SEN Support replaced the IEP. The SEND Code of Practice 2015 dropped the term and the old School Action stages, asking schools to use the graduated approach - assess, plan, do, review - in a plan named as they choose.
What changed, and when
The shift happened in 2014. The Children and Families Act 2014 came into force on 1 September 2014, and the SEND Code of Practice issued under it (updated January 2015) removed the old two-tier system of School Action and School Action Plus. In their place sits a single category, SEN Support, delivered through the graduated approach: four repeating stages of assess, plan, do, review. The Code runs to over 120 pages and does not once mention an “Individual Education Plan” or IEP - the term simply stopped being part of the statutory picture.
A renamed plan is not a lost plan
This is the reassurance most parents are really after. If a school has told you “we don’t do IEPs any more”, it does not mean your child’s support has been removed. The IEP was never a legal requirement, even before 2015, and the Code deliberately leaves the format of any record to the school. So the same document that used to be called an IEP usually still exists - just under a different name:
- a provision map
- a SEN support plan or individual support plan (ILP)
- a one-page profile or pupil passport
What matters is not the title but whether the support is written down, being delivered, and reviewed with you on the assess-plan-do-review cycle. You are entitled to see that record and to be part of each review.
What might change next
There is a reform on the horizon worth knowing about, though it is not law yet. The Schools White Paper published in February 2026 proposes a statutory digital Individual Support Plan (ISP) - a single record of a child’s needs and day-to-day support - with a legal duty on every school, nursery and college to create one for each child with SEND. For now this is a consultation proposal, not a present duty, and the Department for Education says no changes to the support given by EHCPs will begin before September 2030. So today the honest answer remains SEN Support and the graduated approach, with the ISP as the likely direction of travel.
Where the law comes from
Related
This page is general information, not clinical or legal advice.