Can my autistic child go to college with an EHCP?

Yes. An EHC plan continues into further education and can name a college you (or your young person, from age 16) ask for. Plans can run to age 25 if still needed, but they never cover university. An EHC plan (Education, Health and Care plan) does not fall away because your child leaves school or turns 16 or 18. It carries on with them into college.

The rule: a college is an institution a plan can name

A college in the further education sector is one of the types of setting that an EHC plan can name (section 38 of the Children and Families Act 2014). That means sixth-form colleges, general further education colleges and specialist post-16 settings all count. When you, or your young person, ask for a particular college, the council has to name it in the plan (section 39). The National Autistic Society sets out the same position: a plan applies from 0 to 25 while your child stays in education or training.

The qualifiers most pages blur

There are two things parents are rarely told, and both matter for an autistic teenager.

• From age 16, the rights are your child's, not yours. Once your young person turns 16, the right to ask for a college, to take part in the review and to appeal passes to them, where they have the capacity to make the decision. Most parent-facing pages still write as though you decide. In practice you support and advocate, but the named person on the paperwork shifts.
• "To age 25" is a ceiling, not a guarantee. The plan continues only while special educational provision is still needed to meet the outcomes written into it. The council can stop a plan only when it is no longer necessary, and for a young person over 18 it must consider whether the education or training outcomes have been achieved first (section 45). As the Department for Education guidance on 19 to 25 year olds makes clear, there is no automatic entitlement to stay in education to 25.

The council must also name the college you ask for unless it is unsuitable for your young person's age, ability, aptitude or needs, or naming it would not be an efficient use of resources or would harm the education of others. Those are the only grounds. An autism diagnosis on its own is not the gate here: holding the EHC plan is what carries the rights forward.

The route: name the college at the transfer review

You do not get the college named by hoping. The move from school to college is a phase transfer, so the plan is reviewed and amended to name the new setting, and the final amended plan naming the college has to be issued by 31 March in the year your child starts. Put the college you want in writing at that review. For the fuller picture of how the plan survives the move, see whether your child can keep their EHCP at college and whether an EHCP lasts until 25.

And university is different

An EHC plan never covers university. Higher education sits outside the 0 to 25 system, so when your young person moves on to a degree the plan ends and the support comes through Disabled Students' Allowance instead. See what happens to an EHCP at university for that switch. You may also have read that EHCPs are being reformed: the Schools White Paper of February 2026 proposes narrowing plans over the long term, but there are no changes before September 2030 and current holders are protected to their next phase, so everything above stands today.

This page is general information, not clinical or legal advice.