Academic year 2020/21

Special educational needs in England

Pupils in England with SEN support or an education, health and care plan (EHCP). Including type of need, age, gender, free school meals (FSM) and ethnicity.

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• Produced by: Department for Education
• Published: 24 June 2021
• Last updated: 14 July 2021

1 update

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Explore data used in this release

This page provides a range of routes to access data from within this statistical release to suit different users.

Download all data (ZIP)

This includes all data sets, guidance files and any supporting files

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• Featured tables

  Featured tables are pre-prepared tables created from a statistical release's data sets. They provide statistics that are regularly requested by users and can be adapted to switch between different categories.

• Data sets: download or create tables

  Data sets present comprehensive open data from which users can create their own tables using the EES table tool or download a zipped CSV file.

• Supporting files

  Supporting files provide an area for teams to supply non-standard files for download by users where required.

• Data guidance

  Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.

• Data catalogue

  Alternatively use our data catalogue to search and filter for specific data sets from this release or our entire library, providing full data summaries, data previews and access to API data sets.

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Featured tables

Featured tables are pre-prepared tables created from a statistical release's data sets. They provide statistics that are regularly requested by some users (such as local councils, regional government or government policy teams) and can be adapted to switch between different categories (such as different geographies, time periods or characteristics where available).

11 featured tables

• Percentage of pupils with SEN, eligible for free school meals, 2015/16 to 2020/21

  Table shows the percentage of pupils with an EHC plan or with SEN support who are eligible for free school meals from 2015/16 to 2020/21

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• Percentage of pupils with an EHC plan or SEN support, all schools, 2015/16 and 2020/21

  Table showing the percentage of pupils in schools with an EHC plan or SEN support. Data covers all schools, 2015/16 to 2020/21

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• Number of pupils with an EHC plan or SEN support, all schools, 2015/16 and 2020/21

  Table showing the number of pupils in schools with an EHC plan or SEN support. Data covers all schools, 2015/16 to 2020/21

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• Number and percentage of pupils by SEN provision and school type, 2019/20 to 2020/21

  Table shows the number and percentage of pupils with an EHC plan or SEN support, by type of school, for 2019/20 and 2020/21

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• Number and percentage, EHC and SEN support, by Local Authority, 2020/21

  This table displays the number of pupils, and percentage of pupils of all pupils, who have an EHC plan or receive SEN support, by local authority

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• Number of pupils with an EHC plan or SEN support, by type of need, 2019/20 to 2020/21

  Table shows the number of pupils with an EHC plan or SEN support, by type of need (for example, Hearing impairment) , 2019/20 to 2020/21

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• Percentage of pupils with an EHC plan and SEN support by gender, 2015/16 to 2020/21

  The table shows the overall percentage of pupils with an EHC plan and with SEN support, by their gender, from 2015/16 to 2020/21

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• Percentage of pupils receiving SEN by Local Authority, between 2015/16 - 2020/21

  This table shows the percentage of pupils receiving SEN by Local Authority, between 2015/16 - 2020/21

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• Percentage of pupils by whether first language is English or not, from 2015/16 to 2020/21

  Table shows percentage of pupils with an EHC plan and SEN support by whether first language is English or not from 2015/16 to 2020/21

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• Number of pupils with EHC plan or SEN support, by ethnicity, 2020/21

  Table showing the number of pupils with an EHC plan or SEN support by ethnicity, 2020/21

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• Percentage of pupils who have EHC plans by Local Authority, between 2015/16 - 2020/21

  This table provides the percentage of pupils who have EHC plans by Local Authority, between 2015/16 - 2020/21

  View, edit or download

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Data sets: download or create tables

Data sets present comprehensive open data from which users can create their own tables using the EES table tool or download a zipped CSV file.

5 data sets available for download

Download all (ZIP)

• 03 - FSM, Ethnicity and Language, by type of SEN provision and type of need - 2016 to 2021

  Local authority, National, Regional

  Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools and pupil referral units by SEN provision, type of need, free school meal eligibility, language and ethnicity.

  • Number of rows: 187,603
  • Indicators:
    • Any other ethnic group
    • Any other ethnic group (%)
    • Any other ethnic group - Arab
  • Filters:
    • Phase type of school
    • Primary type of need
    • SEN provision
  • Time period: 2015/16 to 2020/21

  Data set information page
  Create table

• 05 - Secondary need, by type of SEN provision and type of need - 2016 to 2021

  Local authority, National, Regional

  Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools and pupil referral units by SEN provision, primary type of need and secondary type of need

  • Number of rows: 187,603
  • Indicators:
    • Autistic Spectrum Disorder
    • Autistic Spectrum Disorder (%)
    • Headcount
  • Filters:
    • Phase type of school
    • Primary type of need
    • SEN provision
  • Time period: 2015/16 to 2020/21

  Data set information page
  Create table

• 01 - Pupils in all schools, by type of SEN provision - including independent schools and general hospital schools - 2016 to 2021

  Local authority, National, Regional

  Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools, pupil referral units and independent schools by SEN provision, type of need and school type

  • Number of rows: 74,183
  • Indicators:
    • EHC plans/Statements of SEN
    • EHC plans/Statements of SEN (percent)
    • Headcount
  • Filters:
    • Hospital school flag
    • Phase type of school
    • School type detail
  • Time period: 2015/16 to 2020/21

  Data set information page
  Create table

• 04 - Year group, by type of SEN provision and type of need - 2016 to 2021

  Local authority, National, Regional

  Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools and pupil referral units by SEN provision, type of need and national curriculum year.

  • Number of rows: 187,603
  • Indicators:
    • Early years
    • Early years (%)
    • Headcount
  • Filters:
    • Phase type of school
    • Primary type of need
    • SEN provision
  • Time period: 2015/16 to 2020/21

  Data set information page
  Create table

• 02 - Age and Gender, by type of SEN provision and type of need - 2016 to 2021

  Local authority, National, Regional

  Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools and pupil referral units by SEN provision, type of need, age and gender.

  • Number of rows: 187,603
  • Indicators:
    • Age 10
    • Age 10 (%)
    • Age 11
  • Filters:
    • Phase type of school
    • Primary type of need
    • SEN provision
  • Time period: 2015/16 to 2020/21

  Data set information page
  Create table

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Supporting files

Supporting files provide an area for teams to supply non-standard files for download by users where required.

1 supporting data file

• School level underlying data 2021

  Download (csv, 10 Mb)

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Data guidance

Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.

Description

This document describes the data included in the ‘Special educational needs in England’ National Statistics release’s underlying data files. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License (opens in new tab) and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data (opens in new tab).

The publication methodology, available on the publication report, should be referenced alongside this data. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality as well as explaining methodology used in producing the data.

Coverage

This release provides information on the number of schools and pupils in:

• state-funded primary schools
• state-funded secondary schools
• state-funded special schools
• non-maintained special schools
• pupil referral units
• independent schools

It includes information on:

• pupil numbers, including, SEN provision, SEN type of need gender, ethnicity, language and free school meals eligibility
• school numbers, including resourced provision, SEN units and approved provisions (special schools only) 

The information is based on data collected via the pupil level spring school census, school level annual school census, general hospital schools census and alternative provision census.

File formats and conventions

Rounding

This dataset has not had suppression applied.

Conventions

The following convention is used throughout the underlying data. 

‘:’ Not applicable

‘z’ Not available

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Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about Special educational needs in England statistics and data:

Special educational needs statistics team

Email: sen.statistics@education.gov.uk
Contact name: Ricardo Hayward

Press office

If you have a media enquiry:

Telephone: 020 7783 8300

Public enquiries

If you have a general enquiry about the Department for Education (DfE) or education:

Phone: 0370 000 2288

Opening times

Monday to Friday from 9.30am to 5.30pm (closed on bank holidays)