a £4 billion headline figure will drown out the harder questions, families looking for a clear commitment (for an honest, unambiguous answer) will search the document in vain.

The semantic sleight of hand continues. The assurance that "effective support" will not be taken away is not the same as an absolute guarantee that no child will lose an element of present provision. That distinction matters enormously, and the government knows it.

What the White Paper Actually Says

Titled Every Child Achieving and Thriving, the White Paper does at least put flesh on the bones of what had been circulating in leaks since Thursday. Here is what we now know:

Children in Year 3 or above currently will keep their EHCP until at least age 16, and those in Year 2 or below will be reassessed when they transition to Year 7. The new system will not come into force until at least September 2030, following a 12-week public consultation and a rollout beginning in September 2029. No child with a special school place when the reforms start being introduced in 2029 will lose it.

These protections sound reassuring... until you read the small print. Around one in eight children and young people who currently have an EHCP will move to new support plans between 2030 and 2035 when their needs are reviewed. The DfE projects the proportion of pupils with an EHCP will drop from 5.8% today to around 4.7% by 2034/35. That is not a bureaucratic rounding error. That is tens of thousands of children.

At the centre of the new architecture is a plan called an Individual Support Plan (ISP), which will sit below the EHCP tier. The reforms are expected to introduce a plan with legal footing for all children with SEND called Individual Support Plans (ISPs), and it is understood they will apply to children who have been assessed as needing specialist support. The ISPs will have multiple tiers ("targeted" and "targeted plus") and children will not need a diagnosis to access them, which the government presents as progress.

Challenges to ISPs will be through normal schools and local council complaints procedures. Yes. Read that again. The legal route to challenge a decision about your child's support, which is currently through an independent tribunal, will (for ISP holders) be replaced with a complaints process run by the very bodies that made the decision in the first place. SEND parents will recognise this model immediately. It is the model that failed them before.

The Money: Big Numbers, Hard Questions

The government has led with the £4 billion investment figure and is hoping it does the heavy lifting politically. The breakdown is as follows: a new Inclusive Mainstream Fund worth £1.6 billion over three years, provided directly to early years, schools and colleges; and £1.8 billion over the same period to create an "Experts at Hand" service, a bank of specialists (SEND teachers, speech and language therapists etc.) available in every local area, accessible regardless of whether a child has an EHCP. A further £200 million will go to teacher training, and another £200 million to help local authorities manage the transition.

£1.6 billion is a big number on paper. But as Special Needs Jungle's analysis points out, money alone cannot change an organisation's culture. And the previous implementation grant given to local authorities from 2014 to 2018, to implement the last round of SEND reforms, largely went to consultants and achieved minimal lasting impact. The government should explain precisely how it will ensure this time is different.

NASUWT general secretary Matt Wrack was characteristically blunt, saying the idea that SEND provision could be adequately overhauled with "this low level of funding" was "ridiculous." Meanwhile, local government SEND deficits are projected to reach £6 billion by March 2026; a structural hole that the new money does not come close to filling.

The Art of Not Answering (Continued)

Before the White Paper was published, Phillipson sat down with Kuenssberg and was asked directly: will any child who currently has an EHCP lose their support? She could not bring herself to say no. "We will strengthen and put in place better support for children," she said. The government would "spend more money, not less." The reforms would "transform support for children and families."

Journalistic scrutiny highlighted a key semantic fault line: the assurance that "effective support" will not be taken away is not the same as an absolute guarantee that no child will lose an element of present provision. And now that the White Paper is public, we can confirm that the semantic caution was warranted. The government has not given that guarantee. It cannot, because the document itself projects that a significant minority of current EHCP holders will transition to new, less legally robust plans.

Phillipson said in the paper that the plans will take children with SEND "from sidelined and excluded to seen, heard and included." Fine words. But when Marsha Martin, who runs Black SEN Mamas (a support network for Black mothers of SEND children) spoke to ITV News, her concern was blunter: "It almost seems as though what they are putting in place might stand to exacerbate the issues that we currently have. All we have actually asked for is that there is better adherence to the laws by local authority and that local authorities are held to account."

What Parents and Campaigners Fear — And Why the White Paper Doesn't Resolve It

The Autistic Girls Network's CEO, Cathy Wassell, was among those who reacted to the White Paper's direction with alarm. She described the announcements as "a betrayal of the very principle of inclusion," adding: "Autistic girls often spend primary school masking their struggles. They only get identified when they hit the 'secondary crash.' Slashing support now is like removing a life jacket just as the child is pulled into the deep end."

Her point about secondary transition is particularly relevant given what the White Paper confirms: those who do have an existing EHCP will have to have their needs reassessed between each different phase of their education. Yet we already know that in 2025, only 46.4% of new EHCPs were issued within the statutory 20 weeks. Forcing children back through an assessment system that already takes twice as long as the law requires, at precisely the most turbulent and vulnerable moments of their education, is not a reform. It is an additional hurdle.

The campaign group Save Our Children's Rights called the reforms "an absolute disaster," warning that limiting access to EHCPs could leave "some children and young people with no legally enforceable right to an accessible education that meets their needs."

James Watson-O'Neill, chief executive of Sense, welcomed the funding but warned: "A shocking number of children are being failed by a baffling and underfunded SEND system. Too many are falling through the cracks — at the cost of their happiness, wellbeing and future life chances. If their children's legal rights are weakened any further or there's an attempt to cut spending, the consequences could be devastating."

Teaching unions also pushed back. Teachers' voices have been "conspicuously absent" from the decision-making, according to unions, who also question whether mainstream schools that are already overstretched, have the capacity or culture to become genuinely inclusive overnight, however much money is promised.

There is also a social justice dimension that deserves more attention than it has received. Worries persist that parents with higher incomes and the capacity to navigate a complex system are more likely to secure support for their children. A tiered system with school-managed ISPs and a complaints-based challenge mechanism (rather than an independent tribunal) will be much easier to navigate for those with resources, time, and confidence. The families who fought hardest to get EHCPs are disproportionately those who can afford to. The families who will lose most from a weaker system are disproportionately those who cannot.

A System in Crisis — But the Wrong Solution?

None of this is to pretend the status quo is acceptable. The system is broken, and has been for years. More than £10 billion a year is spent in England, but children with SEND are still under-achieving, disengaged from education and disproportionately excluded from mainstream schools. Councils are projected to hold £6 billion in high needs deficits. Families are pulling their children out of school at record rates, some 150,000 children were educated at home in England during the last academic year, up from 92,000 in 2023.

The case for genuine, ambitious reform of SEND is overwhelming. Nobody serious disputes that. But as education law specialists have pointed out, the whole reason for the growth of EHCPs is simply because they have been "necessary", mainstream schools cannot deliver the support many pupils need within existing resources. That is not a legal issue, but a factual one. Redesigning the legal framework does not change that underlying reality. It simply changes who is legally responsible for acknowledging it.

The Question That Remains

The White Paper is now public. The big numbers are out. The architecture of the new system is now on the record; EHCPs for the most complex needs, ISPs for everyone else, a transition beginning in 2029.

And yet the central question that parents have been asking remains unresolved.

Will my child lose their support?

For a child in Year 2 with an EHCP today, the honest answer is: we don't know. They will be reassessed at Year 7. That assessment will be made under new criteria, by a system that is already failing to hit its own statutory deadlines, using a complaints mechanism rather than an independent tribunal if families disagree with the outcome.

The government's answer is that the £4 billion will transform mainstream schools, making them so genuinely inclusive that fewer children will need statutory plans. That is possible. It is also, frankly, optimistic to the point of wishful thinking, given that a similar ambition underpinned the 2014 reforms — and we know how that turned out.

Bridget Phillipson has said this is a "watershed moment." Perhaps. But watersheds can flow in either direction. And for the families who have already fought (and too often lost) in the current system, the promise of a better one in 2030 will need rather more than warm words and big headline figures to be convincing.

The question she still can't answer tells you everything about why those families are right to be worried.

If you are a parent or carer affected by SEND reform, you can find information, support and guidance on the new proposals at IPSEA (Independent Provider of Special Education Advice) at ipsea.org.uk. You can also contact your MP directly to share your family's experience, and respond to the 12-week public consultation on the new system when it opens.