The schools white paper will be delayed until “early in the new year”, government has announced today, as ministers take more time to draw up SEND reforms.

Government has consistently promised the white paper will be published in Autumn. Alongside SEND reforms, ministers had promised the paper would “lay the path for national renewal to take schools into the 2030s”.

However, education secretary Bridget Phillipson has told the education select committee in a letter today the white paper will now be published “early in the new year”.

“To help us deliver the most effective set of reforms we can, I have taken the decision
to have a further period of co-creation, testing our proposals with the people who
matter most in this reform – the families – alongside teachers and other experts as
you highlight in the select committee’s report,” Phillipson said.

“We will bring forward a full schools white paper early in the new year, underpinned by our belief that high standards and inclusion are two sides of the same coin.”

The committee had called for ministers to urgently set out its SEND reform thinking.