In March, the government set out its long-awaited vision for reforming support for disabled children and young people, and those with special educational needs, in the Schools White Paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving.
The White Paper signals a major change of approach, emphasising the central role that inclusion within mainstream education will be expected to play. While a national consultation is now underway to shape the details of these proposals, several key themes are emerging.
A new model of support
Central to the reforms is an intention to increase the confidence and capability of teachers and wider staff in mainstream education settings, early years settings, colleges, and schools, to meet a diverse range of needs. Every setting should aim to create welcoming school environments that respond swiftly to recognise and meet a wider range of children’s needs. This will include a renewed emphasis on the Reasonable Adjustment duties set out in the Equality Act 2010, enhanced training and professional development for the teaching workforce, and better, more timely input from specialists. In addition, the Department for Education (DfE) will be publishing non-statutory guidance on Inclusion Bases to enhance the offer in mainstream schools.
The White Paper also proposes three tiers of provision sitting above a strengthened Universal offer: Targeted, Targeted Plus, and Specialist. Every student receiving Targeted or Targeted Plus support will have a digital Individual Support Plan (ISP). Underpinned by a new statutory requirement, settings will need to ensure that a student has an ISP where one is needed, working with parents and carers, alongside the child or young person, to shape its contents.
To enable this shift, a new Inclusive Mainstream Fund will be available to early years settings, schools and colleges to build their capacity to deliver inclusive education. Details on how this initial investment will be sustained and built on beyond this transitional funding will be vital to maintaining momentum and permanently embedding the new approach.
Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) will play an important role for those children whose needs cannot be met through this school-based support, and the proposals suggest EHCPs will be underpinned by new Specialist Support Packages for pupils with the most complex needs.
Experts at Hand
Crucially, the Schools White Paper recognises that schools cannot do this alone, and Every Child Achieving and Thriving sets out a vision for mainstream educators and specialist colleagues to work more closely together through the Experts at Hand model.
Under this approach, professionals from a range of specialist services, such as speech and language therapists and educational psychologists, would work more closely with colleagues in education settings. Specialists will provide in‑depth guidance to help staff recognise and respond to commonly occurring needs, as well as provide in-setting group support to pupils without requiring an assessment or referral. The new way of working will be backed by an investment of £1.8bn over the next three years to help local areas increase their specialist capacity.
While the Experts at Hand proposals have been welcomed by the Council for Disabled Children (which has long advocated for this approach), the need remains for both a long-term commitment to a sustainable workforce and better multi-agency working arrangements.
A successful Experts at Hand model will require clear commitment and effective joint working between local authorities, NHS Integrated Care Boards and education settings. While the government has promised measures to expand educational psychology and speech and language therapy, it will need to assess staffing levels and take action where shortages could undermine the local system’s ability to deliver the Expert at Hands offer effectively.
The evidence supporting the new approach
There are major challenges in shifting to this new collaborative way of working. The Council for Disabled Children undertook a project to explore the role of the specialist workforce in enabling this shift towards greater collaboration with teaching staff in mainstream schools.
The project involved interviews with professionals across a wide range of specialist roles, including educational psychologists, SENCOs, and therapists.
The findings - published in the report Inclusive Classrooms - suggest that one key barrier to progress is that many classroom teachers have little or no experience of working alongside specialists. This is particularly true for secondary teachers with subject‑specific roles.
While teachers tend to work with the whole class, the vast majority of specialist time is devoted to individual interventions, with the ‘professional gaze’ focused almost exclusively on individual needs. Specialists also shared that when SEND training for teachers lacked contextual input - such as opportunities to apply learning within their own classrooms - it often had limited long‑term impact and was less effective.
It will take time to align the two perspectives, but emerging findings from several research studies and pilot schemes have helped shape the thinking behind the Experts at Hand programme.
A What Works in SEND report took an in-depth look at inclusion and how local areas support schools. It concluded that strong multi-agency working, where local areas used a ‘team around the school’ approach, was effective at addressing children’s needs early and helped ensure a multi-agency response.
Similarly, the REACh (Reaching Excellence and Ambition for all Children) consortium evaluated pilot programmes aimed at creating more inclusive mainstream education. One of these - the Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) programme - brought health and education specialists and expert parent carers into mainstream primary schools, strengthening whole-school inclusive cultures.
And the final report from the SEND and Alternative Provision Change Programme found that where education, health and care partners had established ways of working together - such as team-around-the-school approaches, or “specialists in residence” models - advice and expertise flowed more readily and was acted on earlier.
Resources for young people
Alongside the White Paper, the national consultation Putting children and young people first is running until 18 May 2026.
To support this process, we have produced a set of inclusive materials that concentrate on key aspects of the School's White Paper through short, accessible summaries. These resources will be useful for all young people interested in the reforms.
Working with us
The Council for Disabled Children, which is part of the National Children’s Bureau, works with local authorities, health partners, education providers, and the wider children’s sector to improve practice, strengthen participation, and deliver better outcomes for disabled children and young people, and those with special educational needs. You can find out about the support we offer here.
Thanks
This article is based on a piece we wrote for the SecEd website.