Deep Dive: What the Schools White Paper and SEND Reforms Really Mean for FE

The Schools White Paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, alongside the SEND consultation Putting Children and Young People First, represents the most ambitious overhaul of SEND provision in a generation. The investment is real: £7 billion more is being spent on SEND compared to 2025-26. Key investments include £1.6 billion for an Inclusive Mainstream Fund, £1.8 billion for “Experts at Hand,” over £200 million for national SEND training, and £3.7 billion in capital for 60,000 new specialist places.

£7 billion more is being spent on SEND compared to 2025-26, FE and Individual Support Plans (ISPs)

But here’s the tension running through both documents: this is a schools white paper. Despite repeated references to the “0-25 system,” the policy architecture, funding mechanisms, and implementation details are all designed around schools. Colleges, training providers and employers are mentioned, but the post-16 detail is thin, and in several critical areas, the Government openly admits it hasn’t worked out how the reforms will operate for FE. One major area for the FE and Skills sector is that the Government intends to place a duty on colleges to produce Individual Support Plans (ISPs), but the sector can shape how they work in FE through the consultation.

The consultation closes on 18 May 2026

That matters because the consultation closes on 18 May 2026. The sector has less than three months to shape how these reforms land for post-16 learners. If FE doesn’t show up with detailed, practical proposals, the default will be a schools model retrofitted onto colleges.

This deep dive examines three questions: Does the funding actually reach colleges? Does the transition model work for post-16? And where are the employers?

Key Takeaways

• £1.6bn Inclusive Mainstream Fund explicitly includes colleges, but no detail on how allocation works for FE
• £1.8bn Experts at Hand may need an “alternative model” for colleges, the Government’s words, not ours
• The Government intends to place a duty on colleges to produce ISPs, but the sector can shape how they work in FE through the consultation
• Transition planning must begin 12 months in advance, with schools, colleges and LAs co-designing bespoke packages
• The post-18 cliff edge is acknowledged but unresolved, the consultation says it will “consider whether further support is needed” after 18
• Apprenticeships get barely a page in a 129-page consultation document.
• Consultation Q17 directly asks how to support SEND transitions into post-16, this is the sector’s moment to respond

The Funding: Follow the Money

Does It Reach Colleges?

The £1.6 billion Inclusive Mainstream Fund explicitly covers “early years, schools and colleges.” That’s the good news. The bad news is that the consultation provides extensive modelling for how schools will use this funding but says little about FE, where learner numbers, programme structures, and support models are fundamentally different.

The Government says it will work with colleges to develop an “appropriate and proportionate” approach. Translation: they haven’t designed it yet. They’re also consulting on whether colleges should demonstrate how they use inclusion funding in their accountability agreements again, undecided.

David Hughes at AoC has framed the opportunity well: the shift from negotiating funding for every individual towards funding colleges to have capacity for varied needs is, in his view, a fundamental and positive change. But he flags a genuine black hole for the 19-25 age group, learners remaining in education without an EHCP would fall to the adult skills fund, which is already overstretched with lower funding rates. The consultation doesn’t address this.

Experts at Hand: The Biggest Gap

The £1.8 billion Experts at Hand programme, embedding educational psychologists, speech and language therapists, and occupational therapists into mainstream settings, is arguably the most significant new investment. But here’s the critical line, buried in the consultation:

“An alternative model may be more appropriate for colleges and localised post-16 providers given that their size and therefore commissioning capability is varied and often spread across multiple local authorities.”

The Government is saying the schools model probably won’t work for colleges. A large FE college draws learners from multiple LA areas, making LA-commissioned specialist services hard to coordinate. A small training provider may lack the scale or relationships to access them at all. The consultation acknowledges this but offers no solution. This is the single biggest implementation gap for post-16, and the sector needs to propose its own model, regional commissioning, consortium approaches, or direct college contracts, during the consultation window.

Training and Capital

The £200 million training programme is welcome and starts September 2026, all staff in the 0-25 system, not just SEND specialists. The Government will also review the school SENCO role and work with the wider post-16 sector to understand the implications for college settings. The £3.7 billion capital investment includes colleges and can fund accessibility improvements, though the “Inclusion Base” model is designed around schools and will need adapting for FE’s multi-campus, workshop-based delivery.

The Transition Model: Promise and Gaps

What Works

The consultation sets a clear expectation for the first time: transition planning must begin at least 12 months in advance. Schools, colleges and LAs will co-design “bespoke or cohort-based transition packages.” A Derby College case study shows what good looks like, an 8-step package running from assessment to enrolment with site tours, taster days, and a personalised support plan.

The data demands action: the post-16 destination gap has widened to 8.1 percentage points, and young people with SEND are 80% more likely to be NEET.

The new layered support model replaces the EHCP-or-nothing binary. Individual Support Plans (ISPs) will be digital, follow learners between settings, and carry legal entitlement. For transition, this is potentially transformative, instead of a young person arriving at college with a paper file or nothing, their ISP transfers digitally with immediate visibility of needs and what’s been working.

What Doesn’t

The 12-month planning requirement creates significant new operational demands. A large college with dozens of feeder schools across multiple LAs faces considerably more complex coordination than a single secondary school. The consultation shares the responsibility between schools, colleges and LAs, but the logistics are unaddressed.

ISPs also need to be designed for FE contexts, modular study programmes, work placements, multiple teaching staff, not just adapted from a schools template. The Government intends to place a duty on colleges to produce ISPs, which means the sector can shape what they look like for FE if it engages now.

The Post-18 Cliff Edge: The Critical Admission

Buried in the transitions section is one of the most significant lines in the entire document: “We will also consider whether further support is needed for young people with SEND who do not have an EHCP under the new system after the age of 18.”

The Government is explicitly acknowledging the post-18 cliff edge and admitting it doesn’t have an answer. Under the new system, with fewer EHCPs and more learners on ISPs, the question is: what happens to ISP support when a learner turns 18 or moves beyond post-16? Those with EHCPs continue to 25. For the growing cohort of ISPs, the post-18 picture is blank.

According to sector data, nearly half of all young people who are NEET are now disabled, up from one in five a decade ago. If ISP support evaporates at 18, the reforms risk creating a new cliff edge to replace the old one. The sector must fill this gap during the consultation.

Where Are the Employers?

This is the thinnest section of both documents, and it matters most for FE and skills.

Apprenticeships get barely a page in a 129-page document. Foundation Apprenticeships are mentioned as a new route, but with no detail on how SEND support integrates. Supported Internships continue, including a pilot for those without EHCPs. The Alan Milburn review will make recommendations on NEET opportunities. That’s essentially it.

There is no framework for how ISPs transfer to an employer. No model for how Experts at Hand works during work placements or apprenticeships. And Cognassist data suggests that 1 in 3 apprentices has a cognitive learning need that is often hidden and undiagnosed, a finding that doesn’t appear anywhere in either government document.

Are these funding and support programmes only available to public sector providers? ITPs and employer providers carry the same duties, a learner’s route into education should not determine the quality of inclusion they receive.

The Post-16 White Paper and the Schools White Paper need to talk to each other. Foundation Apprenticeships, the Youth Guarantee, enhanced NEET tracking, and the Growth and Skills Levy all have SEND dimensions that neither document addresses. What does Foundation Apprenticeship delivery look like for a learner with an ISP? How does the Youth Guarantee’s automatic college place work for someone with complex SEND? Unanswered.

Beyond SEND: The AI Gap in the Same Document

The SEND reforms are not the only area where the white paper’s ambition outpaces its post-16 detail. As UCL’s Professor Ruse Luckin highlights, in the same document commits £23 million to a four-year EdTech evidence programme, launches an AI Safety and Pedagogy Taskforce, announces sovereign AI safety and pedagogy benchmarks, and promises teacher co-created AI tutoring tools available to schools by 2027, with Google DeepMind and OpenAI named as partners. It draws a distinction, now government policy, between general-purpose AI that gives answers and purpose-built educational AI rooted in pedagogy. None of this extends explicitly to FE.

Given that the AI tutoring tools are being designed for secondary maths and English, and the white paper simultaneously creates new Level 1 qualifications and 100 hours of English and maths for post-16 learners without a grade 4, the absence of any connection between the two is notable.

What the Consultation Asks, and What FE Must Answer

Of the 39 consultation questions, several demand priority attention from the post-16 sector:

Q17: How can we best support transition for young people with SEND into post-16 provision, FE, HE, training or employment?
The single most important question. Address the 12-month planning model, ISP transfer to FE, post-18 support, and employment pathways.

Q30: How should settings be held accountable for how they spend their Inclusive Mainstream funding?
The consultation floats whether colleges should demonstrate inclusion spending in accountability agreements. If the sector doesn’t propose its own model, one will be imposed.

Q8: Do you agree that the refreshed ‘areas of development’ will support educators to understand and address barriers to learning and participation?
Address how barrier identification works in FE’s modular, multi-staff, placement-based delivery model, not just the single-classroom schools model.

The use of AI and AI support could be better utilised to support SEND in new ways. Is this something to flag in the consultation?

And across all responses, push for detail on how the reforms will be delivered in post-16 settings, the Government has admitted it doesn’t have the answer for FE. The sector must provide one.

What We Must Do Now

• Respond collectively.
  Individual responses matter, but a coordinated sector voice carries more weight. AoC, AELP, Natspec and sector bodies should coordinate. The Bridging the SEND Transition Collective on 24 April, which falls within the consultation window, offers a direct opportunity to co-create recommendations that feed into a formal response.
• Design the FE model for Experts at Hand.
  Don’t wait for the Government to design it. Propose a model that accounts for multi-LA catchments, varied college sizes, and post-16 learner needs.
• Build ISPs for FE.
  With the duty on colleges to produce ISPs, they need to be designed for FE from day one, modular programmes, work placements, multiple teaching environments, interoperable with college MIS systems.
• Fill the post-18 gap.
  Propose a model, extended ISP support, a transition fund, or employer duties on reasonable adjustments. The current silence will default to a cliff edge.
• Connect the two white papers.
  Responses should cross-reference the Post-16 White Paper and propose joined-up delivery models for Foundation Apprenticeships, the Youth Guarantee, and SEND reform.
• Prepare operationally.
  Audit current SEND provision against the new layered model. Map feeder school relationships for 12-month transition planning. Review workforce needs against the training programme. Assess data systems for digital ISPs. Engage with LAs and ICBs on local Experts at Hand commissioning.

Looking Ahead

The ambition is undeniable and the investment is real. The shift from EHCP-or-nothing to a layered model with universal training, targeted ISPs, and specialist packages has the potential to be genuinely transformative. But the risk for FE is clear: this is a schools reform with FE bolted on. The post-16 detail is consistently thinner. The employer dimension is almost absent. And the post-18 cliff edge is acknowledged but unresolved.

The Government is explicitly asking for help designing the FE model.

As AELP’s Paul Stannard put it:

“While this is primarily a schools-focused document, the critical question remains how young people with SEND will be supported as they move into further education, training and employment.”

The consultation closes on the 18th of May. The sector has the expertise, the evidence, and the experience. Now it needs that collective voice to match.