The policy paper has been highly anticipated by parents who fear the reforms could mean the support their child receives could be limited in some way.

The proposals in the paper come as the government faces significant pressures from the rising costs of a SEND system, widely considered to be in crisis.

Leaks from the paper, reported by the BBC, suggest children with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) – which are legal documents outlining their extra support entitlement – will be reassessed after primary school from 2029.

The BBC understands this will sit alongside an extension of legal rights to include all children with SEND through school-led Individual Support Plans (ISP).

Every child with identified special educational needs, including those who do not currently have an EHCP, will have an ISP drawn up by the school, which will have some kind of legal status.

Phillipson told the Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that “EHCPs will have an important role to play in the new system”.

“The assurance I can give to parents is that under the new system, more children will receive support,” Phillipson said.

“But they’ll receive it more quickly. They’ll receive it when they need it and where they need it. Parents won’t have to fight so hard to get support through an EHCP.”

She said the new ISPs would have a legal “underpinning”, meaning “there are clear routes and clear principles set out in statute that will guide all of this”.

When pressed on whether any child who currently receives support would lose it under the proposals, Phillipson said: “We are not going to be taking away effective support from children.”

She added: “And what I’ll be setting out tomorrow is a decade-long, very careful transition from the system that we have – which everyone recognises isn’t working.”

But she acknowledged that children “will be reviewed in terms of their needs assessed”.

“That should be happening at the moment,” Phillipson said. “We’re meant to be having a system where every year an EHCP is reviewed. That doesn’t always happen.”

In an interview on the same programme, shadow education secretary Laura Trott said the Conservatives “do have some big concerns about what is being floated”.

Trott said too many parents “had to fight for the support and the idea that they’re going to be reassessed will be genuinely frightening”.