Learning after 16

What changes at 16?

Less immediately than the anxiety around the birthday suggests, and more fundamentally than anybody warns you. Education after that age continues, and the plan that carries special educational support continues with it; but the rules that govern that plan, including what it requires and until which age, sit in the Children and Families Act 2014. That Act is one this handbook has yet to open and date, so no rule from it is printed on this page. What follows is the other half of the handover: what the adult system asks for, read from the Care Act 2014 and dated where it says anything at all.

The reason to read it early is that the two systems do not hand over automatically. The education side has its own rhythm, its own meetings and its own documents, and the adult side begins its work when somebody asks it to. A family that waits for the education system to finish before approaching the adult one is a family that spends a year discovering what this page sets out in ten minutes.

What does the adult side ask for?

Four things, in order. First, that somebody asks: the assessment of an adult's needs for care and support is carried out under section 9 of the Care Act 2014, and it begins with a request that is worth recording with a date. Second, that the needs found are measured against the national eligibility criteria, which the Act carries at section 13 and which are set out in the 2015 regulations, with regulation 2 for adults who need care and support. Third, that what is to be done about it is written down: the steps the council takes are at section 24 and the plan at section 25. Fourth, that the money is attached to the plan as a personal budget, at section 26.

Care Act 2014, sections 9, 13, 24, 25 and 26, and the Care and Support (Eligibility Criteria) Regulations 2015, regulation 2. Version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026, legislation.gov.uk, read on 3 September 2026.

Behind all four sits section 1, Promoting individual well-being, which is the section the council is working towards in every decision it takes about an adult, and which is the section to name when a decision about the future appears to have been taken entirely about timetables and buildings. The four rights in their general form are set out in your rights under the law.

How should the handover be prepared?

As a piece of paperwork rather than a hope. Three requests, all of them free, do most of the work. Ask for the date the adult request was recorded and the name of the team holding it, so that the clock can be talked about with a reference. Ask which parts of the young person's existing support the assessment has read, because an assessment that starts from a blank page produces a thinner plan than one that starts from a file. And ask for the resulting plan in writing, with the parts you disagree with recorded inside it, because a plan is the document the whole adult system will act on and the only one it will act on.

The document councils work from is the Care and support statutory guidance, and its dates are worth writing into any meeting about the future: first published on 29 July 2016, last updated on 22 July 2025. Advice given before an update may describe a version that has since changed, which is a polite and effective question to ask in a transition meeting where everybody is relying on what they were told years ago.

Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, first published 29 July 2016, last updated 22 July 2025, GOV.UK, read on 3 September 2026.

What the plan is supposed to contain, who agrees it and when it has to be reviewed are set out in the care and support plan, which is the page to read before attending the meeting where the adult plan is drafted.

What can a college be asked to adjust?

The Equality Act 2010 carries an obligation to make reasonable adjustments, and it rests with the institution providing the teaching. In a college the adjustments that matter are rarely architectural: they are the pace of a session, the size of a group, the way a change of room or tutor is signalled in advance, and whether the arrangement survives a timetable rewrite. None of those cost anything but attention, which is why they are worth asking for by name rather than by category.

Equality Act 2010, revised text, legislation.gov.uk, contents page read on 3 September 2026.

The page on the courses themselves, adult learning courses, takes the college question further and asks what a course is for once attendance is a choice rather than an obligation, which is the question the years after 16 actually answer.

What happens to the plan afterwards?

It becomes the thing that changes, rather than the thing that was achieved. A plan is reviewed at section 27, and the review is the step at which a week of college can turn into a week of work, or into something else entirely, without the whole assessment beginning again. Where the destination is a job, supported employment is the route that picks the story up, and the support hours move with it into the same plan.

Keeping the choice open is cheaper than reopening it, which is the practical argument for reading the four routes side by side before the transition meeting rather than after the first year of whatever was arranged. Weighing up the options exists for exactly that hour, and the questions it asks are the ones a well run transition meeting should have asked first. Behind every one of them sits the same duty the Act opens with: the well-being of the adult whose week is being decided, which is not a mood and not a courtesy, but the stated purpose of the whole apparatus, at your rights under the law.

Sources read for this page

• Care Act 2014, revised text on legislation.gov.uk, version Latest available (Revised) as at 2 September 2026
• Care and support statutory guidance, Department of Health and Social Care, updated 22 July 2025
• Equality Act 2010, revised text on legislation.gov.uk

Each source above was opened on 3 September 2026. Where a page here prints a section number or a figure, the source line beside it names the version that number was read from.