Reviews turn on evidence of what is actually happening, and a tutor working with your child each week sees things a termly report does not. Our SEN specialists work with families across London and often help parents identify exactly where progress has stalled before a review meeting.
The letter arrives with a date on it and very little else. A meeting has been arranged to review your child's plan, you are invited, and you are not entirely sure what you are walking into.
Or the opposite has happened. The meeting took place months ago, nothing has come back from the local authority, and you have started to wonder whether you are being unreasonable by chasing.
Both are common. The review process has clear legal deadlines attached to it, but they are rarely explained to families in a way that makes them easy to use. This guide sets out what has to happen, who is responsible for each stage, and what the timescales actually are.
A review is the formal check on whether your child's Education, Health and Care plan still matches their needs. It looks at the progress made towards the outcomes written into Section E, and it asks whether the support in the plan is still the right support.
It is not an administrative formality, although it can feel like one. The review is the point at which provision can be added, changed or removed, and it is the main opportunity most families get each year to raise something that is not working. If you are at an earlier stage and the plan itself is not yet in place, our guide to what an EHCP is and how to apply for one covers that process instead.
Every EHCP must be reviewed at least once every twelve months. The review has to be completed, not merely started, within twelve months of the plan being issued or of the previous review.
For children under five, reviews happen more often. The SEND Code of Practice sets the expectation at every six months up to a child's fifth birthday, because needs at that age change quickly.
In practice, most schools hold the meeting a month or two before the anniversary date, which gives the local authority time to work through the stages that follow.
The meeting is usually run by the school, and it is normally shorter than parents expect. An hour is typical, sometimes less.
Your child's school or setting, you as the parent, and your child or young person where that is appropriate. The SENCO usually leads. A local authority representative may attend but often does not. Health and social care professionals are invited where they are involved, though attendance varies considerably.
Progress towards the outcomes in the plan, whether the provision listed is actually being delivered, and whether anything needs to change. From Year 9 onwards, the meeting also has to consider preparation for adulthood, which covers employment, independent living and community participation.
Reports and advice from everyone involved should be circulated to all those invited at least two weeks before the meeting. If you have not received anything a fortnight beforehand, that is worth a phone call to the SENCO. Going into the meeting having read the reports changes the conversation entirely.
This is the part that families most often have to enforce themselves, so it is worth knowing precisely.
The four week deadline runs from the date of the meeting, not from the date the local authority receives the school's report. That distinction matters. A local authority cannot extend its own deadline by waiting on paperwork it should have chased.
No changes. You have a right of appeal against this decision, and you should be told so in the letter.
The local authority issues a draft amended plan showing the proposed changes. You have fifteen days to respond, agreeing, disagreeing or proposing alternatives of your own. Use them. This is the stage at which wording can still be improved, and vague provision is far harder to challenge once it is final.
The local authority proposes to end the plan. This also carries a right of appeal, and the plan stays in force while an appeal is ongoing.
Appeals go to the First-tier Tribunal for Special Educational Needs and Disability, and there is a two month time limit. If you are considering one, IPSEA and your local SENDIASS service both give free, independent advice. That is specialist legal territory and it is worth taking proper guidance rather than going in alone.
Parents are entitled to submit their views ahead of the meeting, and this is the single most useful thing you can do to influence the outcome.
What tends to carry weight is specific, dated observation rather than general concern. “He is struggling with writing” is easy to absorb and forget. “Homework that should take twenty minutes takes an hour and usually ends in tears, three or four nights a week since January” is much harder to set aside.
A short written contribution covering four things is usually enough:
That last point is worth being direct about. Reviews frequently conclude with everyone agreeing things are broadly fine, because nobody said clearly that they were not.
This is where September matters, and where the ordinary twelve month cycle no longer applies.
When a child is due to move between phases of education, the local authority has to issue a final amended plan naming the new setting by a fixed date, well before the move happens.
Working backwards from those dates, the review has to happen in the autumn term. Consultations with prospective schools take weeks, and the local authority needs the review paperwork before it can start. A phase transfer review scheduled for January is already too late.
If your child is in Year 6, Year 11 or Year 2 and you have not heard about a review date by the October half term, contact the SENCO and the local authority's SEN team in writing.
A review does not have to wait for the anniversary. You can ask for one to be brought forward, and there are good reasons to do so.
An early or emergency review is appropriate where a placement is breaking down, where your child's needs have changed significantly, where attendance has fallen away, or where the provision in the plan has stopped being delivered. Put the request in writing to the local authority and to the school, and say specifically what has changed.
Attendance is a common trigger. Where a child has begun refusing school or is only managing part of the week, an early review is usually more productive than waiting, and our guide to school anxiety and school refusal covers what tends to sit behind that pattern.
Local authorities miss these deadlines regularly, usually through caseload pressure rather than anything deliberate. That does not make the deadlines optional.
A short, dated email to the SEN caseworker, copied to the SEN team's general address, referring to the specific timescale and asking when you can expect the decision, resolves a good proportion of delays on its own. Keep the correspondence. If nothing moves, the next step is the local authority's formal complaints process, and after that the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
For anything involving placement or a phase transfer deadline, do not let it drift. A missed 15 February deadline can mean a child starting September without a named school.
A review is one day out of a school year, and most of what determines whether your child makes progress happens in the other three hundred and sixty four.
Keeping a light record through the year makes the next review far easier. Dates when things went wrong, copies of correspondence, examples of work, notes from meetings. Very few parents do this and the ones who do arrive at the meeting with something nobody can talk around.
At least every twelve months, and the review must be completed within twelve months of the plan being issued or of the last review. For children under five, the expectation is every six months up to their fifth birthday.
Four weeks from the date of the review meeting. Within that time it must tell you whether it intends to maintain the plan, amend it, cease to maintain it, or carry out a reassessment. The four weeks run from the meeting, not from when the school's report arrives.
The school sends a report of the meeting to everyone invited within two weeks. The local authority then notifies its decision within four weeks of the meeting. If it decides to amend, it issues a draft amended plan, you have fifteen days to comment, and the final amended plan should be issued within twelve weeks of the meeting.
The school or setting, usually led by the SENCO, along with you and your child where appropriate. A local authority representative may attend. Health and social care professionals are invited where they are involved with your child, though they do not always come.
Around an hour is typical, sometimes less. The length matters less than the preparation. Reading the reports beforehand and submitting a written contribution will do more for the outcome than a longer meeting.
Yes. You can request an early or emergency review at any point, and it is worth doing where a placement is breaking down, needs have changed, attendance has dropped, or the provision in the plan is not being delivered. Put the request in writing to both the school and the local authority.
Where a child is moving between phases of education, the final amended plan naming the new setting must be issued by 15 February in the year of transfer, or by 31 March for a move into post-16 education. Working back from those dates, the review needs to happen in the autumn term.
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