SEN Support is the extra help schools in England must give pupils with special educational needs who do not have an EHCP, through an ongoing assess, plan, do, review cycle. Around 1.28 million pupils received it in 2025.
In plain terms, SEN Support is the help your child's school arranges from its own resources when it spots that they need something different from or additional to what other children of the same age get. The school's special educational needs coordinator (the SENCO) leads it, working with your child's teachers and with you. It is the main level of help in the system: as of January 2025, around 14 per cent of all pupils in England were on SEN Support, far more than the smaller group who hold a formal plan.
What the school actually has to do
SEN Support runs through the graduated approach: a four-part cycle the school repeats and refines each term as it gets to know your child (SEND Code of Practice 2015, paragraph 6.44).
- Assess: the school works out what your child's needs are, using its own observations and talking to you.
- Plan: it agrees with you what help will be put in place, the outcomes it is aiming for and when it will review.
- Do: the class teacher stays responsible for your child and delivers the agreed help day to day.
- Review: you and the school look at whether it is working and change the plan if it is not. This should happen at least three times a year.
Schools must use their best endeavours to make sure pupils with special educational needs get the help they need (Children and Families Act 2014, section 66), and every school has to publish a SEN Information Report saying what it offers (SEND Regulations 2014, Regulation 51).
What SEN Support is not
Two things trip parents up. First, you do not need a diagnosis for your child to be put on SEN Support. The law defines special educational needs by whether a child needs provision different from or additional to their peers, not by a medical label (Children and Families Act 2014, section 20). A school that says it cannot act until you have a diagnosis has it wrong.
Second, SEN Support is not the same as an EHCP (Education, Health and Care plan), and it sits below one in the system. SEN Support is school-arranged and has no separate legal force; an EHCP is a legally binding plan the council must deliver, for children whose needs a school cannot meet from its own resources. Most children never need an EHCP. If you are weighing up the two, it is worth reading how SEN Support and an EHCP differ.
Reform watch. The Schools White Paper Every Child Achieving and Thriving (23 February 2026) proposes replacing SEN Support with a new statutory duty to write an Individual Support Plan for every child with identified SEND, again with no diagnosis needed. This is at consultation stage: the plans are proposed from September 2029, EHCPs are kept for the most complex needs, and nothing changes for existing arrangements in the meantime. For now, SEN Support as set out above is the law that applies.
Where the law comes from
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This page is general information, not clinical or legal advice.