Ordinarily Available Provision: What Schools Must Provide Without an EHCP

"The school has already put a lot of support in place for your child." It sounds reassuring. But what does it actually mean in legal terms? What is the school genuinely required to provide without an EHCP, and what can you hold them to if they fall short?

The answer lies in a concept called Ordinarily Available Provision — sometimes abbreviated to OAP. Understanding it is essential for parents at the SEN support stage, because it defines the baseline below which a school simply cannot fall, regardless of budget or staff constraints.

What Ordinarily Available Provision Is

Ordinarily Available Provision describes the support and adaptations that every local authority expects all of its schools to be able to provide from within their own resources — without requiring an EHCP, without seeking additional local authority funding, and without treating any child as exceptional.

This is not a single national standard. Each local authority in England publishes its own Ordinarily Available Provision (OAP) document, which sets out what every mainstream school in that area should be able to deliver. These documents vary, but they typically cover:

• Differentiated teaching strategies within the classroom
• Small group and individual literacy and numeracy interventions
• Sensory and physical adaptations to the classroom environment
• Strategies for managing specific needs such as SEMH, SLCN, and autism
• Access to SENCO time and coordination
• Communication with parents around the APDR cycle
• Referral pathways to external specialists

The local authority's OAP document is a public document. Search "[your LA] ordinarily available provision" to find it.

Why It Matters for SEN Support

If your child is on SEN support and the school claims they are "already doing everything they can," your local authority's OAP document tells you whether that claim is credible.

If the school is not providing support that appears in the OAP — differentiated materials, regular small group work, regular communication with parents about APDR cycles — they are not meeting the expected standard for their area. This is directly relevant if you are building a case for an EHC needs assessment.

Conversely, the OAP also helps you understand what schools are genuinely expected to fund from their own budgets. An EHCP becomes necessary when the support a child needs goes beyond what is ordinarily available — when their needs are so complex or intensive that a typical school cannot realistically meet them from its delegated SEN budget.

The Notional SEN Budget and the £6,000 Threshold

Every school in England receives a notional SEN budget as part of its core funding. This is a sum calculated by the local authority to cover the costs of SEN support for individual pupils. Schools are expected to fund the first £6,000 of provision for any individual pupil from this budget.

This £6,000 figure represents a practical ceiling for SEN support. Once a child requires provision that costs more than £6,000 per year — in teaching assistant time, specialist interventions, therapeutic support, or equipment — the school is generally expected to seek LA top-up funding via an EHCP.

This is why schools sometimes resist EHCP requests: the EHCP process makes visible and binding a cost that the school would otherwise have to absorb. But if a child's needs are significant enough to exceed ordinarily available provision, the school's financial position is not a valid reason to refuse or delay an EHCP request.

What Schools Cannot Use OAP to Justify

There are things that genuinely fall outside ordinarily available provision — and schools should not claim otherwise:

• One-to-one support for the majority of the school day
• Highly specialist interventions (e.g., intensive structured literacy programmes delivered by accredited specialists)
• Therapeutic services delivered by qualified SALT, OT, or CAMHS practitioners
• Specialist equipment or technology (e.g., communication devices, specialist seating)
• A reduced class size or specialist placement

If a child needs these things, they need an EHCP. No amount of school goodwill can deliver legally binding specialist provision without one.

How to Use Your LA's OAP Document

When you are preparing for a SENCO meeting or building the case for an EHC needs assessment, the OAP document is a useful tool:

1. Check whether the school is meeting the baseline. Does the OAP list strategies or supports that your child is not receiving? If so, document the gap and raise it specifically.

2. Identify when needs go beyond ordinarily available. Does your child clearly need more intensive or specialist support than the OAP describes? This is evidence that an EHCP is required.

3. Use it in EHCP assessment requests. A letter requesting an EHC needs assessment is more compelling when it references the local authority's own OAP document and explains specifically why the child's needs exceed what is described there.

When the OAP Document Is Vague

One limitation of the OAP framework is that these documents vary significantly in quality. Some local authorities publish detailed, clear guides to what schools are expected to provide. Others publish aspirational statements that are too vague to be useful as an accountability tool.

If your LA's OAP document is too vague to be useful, the SEND Code of Practice chapter 6 provides the national baseline: schools must use their best endeavours to meet SEN, must follow the APDR cycle, must involve parents, and must make arrangements to support pupils' access to the curriculum.

Even without a detailed local OAP, you can hold schools to these fundamental requirements.

The England EHCP & SEN Blueprint at /uk/england/iep-guide includes a provision mapping audit that maps what your child is receiving against what your local OAP framework describes, making it easier to identify gaps and build a clear picture of whether SEN support is adequate or whether an EHCP is necessary.

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