More than one in five pupils in England now have special educational needs, according to the latest official figures that show a sharp increase in children receiving extra support in schools.
The annual data from the Department for Education (DfE) confirms predictions of a rise in families seeking education, health and care plans (EHCPs) – individual agreements detailing additional support – ahead of the government's efforts to overhaul funding and provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send).
The number of children with EHCPs increased by 11.6% this year compared with 2025, adding 58,000 to reach a record total of 538,500. This means 6% of all schoolchildren now have active EHCPs.
There was also a 3% rise in the number of children with special needs and support without an EHCP, to nearly 1.4 million. Combining both groups reveals that 21% of the school population is regarded as having some form of special needs.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), said: “Behind these figures are children and families still desperately struggling to get help from schools which simply don’t have the funding, staff, space or specialist support to cope on their own with rising demand.”
A DfE spokesperson commented: “These figures lay bare the scale of the challenge we inherited – a Send system under immense strain, record numbers of EHCPs and nearly half of those plans going to disadvantaged children. That’s why we are investing over £4bn to bring specialist support directly into schools, to train every teacher to better support Send, and give mainstream settings the expertise and resources they need to meet children’s needs earlier and more effectively.”
Under the government’s white paper proposals, fewer pupils are likely to receive EHCPs, with many instead receiving “individual support plans” agreed between parents and schools. The government has stated that no changes will be made to EHCP support before September 2030, but local authorities will have to absorb the effects of rising costs on their budgets in the meantime.
Harriet Edwards, a director of the disability charity Sense, said the latest figures should be “an urgent wake-up call” for the government. “The number of disabled children needing specialist support to learn and get the best start in life is rising. Yet far too many are still being failed by a broken education system and left falling through the cracks,” she said. “Properly funded support from specialist teachers has never been more urgently needed.”
Boys make up more than two-thirds of children with EHCPs, but the number of girls is rising more quickly. One in three pupils with EHCPs have autism, while more than one in five have speech, language and communications needs.
The reforms encourage mainstream state schools to educate more children with special needs, and the DfE’s figures show that nearly 58% of children with EHCPs attend mainstream schools. More than 500 schools have internal Send units, while 1,300 have “resourced provision” for special needs.
Rob Williams, a senior policy adviser at the NAHT, said: “In the absence of sufficient places and timely support, many mainstream schools have stepped in, creating their own specialist units to meet pupils’ needs. This is a testament to the sector’s commitment to inclusion but it is not sustainable.”
