When a child or young person has an EHC plan and is due to move to a new phase of education (such as from primary to secondary education), their EHC plan must be reviewed and amended well before they move to their new education phase.

On this page we explain what a phase transfer is, when EHC plans must be reviewed by and what legal process all local authorities (LAs) must follow.

What is a ‘phase transfer’?

LAs have a legal duty to review and amend an EHC plan when a child or young person transfers from one phase of education to another.

Phase transfer is the moving between particular stages of education:

• early years education to school
• infant to junior school
• primary to middle school
• primary to secondary school
• middle to secondary school
• secondary school to a post 16 institution

This process must start within 12 months of a transfer to a new phase of education.

For those transferring from secondary school to a post-16 institution, the EHC plan must be reviewed and amended by 31 March in the year of transfer.

For all other phases of transfer, the deadline is 15 February in the year of transfer.

When a young person is already attending a post-16 institution and it is proposed that they move from one post-16 institution to another at any time, the LA must review and amend the EHC plan at least five months before that transfer takes place.

These deadlines are set out in Regulation 18 of The Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014.

What this means is that after the review, the EHC plan should say that your child or  young person will continue to attend the current setting until the end of the academic year (or another date if different). In Section I, it must name the setting and type (or just the type of setting) that your child or young person will go to from the start of the next academic year. 

The process must be carried out for all children and young people with EHC plans moving from one phase of education to another. For example, regardless of whether your child attends a mainstream or special school, or if they go to an ‘all-through’ school (for example, a school which covers primary and secondary education) – this process must still be completed. If your child or young person attends an all-through setting, your LA must still carry out a phase transfer review, even if your child will stay in the same setting. This is because they will be moving from one phase of education to another.

The process the LA must follow is the same as the annual review process. The only differences are that there is a different time when the review must take place and a long-stop date by which plans must be reviewed and amended by.

So, where your LA is amending (or changing) the EHC plan before a phase transfer, it must:

Duty	What this means
Make sure the phase transfer process starts at the right time.	Your LA must start the review process within 12 months of your child or young person moving to a new education phase, no earlier and no later. This means that discussions about transfer need to begin early in the autumn term of the year before transfer (such as year 6 or 11) to allow plenty of time for the review and amendment process to happen.
Make sure the review process is carried out lawfully, even if the school or college arranges the review meeting.	Your LA is responsible for this process and making sure the timelines are complied with.
Make its decision concluding the review within four weeks of the phase transfer review meeting.	It must decide whether to maintain the plan, amend (change) the plan, or cease to maintain (stop) the EHC plan.
If its decision is to amend the plan, send to you a notice of the proposed amendments (changes) at the same time as its decision letter.	Your LA must tell you what changes it is considering making to the plan when it tells you it proposes to amend the plan. The two matters (the decision and the proposed changes) must be sent together. This means that your LA cannot say it wants to amend the plan, but will tell you what changes it wants to make at a later point. This is an important stage. Here, your LA must give you at least 15 days to: make comments on the content of the EHC plan request a particular school is named in Section I, and request a meeting with an LA officer to discuss the plan. It is at this point that you should be asked which school or college you would like the EHC plan to name. Your LA’s normal admissions processes are not relevant.
Finalise the amended EHC plan within eight weeks of sending to you the proposed amendments.	This means that your LA cannot take longer than eight weeks to finalise the plan, even if the relevant deadline is some time away. When finalising the plan, your LA must name the maintained school or nursery school, academy, non-maintained special school, institution in the FE sector or section 41 school you requested unless limited lawful reasons apply.
Make sure this whole process is complete by the relevant deadline.	The long-stop deadlines of 15 February and 31 March do not mean that your LA can choose when to finalise the plan following its notice of proposed amendments. The law is clear that all EHC plans must be reviewed and amended within eight weeks of the LA’s notice of proposed amendments, and your LA must make sure this is done before the relevant deadline.

 

If you haven’t been notified that a review of the EHC plan is going to take place by the autumn term, or your LA has already missed the above deadline, you can find information about what to do on our website.