EHCPs and dyslexic learners in 2026

EHCPs and dyslexic learners in 2026: what's changing, what it funds, and how to make the support stick

The EHCP system you've known since 2014 is about to change. Here's a plain-English guide to where things stand in 2026 — what an Education, Health and Care Plan still covers for dyslexic learners, what the new Schools White Paper means for families and schools, and how to make whatever support is in place actually translate into reading progress.

If you're a parent, SENCo, ALNCo or class teacher trying to get the right reading support in place for a dyslexic child, you've probably noticed the ground shifting under your feet. EHCP applications are at record highs, tribunal cases are soaring, and as of February 2026, the Government has formally set out plans to restructure the whole system. This piece walks you through what's still true, what's changing, and — crucially — what good assistive technology can deliver inside a plan (whatever it ends up being called).

What is an EHCP?

An Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) is a legal document produced by a Local Authority that sets out a child or young person's special educational, health and care needs, along with the support required to meet them. They apply to children and young people aged 0–25, and they're designed for learners whose needs can't reasonably be met through the standard SEN support a school provides from its own resources.

The key point — and the one that matters most when support isn't being delivered — is that an EHCP is legally binding. Once the plan is issued, the Local Authority has a statutory duty to ensure the specialist provision described in Section F of the plan is put in place. That's the bit that gives parents and schools leverage that ordinary SEN support simply doesn't have.

EHCPs are used for a wide range of needs, including specific learning difficulties like dyslexia, dyscalculia and dysgraphia, but also ADHD, autism, speech and language needs, physical disabilities, sensory impairments, and social, emotional and mental health needs.

Can you get an EHCP specifically for dyslexia?

Yes — but the bar is high, and it's the impact of the dyslexia rather than the diagnosis itself that matters.

A formal diagnosis of dyslexia is not required for an EHCP, and equally, having a diagnosis does not guarantee one. What the Local Authority is looking for when it considers an EHC Needs Assessment is whether the learner has — or may have — special educational needs, and whether those needs are likely to call for provision beyond what the school can reasonably make from its own SEN budget. This is the so-called "legal test", and the threshold is actually lower than many assume: Local Authorities turn down a significant proportion of requests that later succeed on appeal, with parental appeal success rates running at well over 90% at tribunal.

For dyslexic learners specifically, a stronger EHCP case tends to involve evidence that:

  • Literacy attainment is significantly below age-related expectations and isn't closing the gap despite targeted intervention.
  • The impact is cross-curricular — not just in English, but in subjects where accessing written text is the gateway to everything else (science, humanities, even maths word problems).
  • There are co-occurring difficulties (working memory, processing speed, attention, organisation) that compound the impact.
  • The learner's confidence, wellbeing or mental health is being affected.

An up-to-date specialist assessment — typically from an educational psychologist or suitably qualified specialist teacher — is often what tips the balance when the case is borderline.

The EHCP process: how it actually works

Step 1 — Request an EHC Needs Assessment (EHCNA)

A parent, carer, school, young person (16+) or anyone else concerned about the learner can make the request to the Local Authority's SEN team. Most councils have a form on their Local Offer website. The school's SENCo or ALNCo is usually the best first point of contact.

Step 2 — The Local Authority decides whether to assess

The LA has 6 weeks to decide whether to carry out an assessment. If they refuse, that decision can be appealed to the SEND Tribunal — and appeal success rates are very high. If they agree, the assessment itself must be completed and a decision issued within 20 weeks of the original request.

Step 3 — The assessment

Under Regulation 6(1) of the SEND Regulations 2014, the Local Authority must seek advice from the parent/young person, the school, a health professional, an educational psychologist, and anyone else relevant — including any professional the family reasonably requests. For older learners, post-16 preparation for adulthood advice is also required.

Step 4 — The decision

The LA decides whether an EHCP is necessary. If the answer is no, that's another appealable decision. If yes, a draft plan is produced.

Step 5 — Draft plan and consultation

Families get 15 days to review the draft, request amendments, and name a preferred school or setting. A "next steps" meeting allows you to talk through the plan and discuss whether to request a personal budget.

Step 6 — Final plan and annual reviews

Once finalised, the plan must be reviewed at least annually. For children under 5, reviews happen every six months.

How EHCP funding actually works (hint: it's not a cheque)

One of the most common misconceptions is that an EHCP comes with its own budget handed directly to the parent or school. It doesn't.

What happens instead is a two-tier funding model:

  1. The first £6,000 of support comes from the school's existing SEN budget, known as the notional SEN budget. Every mainstream school is expected to fund the initial layer of additional support for any child on SEN Support or with an EHCP from this pot.
  2. Top-up funding from the Local Authority's High Needs Block covers anything above £6,000 that the EHCP requires — specialist staff time, specific interventions, therapies, and assistive equipment.

In some cases, parents can request a personal budget for part of the provision, which allows them to commission some elements of the support themselves.

The strain in this system is real. Schools are navigating tight budgets and, in many areas, staffing pressures, while Local Authority High Needs deficits are projected to reach around £5 billion by 2026. This is a big part of why reform is now on the table.

What's changing: the Schools White Paper 2026

On 23 February 2026, the Government published its Schools White Paper, Every Child Achieving and Thriving, alongside a formal consultation on SEND reform (open until 18 May 2026). This is the biggest proposed change to special educational needs provision in England since the Children and Families Act 2014.

The headline numbers are:

  • Around £4 billion in new SEND investment.
  • A new four-tier support structure: Universal, Targeted, Targeted Plus, and Specialist.
  • EHCPs will remain — but over the long term will be reserved for children with the most complex needs, with full transition by around 2035.
  • A new Individual Support Plan (ISP) will be introduced for children receiving Targeted and Targeted Plus support, putting some SEN Support on a statutory footing for the first time.
  • Mandatory SEND training for all teachers, and new National Inclusion Standards from 2028.
  • No changes to existing EHCPs until 2030, with reassessment happening at natural review points from that date onwards.

What this means for dyslexic learners

The White Paper gives dyslexia as a specific example of the kind of need that would typically sit in the Targeted band, where support might include things like coloured overlays, adapted materials or laptops. More complex or co-occurring presentations could fall into Targeted Plus, which might include specialist teacher input or therapy.

The British Dyslexia Association has broadly welcomed the move to put SEN Support on a statutory footing — something parents of dyslexic children have been campaigning for, because most dyslexic learners are supported at SEN Support level without ever reaching the EHCP threshold. However, the BDA has also raised concerns that without a dedicated national dyslexia strategy and a stronger accountability framework, literacy needs risk being overlooked inside a broader reform programme.

What's not changing in the short term:

  • If your child already has an EHCP, it continues unchanged until at least 2030.
  • The right to request an EHC Needs Assessment, and the right to appeal a refusal, both remain in place for the foreseeable future.
  • Schools' statutory duty to "use best endeavours" to meet SEN remains.

The pressure on the current system, in numbers

The reform isn't happening in a vacuum. The scale of demand on the current system is stark:

  • 1.7 million pupils in England were identified with SEN as of January 2025 — around 19.6% of all pupils.
  • Approximately 482,640 EHCPs are now in place — the highest on record and more than double the 2016 figure.
  • 1 in 20 pupils now has an EHCP (5.3%, up from 4.8% the previous year).
  • Only 46.4% of new plans are being issued within the statutory 20-week window.
  • 24,000 SEND tribunal cases were lodged in 2024–25 — up by more than a third on the previous year — with parents winning the vast majority.
  • Council SEND expenditure is forecast to rise from £4 billion in 2015 to around £12 billion by 2026.

For dyslexic learners specifically, only 8% of children with EHCPs achieved the expected level in reading, writing and maths at the end of primary school in 2022/23 — identical to the 2016/17 figure. In other words, more children are getting plans, but outcomes for those children haven't improved. That's part of what the reforms are trying to address.

What good EHCP provision looks like for a dyslexic learner

Whether support sits in an EHCP or in the incoming Individual Support Plan framework, the core ingredients of effective provision for dyslexia don't change. A well-written plan for a dyslexic learner typically includes:

  • Structured, evidence-based literacy intervention (systematic synthetic phonics at primary age, multi-sensory structured literacy approaches for older learners).
  • Specialist teaching time from a qualified dyslexia specialist or teaching assistant working under their direction.
  • Reasonable adjustments in the classroom — coloured overlays or tinted paper where helpful, dyslexia-friendly fonts, reduced-text worksheets, extended time for written tasks.
  • Assistive technology to unlock access to the curriculum — reading pens, text-to-speech software, speech-to-text dictation, electronic overlays and digital reading rulers.
  • Exam access arrangements that mirror the learner's normal way of working — most commonly extra time, a reader or reading pen, and/or a scribe or word processor.
  • Emotional and pastoral support — dyslexia is frequently associated with anxiety, low self-esteem and reading avoidance, and good plans treat this as core, not optional.

Why assistive technology earns its place in the plan

Assistive technology sits in an interesting position in the SEND reform conversation. The Department for Education's own Assistive Technology Test and Learn programme, launched in 2025 with up to £1.7 million in funding, set up "lending libraries" of assistive tech — including reading pens, dictation tools and communication tablets — across up to 32 local authorities and 4,000 schools. That's a clear signal that the direction of travel in SEND policy is towards equipping schools to support more learners within mainstream settings, and AT is central to that.

For dyslexic learners in particular, the evidence base for reading pens and text-to-speech is strong and has been for years. When a learner can decode independently with a pen in their hand, three things happen in parallel:

  1. Comprehension catches up with cognition. Dyslexic learners are typically strong thinkers held back by the decoding bottleneck. Take the bottleneck away and they can engage with age-appropriate material.
  2. Vocabulary and fluency grow. Hearing words while seeing them on the page reinforces orthographic mapping — the very skill that dyslexic readers find hardest.
  3. Confidence returns. The single biggest predictor of reading progress in older dyslexic learners is often whether they're still willing to pick a book up. AT that restores independence restores willingness.

The other practical argument is that reading pens and similar AT fit cleanly into that tricky £6,000 notional budget. A reading pen is a one-off cost that supports a learner through multiple school years, moves with them between key stages, and can be used for exam access under JCQ regulations when the right conditions are met. For schools balancing SEN budgets in an era of tight finances, durable AT is one of the higher-leverage investments available.

Practical guidance: what parents, SENCos and ALNCos can do right now

If you're a parent or carer

  • Start a written evidence file: assessments, school reports, intervention records, samples of work, dated notes of meetings. This is gold dust if you ever need to appeal.
  • Ask the school's SENCo for a copy of the pupil profile or SEN Support plan and make sure you've seen the assess–plan–do–review cycle in action before applying for an EHCNA.
  • Check your Local Authority's Local Offer — every council publishes one, and it sets out what should be available without an EHCP.
  • If you're considering an EHCNA request, the charity IPSEA provides free, legally accurate guidance and model letters.

If you're a SENCo or ALNCo

  • Make sure any EHCNA request is accompanied by clear, quantified evidence: standardised scores, progress data across multiple assess–plan–do–review cycles, and costed detail of what's already been tried from the notional SEN budget.
  • Pay particular attention to Section F of any draft plan — this is the legally enforceable part. Vague language ("access to", "as appropriate") is where provision tends to evaporate. Specific, quantified, and costed provision is what holds up.
  • Start preparing your team now for the new Individual Support Plan framework — the consultation closes 18 May 2026 and preparatory work for the three-tier support structure begins across 2026/27 and 2027/28.

If you're a class teacher

  • Keep dated, specific records of what you've tried and how the learner responded. "Quality-first teaching" only counts as adequately evidenced when it's documented.
  • Under the proposed reforms, all teachers will need to complete mandatory SEND training. The earlier you start building your practical toolkit — decodable texts, pre-teaching of vocabulary, dual-coding, AT in the classroom — the better positioned you'll be.

Reading pens and the wider AT landscape

At The Dyslexia Shop we stock the full range of reading pens and assistive technology that schools typically specify in EHCPs and SEN Support plans — including Reader Pens (for classroom use) and OrCam assistive reading devices (for learners with more significant visual or processing difficulties), along with coloured overlays, reading rulers, dyslexia-friendly stationery and a full range of classroom support tools.

If you'd like help working out which tools fit a specific EHCP, ISP or SEN Support plan, our team is always happy to talk it through — drop us a line via our contact page and we'll point you in the right direction.

Sources and further reading

This blog is intended as general guidance for parents, careers and education professionals in England. It isn't legal advice. If you're appealing a refused EHCNA or a final EHCP, IPSEA and SOS!SEN both offer free, legally accurate support.

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