What the school must do
Provide SEN Support: the school must use its best endeavours to meet the child’s needs, follow the graduated approach (assess, plan, do, review) and make reasonable adjustments, all without an EHCP. (England, 2026.) None of this waits on the council, and none of it waits on a plan being in place.
Four duties sit under that sentence, and each is a legal floor rather than good practice:
- Best endeavours. Every mainstream school and academy must use its best endeavours to secure the special educational provision a pupil’s SEN calls for Children and Families Act 2014, s.66. This covers all pupils with SEN, not only those with an EHCP.
- The graduated approach. Identify and meet need through a SENCO-led cycle of assess, plan, do, review, set out in the statutory SEND Code of Practice 2015 (paragraphs 6.44 to 6.56) SEND Code of Practice.
- Reasonable adjustments. A separate, anticipatory duty to disabled pupils so they are not put at a substantial disadvantage Equality Act 2010, s.20. It runs alongside the SEN duties, with or without a plan.
- The SEN Information Report. The school must publish, and review every year, a report setting out how it identifies and supports pupils with SEN SEND Regulations 2014, reg.51.
Triggered by need, not by a diagnosis or a plan
The qualifier most guidance skips: a child has SEN if they have a learning difficulty or disability that calls for special educational provision. The trigger is need. It is not a medical diagnosis, and it is not an EHCP. So the school cannot wait for a diagnosis before it acts, and it cannot wait for the council to agree an EHC needs assessment either. If an assessment has been refused, the SEN Support duty is unchanged, because it never depended on the plan in the first place. In practice this is SEN support: a tailored learning programme, extra help from a teacher or teaching assistant, smaller-group work, in-class observation, or help with communication and personal care.
Why this is a floor, not a favour
These duties are enforceable, not aspirational. Best endeavours, the anticipatory reasonable-adjustments duty and the SEN Information Report each carry legal weight, and a failure on any of them can be challenged. SEN Support is funded from the school’s notional SEN budget: the expectation is that the school meets the first £6,000 of additional or different provision for a pupil from its own delegated funding before higher-needs top-up funding or an EHCP comes into play. Doing the graduated approach well, and recording it, is also the evidence base the council looks for if an EHC needs assessment is later requested.
Reform watch: what 2026 does and doesn’t change
The framework above is the current law as at 2026 and is unchanged. The February 2026 Schools White Paper (“Every Child Achieving and Thriving”) proposes a new legal duty for every school, nursery and college to write an Individual Support Plan for each child with SEND, and narrows future EHCPs toward the most complex needs DfE Education Hub. These are proposals. No changes to EHCP support begin before September 2030, and the SEN Support duties above govern what your school owes a pupil today.
Where the law comes from
Related
This page is general information, not clinical or legal advice.