The 2025 Schools White Paper – Forwards or Backward? 

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The 2025 Schools White Paper offers a key moment for the future of education in England, especially for those Disabled pupils and students within it. The paper’s focus is on improving standards, increasing accountability and promoting inclusion.  

Specifically, changes to the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) support system are proposed. Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) are likely to be scrapped. See ALLFIE’s briefing on this issue (ALLFIE, 2025). Also, a three-tier support system for schools is suggested, i.e. universal, targeted intervention, and specialist support. 

While these changes may aim to streamline much needed support, we are concerned about their impact on the education of Disabled pupils and their rights to it. Considering the current lack of adequate support, and choice for Disabled pupils, we are concerned this review begins with a focus on ‘value for money’ rather than opportunities for education and rights to it. This, we worry, will lead to more segregation and bias in education policy, the consequence of which will mean less attainment, and more discrimination for Disabled pupils.    

However, this is a moment for systemic change. One key thing that the White paper could achieve is to recognise Inclusive Education as a right for all Disabled people to reflect all aspects of the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRDP). This would include specifically withdrawing all previous reservations made by the UK Government to Article 24, that is ‘an Inclusive, Education system at all levels’¹. This would be a push forward to end segregated learning for Disabled pupils and is what ALLFIE expects the focus of the 2025 Schools White Paper approach of promoting inclusion to be aligned with.  

To push forward even further, ALLFIE suggests that the Schools White Paper could also;  

• • Commit to phasing out segregated education, with clear targets.
  • Invest in ‘Inclusive Education’ for teacher training and recruit more Disabled teachers. 
  • End regulatory bodies like Ofsted that reinforce ‘segregated education’ bias. 
  • Create a monitoring system for ‘Inclusive Education’, that is rights-based. 

ALLFIE insists that the 2025 Schools White Paper will push us forward to achieving Inclusive Education, many other countries have done².  

Inclusive Education requires an unwavering commitment to bringing pupils together, not separating them just because of the diversity of their bodyminds. This won’t just benefit Disabled people, through increases to attainment, participation and employment; everyone will gain from an education system that, by default, tailors learning to an individual’s preferences and enables them to achieve amazing things for all of us together.  

¹ Reservations to Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) primarily relate to the UK’s ability to provide segregated or specialised education and educate disabled children outside their local area. 

² Countries with notable progress in inclusive education include Finland, Norway, Portugal, Italy, and some Asian countries like India, Nepal, and the Philippines.