Special Educational Needs: support in England
An overview of the current system of support for children and young people with special educational needs, and pressure on the system. Updated with new 2024-25 SEND incidence and EHC plan data
The Children and Families Act 2014 provides the statutory basis for the system for identifying children and young people (age 0-25) in England with special educational needs (SEN), assessing their needs and making provision for them.
The statutory Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND): Code of practice, first published in 2014, sets out detailed information on the support available for children and young people aged 0 to 25 under the 2014 Act.
Broadly, there are two levels of support:
- SEN Support, provided to a child or young person in their pre-school, school, or college
- Education, Health, and Care Plans (EHCPs) which provide a formal basis for support for children and young people who need more support than is available through SEN Support
Education is a devolved policy area and this paper applies to England only.
How many school pupils have SEN?In January 2025, there were over 1.7 million school pupils in England with identified SEN (19.6% of all pupils).
Of these pupils with identified SEN, around 1.3 million receive SEN Support, and around 0.5 million have Education, Health, and Care plans.
Government white paper announcementOn 11 June 2025, as part of the Spending Review, the government confirmed that its intended approach to SEND reform would be set out in a schools white paper in autumn 2025. This has since been delayed to early 2026.
Pressure on local authority financesIn recent years, numerous reports have described increasing pressure on local authority finances relating to SEND, with EHCP numbers rising sharply and increased costs in other areas such as transport.
In January 2025, the Public Accounts Committee said the system for supporting children with SEN “is reaching, or, arguably, has already reached, crisis point” despite significant extra funding being provided.
Under the Conservative government, Safety Valve and Delivering Better Value programmes were implemented to attempt to manage local authority finances, although these have proved controversial. New Safety Valve arrangements have been paused by the Labour government.
Since 2020, a ‘statutory override’ has also been in place that allows local authorities to exclude any deficits on their Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) spending from their main revenue budgets, meaning that local authorities’ DSG deficits could be separated from their wider accounts. This override has been extended to 2028 under the current government, pending wider reform of the system.
The autumn 2025 Budget said that the government would absorb this cost through central budgets once the override expires in 2028.
Education Committee report – September 2025The Education Committee published a report on Solving the SEND Crisis in September 2025. The report was extensive and contained a large number of recommendations, proposed ahead of the expected schools white paper later in the year.
The report said that there should be no withdrawal of statutory entitlements for children and young people, and focused on inclusivity and early intervention to support children and young people as a way to restrain EHCP numbers and associated costs.
The report’s other recommendations included national standards for ordinarily available provision and SEN support, a review of SEN funding, and mandatory teacher training on SEN.
The government’s response to the committee’s report was published in December 2025. The response did not provide detailed answers to the committee’s recommendations, ahead of the white paper on reform planned for early 2026.