How do we support a SEND child's transition from nursery to reception?

Start the term before

Start planning the term before the move: hold a meeting with the nursery and family, and share the child's SEN records with the new school. For an EHC plan, the council must name the reception place by 15 February. That covers both halves of the job, because there are two separate duties here and most generic transition checklists only carry one of them.

The first duty applies to every child with special educational needs, whether or not they have a diagnosis or a plan. The SEND Code of Practice (para 5.47) says SEN Support — the graduated help a setting gives without a statutory plan — should include planning and preparing for transition, and that the current setting should share agreed information with the receiving school. So the action is concrete: get the nursery SENCO, the reception teacher and the family round a table this term, and agree what moves with the child.

Share what actually helps in September

The records worth sharing are the ones reception can use on day one: the early years progress check, any one-page profile, the child’s current targets and what is working, sensory or communication needs, and the practical strategies the nursery has tested. The Early Years Foundation Stage framework already requires settings to identify and support SEND and to keep parents informed, so this information exists; the transition job is moving it across with the family’s agreement, not creating it from scratch.

Build in settling-in visits where you can, and let the reception adults meet the child in a familiar room before the child has to walk into an unfamiliar one. The aim is that support continues in September rather than restarting.

If the child has an EHC plan, the council owns a deadline

This is the part the ‘good practice’ blogs leave out. Where a child already holds an EHC plan (Education, Health and Care plan), nursery-to-reception is a defined phase transfer. The council must hold the review and issue the amended plan naming the reception school by 15 February in the year of the move (SEND Regulations 2014, reg. 18). That deadline sits with the local authority, not the school, and it exists to leave time to resolve a dispute before September: parents can appeal the named school to the SEND Tribunal, and the February date is what gives them room to do so.

For a child on SEN Support the dated deadline does not apply, but the planning and information-sharing duty above still does. Plan early either way; only the EHC plan child also brings a hard date the council must meet.

One thing to watch

The Schools White Paper (February 2026) and the Education for All Bill propose statutory Individual Support Plans for a wider group of pupils and a narrower EHC plan. These are proposals: the Government has signalled no changes before September 2030, and current plan holders are protected, so the rules above are the ones that govern this autumn’s intake.

• See also what your duties are at a pupil’s EHCP annual review.

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