‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ – a summary of the DfE’s education white paper

How will the Government deliver change?

The Government has seven key areas (chapters) of change it wants to deliver. These are grouped into two parts – ‘Setting up every child to succeed’ and ‘Stronger foundations to deliver change’.

Chapter 1: Our children’s futures

1. Best Start Family Hubs and Healthy Babies programme to revitalise and build on Sure Start’s Children’s centres.
2. Dedicated SEND practitioner for every Best Start Family Hub.
3. Expansion of Families First Partnership Programme.
4. Mental health support teams in every school and college by end of this parliament (currently in 60% of schools).
5. SAFE (Support, Attend, Fulfil, Exceed) task force programme piloting in 10 serious violence hotspots. Findings to inform Government to provide support for communities most affected by violence, including knife crime.
6. Spaces needed for young people to spend time with friends – £400 million to be spent on new and upgraded grassroots community sport facilities with a particular focus on access to sport for underrepresented groups (women and girls, young people with SEND, those living in disadvantaged areas).
7. Will review of how surplus space in education estates can be used flexibility to meet wider community needs, such as youth facilities.
8. Creating a new model of local partnership and shared accountability for children’s outcomes across local communities.

Chapter 2: Narrow to broad

1. Building on CAR commitments to help children adapt to a fast-changing world.
2. To publish and share best practice for schools that effectively integrate children into reception.
3. Funding for partnerships between early years settings and schools to implement different approaches to transitions (including for children with SEND).
4. Launching RISE Reception Networks to spread best practice/encourage strong partnerships.
5. Boosting quality of transition between education phases.
6. Committed to developing evidence-led resources to support curriculum adaption, including for those with SEND.
7. New Literacy CPD programmes: Reading Ambition for All and Unlocking Reading (75% of secondary literacy leads will have access to new reading training by end of academic year).
8. Speaking to be core foundation of education – primary and secondary to have combined oracy, reading and writing framework.
9. Developing partnership between RISE and English Hubs, and RISE and Maths Hubs.
10. CPD programmes for maths – reformed Advanced Maths Programme and new Higher Level Maths Achievement Programme.
11. New Level 1 prep for GCSE qualification.
12. Pilot programme to understand value of maths and statistics in machine learning and AI.
13. Plan to revise the 16 to 18 English and maths progress measures and qualification achievement rates.
14. Enrichment framework to be published this year.
15. Working with DCMS to enable 400 schools in most deprived areas in England to meet enrichment benchmarks, international enrichment opportunities through EU’s Erasmus + programme (2027), funding Every Child Can programme.
16. Continued investment in music hubs, PE, school partnerships and launch of TechYouth programme.
17. Commitment from organisations to provide enrichment, with call for more organisations to support.
18. New careers statutory guidance, changes to Progress 8 and work with the Department of Business and Trade to support small and medium businesses to engaged with schools; measures to improve critical transition between school and FE (including data sharing, automatically allocating young people a place etc.).

Chapter 3: Sidelined to included

1. Focus on delivering funding and support to those let down by the current system.
2. Improving support for white working class children – including rebuilding early family support so children arrive to school ‘reception ready’; designing new model for targeting disadvantage funding to deliver targeted interventions; and developing insights into the relationships between working-class families and schools to strengthen parental engagement.
3. Seeking out opportunities to support children working at greater depth.
4. Oak National Academy to continue to work with teachers to develop a range of AI tools and curriculum materials.
5. Consulting on new progress measures to better capture progress and achievements of children who start secondary school significantly behind their peers.
6. Focused funding for disadvantaged children – increased Pupil Premium funding and new model for targeting funds to narrow attainment gaps.
7. Launching two place-focused missions, ‘Mission Northeast’ and ‘Mission Coastal’, to transform local outcomes (and use as blueprint for other missions across the nation).
8. Inclusive mainstream education fund, training and set-up of inclusion bases in mainstream settings.
9. Funding for accessible buildings.
10. Additional high-quality special school and alternative provision places for children with complex needs.
11. New ‘Experts at hand’ service – speech and language therapists, educational psychologists and wider professionals to expand multi-agency support.
12. Looking at variable funding rates for different ‘levels’ of disadvantage so those with ‘more entrenched disadvantage attract more funding’ (summer consultation to come which invites sector and local communities to share views).
13. Remove the need for families to choose to take up the free school meal offer to be eligible for deprivation funding.
14. Draw on wealth of evidence from EEF on ‘what works’.
15. Consulting on changes to School Admissions Code to promote fairness for all families, particularly the most disadvantaged and children with additional needs.
16. Developing resources for inclusive admission arrangements.
17. Making operation of banding arrangements clearer.
18. Inclusive training offer for existing and new teacher programmes – consultations to be had with early years sector, and teacher training routes with plan to double early years ITT places by 2028.

NB: SEND reform was a large part of this chapter but we will cover this as part of our separate SEND reform summary.

Chapter 4: Withdrawn to engaging

1. Survey data on pupil experiences in school to be published annually (picture of belonging and engagement to inform Government policy and benchmarks for schools monitoring trends).
2. Expectation for all schools to monitor pupils’ sense of belonging and engagement by 2029.
3. Pupil Engagement Framework to be published later this year so schools can measure key factors and make improvements (includes questions for pupils that are actionable).
4. Government’s Race Equality Unit will conduct further research into racist abuse in schools including direct engagement with pupils and teachers.
5. Independent review recently announced into antisemitism and related issues in schools and colleges to commence from this spring.
6. Establishing minimum home-to-school partnership expectations on what families can expect from schools and what schools expect in return – expected to cover things like timely and effective communication, empowering families to support home learning, opportunities for families to be part of school life etc.
7. To work with local authorities to better support families, including providing an evidence-based guide on how to support learning at home and overcoming barriers of access to technology or study space.
8. Review of current online offer for family support and creation of one-stop shop with age-appropriate support and advice.
9. New screen-time guidance for under-fives to be published in April 2026.
10. Work with IET group to improve complaints system – working on creating of digital, accessible solution for handling complaints, will set out new mutual expectations for complaints handling and create a parents’ guide to school complaints.
11. Will develop new School Profiles to give parents a rounded picture and up-to-date information in one place. Reports will include things like: Ofsted’s most recent report card; and attainment, progress and attendance data. There is also research this year to explore similar profiles for 16-19 providers.
12. Rolling out RISE Attendance and Behaviour Hubs.
13. Specialist attendance advisors to support and challenge local authorities with high need and to develop strategies for tackling severe absence. Severely absent children without a social worker with be routinely assessed for family help through the Families First Partnership programme.
14. Working with schools and NHS on how schools can better accommodate children with health conditions; collect data on health-related attendance; and update guidance and clarify expectations for parents around things like medical appointments.
15. Government to explore how there can be space in schools for children to access health services without missing out on school.
16. New duty on councils to notify schools, health visitors and GPs that a child is in temporary accommodation; and clear guidance to be provided around attendance of children residing in temporary accommodation.
17. Updating behaviour resources to emphasise best practice and inclusion, including Behaviour in Schools guidance, statutory Suspension and Permanent Exclusion guidance, bespoke evidence-based toolkit for teachers on behaviour and bullying, and timely data on suspensions and permanent exclusions.
18. Working with organisations to develop more practical guidance on reasonable adjustments.
19. Enabling of alternative provision and special schools with mainstream schools through targeted outreach work – option to offer time-limited places in specialist environments for children with more complex needs.
20. Updated guidance to focus on schools giving equal consideration to developing rewards and recognition systems alongside sanctions.
21. Introduction of Reintegration School Partnerships following a suspension.
22. Race Equality Unit to work with key stakeholder groups to interrogate the evidence on what drives disparities in school exclusions between different ethnic groups.
23. New internal dashboards and annual review using Ofsted insights to monitor school level trends and student movement – to strengthen scrutiny and apply strong enforcement arrangements where off-rolling is confirmed to be happening.

Chapter 5: Support and investment of high-quality staff

1. Commitment to deliver 6,500 more expert teachers.
2. Working to reform statutory pay and conditions for teachers and leaders; removing ceiling to enable leaders to be flexible with pay for teachers; will provide funding for schools to double their maternity pay for teachers and school leaders to 8 weeks full pay (and seeking similar maternity pay measures for support staff and college staff).
3. New SEND CPD programme.
4. Mentoring and coaching offer for headteachers.
5. Improved teacher training entitlement.
6. Piloting new place-based headteacher retention incentive.
7. Using Improving Education Together to ensure unions and employers can ensure policy works in practice.
8. Work with the sector to tackle issue of staff abuse and help them collect more thorough and consistent reporting.
9. Investigating new teacher retention programme for Autumn 2026.
10. Will provide new guidance for schools and local authorities to better support where bullying and harassment take place.
11. Improving flexibility on return to work after maternity leave.
12. Work with school leaders to develop new resources to improve workload, wellbeing and women’s health.
13. Trialling fully anonymised profiles for initial teacher training candidates.
14. Working to improve data collection on ethnicity and disability to better monitor and address disparities.
15. Review of NPQ training to help teachers from more underrepresented groups step into senior roles.
16. The Race Equality Unit will undertake research to explore effective mechanisms to improve recruitment, retention and progression of the ethnic minority teaching workforce.
17. Inclusion training package for support staff.
18. Expansion of training and development opportunities for school business professionals: including new regional in-person training offer and new bursary for Level 4 Diploma in School Business Management.
19. Universal RISE programmes to be used to improve access to CPD.
20. Targeted package of interventions for Excellence in Leadership.
21. Investing £1 million additional funding for wellbeing support.
22. Ensuring headteacher standards reflect expectations for high quality leadership.
23. Maximising Values for Pupils Programme – toolkit of research to be included.
24. Continuing to make it easier for schools to get support with commercial needs – cracking down on unacceptable practices in the suppliers’ market.
25. Provide (for the first time) long-term maintenance budget for schools and colleges.

Chapter 6: Collaboration between schools and other partners

1. Moving to all schools being part of school trusts, including new trusts established by Local Authorities or Area Partnerships.
2. Proportionate, independent trust inspection and targeted interventions as needed.
3. Clear roles and responsibilities to be set out for local government in relation to all local schools and other partners, such as health, to deliver for children across the country.
4. Publishing new Trust Standards.
5. Encouraging school trusts to report on how they have supported stronger outcomes in their community role.
6. Requirement for trusts to have local governance structures and hold annual parental forums
7. Updating co-operative academy school trust model articles of association.
8. New one-stop shop digital platform for self-improvement for schools.

Chapter 7: Enabling innovation and ambition

1. Rolling out new Regional Improvement for Standard and Excellence (RISE).
2. Realising opportunities from data, AI and tech with safe tools and an extensive evidence programme.
3. Help teachers harness AI, including Oak’s lesson assistant, Alia.
4. Building a stronger, more accountable system for school improvement.
5. Work with AI and sector experts to establish safety standards and efficacy instruments for EdTech and AI tools; and to build on the content store of trusted AI tools.
6. Updating AI product safety standards considering emerging risks around mental health and social, emotional and cognitive development.
7. Working with Oak Academy to digitise the National Curriculum.
8. Work on development, testing and trialling of AI tutoring tools for secondary school children.
9. Investing an additional £23 million to expand the EdTech Impact Testbed pilot.
10. Investing in assistive technology.
11. Developing ‘Data Spine’ – secure, privacy-respecting and streamlined way to connect and share information across different systems in education.
12. Create clear and progressive skills pathway for digital skills for the education workforce
13. Work with AI Safety and Pedagogy Taskforce to develop pedagogy and safety benchmarks.