Yes. An EHC plan continues into college and can be maintained until the academic year your child turns 25, if still needed. It is reviewed and amended to name the college by 31 March before they start. An EHC plan (Education, Health and Care plan) does not end when your child leaves school or turns 16, 18 or 19. It carries on with them into further education.
The rule: the plan continues into post-16 education
The duty to secure the support set out in an EHC plan runs across the whole 0 to 25 age range, not just the school years. The same duty that puts provision in place at school follows your child into a sixth-form college, a further education college or a specialist post-16 setting (section 36 of the Children and Families Act 2014). Turning 19 is not, on its own, a reason for the plan to stop. As the Department for Education guidance on 19 to 25 year olds makes clear, a plan can be kept up to the end of the academic year in which your child turns 25 where they still need it.
Why continuation is not automatic: the cease grounds
This is the part most pages skip, and it cuts both ways. The council can only stop maintaining a plan on two grounds: where it is no longer responsible for your child, or where it decides the plan is no longer necessary (section 45 of the Act). None of the following is a lawful reason on its own:
- Your child has left school or finished Year 11, 12 or 13.
- Your child has turned 16, 18 or 19.
- Your child is moving on to a college rather than a school.
Because your child is over 18 once they are well into college, the council also has to look at whether the education or training outcomes written into the plan have actually been achieved before it can argue the plan is no longer necessary. Outcomes that are still being worked towards keep the plan alive. And if the council does decide to cease, you can appeal to the SEND Tribunal, and the plan stays in force while you do.
The route: the phase-transfer review and the 31 March date
Continuation does not just happen quietly in the background. When your child moves from school to college, the move counts as a phase transfer, and the plan has to be reviewed and amended to name the new setting. The council must issue the final amended plan, with the college named in the part that names the placement (Section I), by 31 March in the year your child starts college (the deadline confirmed by Simpson Millar). You have the right to ask for a particular college, and a maintained college named in Section I has a duty to admit your child. This is the same phase-transfer process that applies at any change of setting.
What about the proposed reforms?
You may have read that EHCPs are being changed. The Schools White Paper of February 2026 and the Education for All Bill proposed in May 2026 set out a direction towards a narrower EHC plan and a new Individual Support Plan. None of this changes the law for a child moving to college now. There are no changes before September 2030, and current plan holders are protected to their next phase transfer or to age 16, so everything above stands. For a fuller answer on the upper age limit, see whether an EHCP lasts until 25.
Where the law comes from
Related
This page is general information, not clinical or legal advice.