The government has set out major changes to the system for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England
By 2035, education, health and care plans (EHCPs) - legal documents which set out the help children are entitled to - will be reserved for only the most complex cases
Children who currently have an EHCP will keep them until they reach the next stage of their education, such as secondary school or sixth form
From 2029, children will be reassessed for EHCPs as they move up to their next stage of education
In England, 639,000 people with SEND up to the age of 25 have education, health and care plans - a number that has more than doubled in a decade
One parent tells us the current system is an "uphill struggle". Tell us your experiences here
Phillipson said the changes would be phased in over a decade.
"We'll do this carefully," she said, adding her aim was to "build up the system now ahead of a bigger change".
"This time of opportunity doesn't come across very often, and I'm determined that we seize it," she adds.
Phillipson has finished speaking, before doing so she took questions from journalists.
She was asked how the government is going to ensure children with SEND flourish at a time when more teachers were leaving the profession due to workloads.
Phillipson says retaining and recruiting brilliant teachers and support staff is "absolutely critical to delivering better education for all children".
She says that the government is setting out its plans today to reach its target of recruiting 6,500 new teachers, which it committed to in its manifesto.
She adds that retention numbers in teachers is the "best they've been since around 2010", so the government is making progress but there is more to do.
Reiterating what we reported earlier, Phillipson says education, health and care plans (EHCPs) for children with the most complex needs will stay.
She says these plans will be "guided by nationally defined, and evidence-based specialist provision packages".
She says that what is crucial is "that support starts early", adding that the government's "best start hubs" for younger children will now also cover SEND.
Phillipson says the government is investing £200m in these hubs so that more of them have dedicated SEND professionals.
Phillipson says she wants to deliver great local schooling with high standards and inclusion, driven by ambition for every student.
"I want your child to achieve, I want your child to thrive," she says. Where deprivation is deepest, she adds, that's where she'll "be boldest".
The government will work to drive funding to where it's needed most, adding that "we have a moral responsibility to work together on this".
She says the government will ensure there's support that "stretches from birth to the workplace".
As the government unveils its planned changes, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson starts her speech at Midlands school by saying her approach is one "for all children".
She says that despite the heroic efforts of staff the "disadvantage gap is still wide, children with SEND are sidelined and bright children from ordinary families are still not achieving all that they should".
Phillipson says our current education system "works well for some children but not all".
"When it comes to opportunities, background still counts for too much and hard work too little," she says, rejecting the idea that "excellence is only possible for some children".
Branwen Jeffreys
Education Editor
The government has just revealed its full planned changes to the system supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England.
It says that by 2035, education, health and care plans (EHCPs) - the legal documents which set out the extra help children are entitled to - will be reserved for only the most complex special educational needs. This will help the government manage the costs of delivering an expensive part of the system.
Children with SEND will fit into two levels of support: Targeted, which will apply to all pupils in mainstream schools, or Specialist, which will be for children with the most complex needs. That Specialist level of support will be the basis for EHCPs in future.
Children who currently have an EHCP will keep them until they reach the next stage of their education, such as secondary school or sixth form and college. Children will be reassessed for EHCPs as they move up to their next stage of education from 2029.
We're now hearing from Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, who is making a speech in at a school in Peterborough about the government's plans.
We'll bring you updates here, and you can watch live at the top of the page.
Russell Clarke is the head teacher at Haslingden High School and Sixth Form in Rossendale, Lancashire, where over 300 students are on the SEND register.
Russell says he needs more specialist staff, better facilities, and more training to broaden the school's provision - things he hopes will be addressed in the government's upcoming white paper.
The biggest issue with the SEND system is the funding, Russell says, "both the amount and how it's distributed".
"Schools need more funding to provide inclusive teaching and timely access to specialist support," he says.
He adds that there also needs to be more practical consultation between schools, families, and the authorities on how to deliver the support a child needs.
SEND in the Spotlight is a weekly podcast from the team behind Woman's Hour.
It explores why the special educational needs system is so widely considered to be broken and how it might be fixed.
Hosted by Nuala McGovern, the podcast provides a platform where families can share their experiences of raising a child with special educational needs.
Share your story with the team: send@bbc.co.uk.
'Everything is an uphill struggle': Adam, from Milton Keynes, whose eight-year-old son is autistic and non verbal, says he's experienced first hand how "broken" the SEND system is.
He tells BBC Radio 5 Live that when it comes to getting support for his son, who "is on the higher end of his needs", "everything is an uphill struggle".
"I don’t think there is a mainstream school that can suit him. But he’s been turned down by pretty much every special needs school in the area anyway", he says.
'A constant battle': Debra, from Sidcup in south-east London, tells Radio 5 Live the government's SEND reforms don't sound "new or revolutionary at all", adding that it "just seems different language for the same provision".
As a special educational needs coordinator, Debra says "I’ve got a constant battle of knowing what the children in my school need to flourish and learn, but not having the resources available to me to properly achieve it".
She says "that's where the investment needs to go, into training people and having enough adults available with the right level of training to understand the needs of the children".
Marsha and her three children are autistic and have ADHD.
She founded Black SEN Mamas in 2020, a peer support network bringing together families with similar experiences, and it now supports thousands of parents across the UK and abroad.
She says non-white families, particularly those from low-income backgrounds, face "additional barriers at every stage".
She believes her own daughter has been treated unfairly in the past and says her experience, working with parents through Black SEN Mamas, is that unconscious biases may play a part in the way decisions are made about children's needs.
But that is hard to prove.
She wants the government's reforms to include specific training for staff to help tackle racism and unconscious bias.
Marsha also fears vulnerable children could lose support once they leave year 6 and says she is disappointed by proposed plans to reassess the support children are entitled to after they finish primary school.
"Children's rights are being compromised, and their needs don't disappear - they escalate when unsupported," she says.
Image source, PA MediaEducation Secretary Bridget Phillipson says the school reforms will "deliver better life chances for children".
Speaking to school leaders and charities at Downing Street, she says: "That has been the driving principle behind all of this, how we make sure that every child in our country can achieve and thrive.
"And I'm confident that what we're setting out today gives us that opportunity and will give the next generation a better chance than those who have gone before."
Image source, PA MediaPrime Minister Keir Starmer says he wants the school reforms to offer "a better education for every single child".
Starmer held an education roundtable with school leaders and charities in Downing Street ahead of the publication of the Schools White Paper later this morning.
Starmer says the government is recruiting 6,500 teachers and cracking down on children missing school.
"You can't have high standards if you don't have inclusion - they're two sides of the same coin, and therefore we have to reform special educational needs," he says.
Starmer says SEND is "the issue that's come up at Prime Minister's Questions more than any other, from all political parties in all parts of the country".
"That is really unusual, and that tells you something about the fact that the system does not work as it is," he says.
BBC Radio 5 Live is hearing from members of the public on SEND ahead of this morning's government announcement.
You can listen to it live in the streamat the top of our page.
Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent
We’ve been talking a lot about SEND but the policy document being published today is actually the government’s Schools White Paper – so it will include other important things, too.
The focus, the Department for Education (DfE) says, is on breaking down barriers to opportunity, so we’re expecting announcements on key issues across England’s schools.
One is attendance. Absence rates are still higher than they were before the pandemic, and it’s been worrying ministers. Expect more details on a new attendance target.
Another is attainment. We’ll be keeping an eye on a potential new progress measure that the DfE says will help children who start secondary school significantly behind their classmates, as well as schemes targeting the north-east England and coastal areas.
Then there’s staffing – especially issues with hiring teachers and keeping them. We’ll hear about financial incentives for head teachers and an increase to maternity pay for school staff.
Ailith Harley-Roberts, from Leeds, whose daughter Thalia has Down's syndrome, says education, health and care plans (EHCPs) provide "vital, legally enforceable rights" for a child.
She says the leaked government proposals to review children's EHCPs after primary school - and again after GCSEs - is causing increasing anxiety among the families she is in contact with.
"With the current system already struggling to manage one assessment, introducing [multiple] raises serious concerns about capacity, resources, and who will ensure plans are followed through," she says.
She worries that children with lifelong conditions might face unnecessary reassessments and risk losing the support they need.
"While the system is far from perfect, I'm grateful my daughter's needs have been properly assessed and recognised," she says.
You can send us your questions or tell us about your experience by getting in touch in the following ways:
Please read our terms & conditions and privacy policy.
Hazel Shearing
Education correspondent
If you've been following this issue, you'll have heard talk about the reforms to England’s SEND system being delayed.
They were – we were expecting them last autumn, but ministers said they wanted to go away and speak to parents, teachers and others.
What followed was another few months of waiting to hear the government’s planned solutions to an escalating problem. That problem is made up of different parts, and can look very different depending on where you fit into the system.
For many pupils and parents, it will have meant more time navigating a system which they say long hasn’t worked for them.
For councils, the delay meant more time dealing with rising costs and debts amid growing demand for support and education, health and care plans (EHCPs). Ahead of the white paper, the government said it would spend £5bn to pay off 90% of any SEND deficits that had been built up by councils to the end of March this year.
Just over 1.7 million (about one in five) pupils in England's schools receive support for special educational needs.
As of January last year, 639,000 young people up to the age of 25 had education, health and care plans (EHCPs) in England - the number has more than doubled in a decade.
Most of that increase has been driven by a rise in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnoses. The condition is now listed as the primary need in a third of all EHCPs.
The process for parents and children to get an EHCP is also experiencing challenges - it can be lengthy, with fewer than half issued within the 20 week legal deadline in 2024.
There was also a record number of tribunal cases in 2024/25, where parents disagreed with a refusal to offer support, or were challenging the level of support offered.
Overall spending on SEND has risen by two-thirds in the past decade, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).
In 2024 the National Audit Office warned the system was "financially unsustainable" for councils and yet not delivering better outcomes for children, calling it "broken".
While speaking to BBC Breakfast, schools standards minister Georgia Gould is asked if she can guarantee that children with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) won't lose them under the government's SEND reforms.
The question follows leaked details of plans to reassess EHCPs when children leave primary school, and an earlier comment by Children's Commissioner for England Rachel de Souza that "no child should lose their plan".
Gould tells the programme EHCPs are "a really important part of the new system", adding that the government is "creating new layers of support".
She is pressed again on whether children will lose this support, but does not directly answer the question.
