What Section F of an EHCP should say

If you have read your child's Education, Health and Care Plan and come away thinking it sounds reasonable but you are not sure what will actually happen on a Tuesday morning, you are reading Section F. And you are not being slow. A lot of Section F is written in a way that sounds supportive and commits to very little. I spent years on the other side of this, as a SENDCo receiving plans and trying to turn them into a timetable. The plans that worked were the specific ones. Not the long ones, the specific ones. This is what to look for.

What is Section F of an EHCP?

An EHCP is divided into lettered sections. Section B sets out your child's special educational needs. Section F sets out the special educational provision that will be put in place to meet those needs. The distinction matters more than it looks. Section B is a description. Section F is a commitment. When people talk about an EHCP being legally binding, it is mostly Section F they mean, because that is the part the local authority has a duty to secure. Section E, which sits between them, contains the outcomes: what everyone is working towards. Section F should make it clear how the provision helps your child get there.

Why does Section F have to be specific?

Because provision that cannot be measured cannot be delivered, and it cannot be checked. The SEND Code of Practice is clear that provision must be detailed and specific, and that it should normally be quantified. In practice that means saying what the support is, how much of it there will be, how often, and who will deliver it, including what training or qualification that person needs. There is a simple test you can apply yourself. If a new member of staff joined your child's school tomorrow, read Section F, and had to deliver it without asking anyone a single question, could they? If the answer is no, the wording is not specific enough yet.

What does specified and quantified actually look like?

Here are eight pairs. The first line in each pair is the kind of wording that turns up in plans all the time. The second is the same intention, written so it can be delivered and checked. These are constructed examples, not extracts from anyone's plan. Your child's provision will look different, because it should be built from their own needs and the advice about them.

Which words are the warning signs?

When I read a draft plan, these are the phrases that make me slow down. None of them is banned, and occasionally one is genuinely appropriate. But each one usually means a decision has been left open.

• Access to.
• Opportunities for.
• Regular, or ongoing.
• As appropriate, or as required, or as needed.
• Where possible.
• Encouraged to.
• Support with.
• Staff to be aware of.
• May benefit from.

Notice what they have in common. Every one of them leaves out at least one of: how much, how often, who, and to what standard. May benefit from is the one I would look at hardest. It describes an opinion about your child rather than a commitment to them, and it belongs in the advice at the back of the plan, not in Section F.

Should every need in Section B have something in Section F?

Yes, and this is the single most useful check you can do. The Code is clear that provision should be specified for each and every need identified in Section B. So take a highlighter to Section B, mark every distinct need, and then go through Section F and find the provision that meets each one. Some parents call this the golden thread. Where you find a need with nothing corresponding to it, you have found something concrete to raise, and you can point at the two sections side by side rather than saying the plan feels thin. It works in the other direction too. If Section F contains provision that does not connect to any need in Section B, that is worth asking about as well, though it is less common. One thing to watch: support that educates or trains your child can sit in Section F even if it is delivered by a health or social care professional. Therapy is the usual example. Where it sits changes what duty attaches to it, so it is worth checking rather than assuming.

What can I ask for if the wording is vague?

You can ask, and you should feel able to. Asking for clearer wording is not an aggressive act, and in my experience most of the people involved would rather sort it at draft stage than later. A few things that tend to help.

Ask in writing, and be specific about what is missing. Section F is too vague is easy to absorb without anything changing. Section F says access to adult support, and I would like it to say how many minutes, in which lessons, and who delivers it, is much harder to leave alone.

Point at the need it is meant to meet. Quote the wording from Section B and then quote the wording from Section F underneath it. Ask which words in F are intended to meet that need.

Ask where the wording came from. The people writing plans generally cannot invent provision. They work from the professional advice gathered during the assessment, which sits at the back of the plan. If the advice was vague, Section F will be vague, and the fix is often to go back to the professional who wrote it and ask them to be clearer. You can ask the local authority to do that.

Raise it during the draft stage if you can. There is a window after a draft plan is issued when you can comment on it, and changes are more straightforward at that point than afterwards. Check the covering letter with your draft for the date you need to respond by.

I am not able to tell you whether a particular plan meets the legal test, and this guide is not legal advice. What I can do is help you see what is missing and put it into words.

What does this look like from the school's side?

Worth saying, because it surprises some parents: vague wording is usually not good news for the school either. A SENDCo trying to build a timetable from access to adult support has no idea whether that means an adult in the room, an adult at the table, or an adult for a named part of the day. They cannot staff it, cannot budget for it, and cannot evidence it at the next review. When the plan is specific, they can do all three. So when you ask for clearer wording, you are often asking for something the school also wants. That is a more comfortable conversation than it looks from the outside, and it is worth going into it that way round.

A short note for schools

If you are a SENDCo reading this rather than a parent, the same test applies to plans arriving in your setting. A plan you cannot deliver from is a plan you cannot evidence against, and the annual review is where that shows up. I work with schools on exactly this, reviewing plans and strengthening the wording so provision is clear enough to timetable. There is more on the schools and training page.