The government wants your view on EOTAS and EHCPs, and it's worth ten minutes of your time

If you're the parent of a child with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), or you're supporting a young person who's ever needed education outside of a mainstream classroom, there's a consultation open right now that matters. It closes on 18 September 2026 at 23:59, and it could shape how SEND support works for years to come.

Below is what's going on, why it matters even if your child is currently doing fine in mainstream school, and how to have your say without it eating your whole evening.

What is this consultation actually about?

The Department for Education is consulting on proposals for Education Otherwise Than at School (EOTAS), sometimes called EOTIS. This is the provision made for children and young people who, for whatever reason, can't attend a school setting and need their education delivered another way: at home, through a specialist provider, or through a blend of approaches.

It sounds like a narrow, technical topic. It isn't. As the SEND advocacy site Special Needs Jungle points out, the principles being proposed here reveal how the government is thinking about SEND support more broadly, including for children who are currently managing fine in mainstream schools but might need additional flexibility down the line. If your child has an EHCP, or you think they might need one in future, this consultation is relevant to you.

Under the proposals, the process would work roughly like this:

1. The local authority assesses whether a child qualifies for an EHCP.

2. The local authority identifies appropriate provision and names a setting, and can propose EOTAS as part of that.

3. The named setting arranges the EOTAS provision from an approved list of providers.

4. There are regular check-ins to assess whether EOTAS is still the right fit.

5. The setting recommends either continuing with EOTAS or transitioning the child back into a school setting.

6. If the family disagrees with that recommendation, they can request an early EHCP review, though the final decision sits with the local authority.

Special Needs Jungle is blunt about their concerns here, describing the proposals as carrying real risk of undermining children's existing SEND rights, with a strong emphasis on cost control and pushing children back into mainstream settings, sometimes with insufficient regard for whether that's right for the child. Whether or not you share that view, it's a good reason to read the detail and decide for yourself.

Even if these proposals go ahead, they wouldn't take effect until 2029/30, as part of the wider Education for All Bill. That's not a reason to skip the consultation. It's still the moment your feedback can shape the final policy, but it does mean there's no need to panic that anything changes for your child tomorrow.

Why it's worth your ten minutes

If you're already fighting for annual reviews, chasing therapists for reports, or just trying to get through the school run without a meltdown (yours or theirs), a government consultation probably isn't top of your to-do list. But this is one of those moments where the people who respond are the people who get heard, and parents of SEND children are exactly the voices this process needs.

You don't have to be an expert. You don't have to answer every question. You just have to say what your family's actual experience tells you.

How to respond, without it taking over your week

The practical details:

• There are 19 questions in total, but you don't need to answer all of them, just the ones relevant to your situation.

• The online form limits most answers to around 250 words (1,750 characters).

• If you need more space, you can email a longer response directly to [email protected].

• You can respond as an individual parent or carer, or on behalf of an organisation.

• There's an option to mark your response as confidential, though this isn't automatically guaranteed.

• Easy Read and BSL versions of the consultation document are available if that's helpful for you or anyone in your circle.

What actually makes a response useful:

• Think about how the proposals would affect your child, or children like them, specifically. Real examples carry weight.

• Think about how this would work in practice, with the staff and systems that actually exist in your area, not just in theory.

• Note what resources or support would need to be in place for this to work well.

• Be honest about the barriers you can see.

A few things to avoid:

• Don't send an identical, copy-pasted response that others are also submitting. These get flagged and can reduce your response's impact rather than amplifying it.

• Keep personally identifiable information to a minimum, and anonymise any specific examples (no naming individual schools, staff, or local authority officers).

• If you use AI tools to help you brainstorm or get past a blank page, that's fine, but check every fact, link, and figure before you submit. Don't let a chatbot's confident tone stand in for your own judgement.

A couple of ways to add your voice beyond the form

Special Needs Jungle and the SEND legal charity SOS!SEN have also been running webinars explaining the proposals in more detail, and there's a #SaveSENDLegalRights petition circulating that needs 100,000 signatures to trigger a parliamentary debate, if you want to add your name to something with a bit more momentum behind it.

In short

You know your child. You know what's worked, what hasn't, and what "support" actually looks like day to day, in a way that no policy document can capture. This consultation is a real, if narrow, window to put that knowledge in front of the people writing the rules, before those rules are locked in.

It closes 18 September 2026. Ten minutes now could be worth a great deal later.

This post is based on reporting and guidance from Special Needs Jungle, a trusted source for SEND news and advocacy in the UK. For the full consultation document and to submit your response, visit the Department for Education's consultation page.