1 featured table
Number and percentage of pupils by SEN provision and school type, in England between 2024/25 and 2025/26
The number and percentage of pupils by SEN provision and school type, in England between 2024/25 and 2025/26
Department for Education
Academic year 2025/26
Special educational needs in England
Pupils in England with SEN support or an education, health and care (EHC) plan . Including type of need, age, sex, free school meals (FSM) and ethnicity.
- Published
Accredited official statistics
Department for Education
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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 provide an area for teams to supply non-standard files for download by users where required.
Description of the data sets included in this release, including information on data sources, coverage, quality and any data conventions used.
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.
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).
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.
9 data sets available for download
Age and Gender, by type of SEN provision and type of need - 2016 to 2026
Available by APILocal authority, National, Parliamentary constituency, Regional
Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools and AP schools by SEN provision, type of need, age and sex.
- API data set ID
- 019df85d-2e6c-7411-942d-5fc8366e636c
- Number of rows
- 1,570,002
- Indicators
- Count of pupils age 10
- Count of pupils age 11
- Count of pupils age 12
- Filters
- Phase type of school
- Primary type of need
- Pupil sex
- Time period
- 2015/16 to 2025/26
Free school meal eligibility by type of SEN provision and type of need - 2016 to 2026
Available by APILocal authority, National, Parliamentary constituency, Regional
Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools and AP schools by SEN provision, type of need, free school meal eligibility.
- API data set ID
- 019df85d-6c83-73fa-9482-734b58f8dc61
- Number of rows
- 1,570,002
- Indicators
- Count of pupils
- Percentage of pupils
- Filters
- Phase type of school
- Primary type of need
- Pupil eligibility for free school meals
- Time period
- 2015/16 to 2025/26
Language by type of SEN provision and type of need - 2016 to 2026
Available by APILocal authority, National, Parliamentary constituency, Regional
Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools and AP schools by SEN provision, type of need, and first language.
- API data set ID
- 019df85e-2ad9-70a1-b7db-cb241de3c082
- Number of rows
- 2,093,336
- Indicators
- Count of pupils
- Percentage of pupils
- Filters
- Phase type of school
- Primary type of need
- Pupil first language
- Time period
- 2015/16 to 2025/26
Secondary need, by type of SEN provision and type of need - 2016 to 2026
Local authority, National, Parliamentary constituency, Regional
Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools and AP schools by SEN provision, primary type of need and secondary type of need.
- Number of rows
- 7,326,676
- Indicators
- Number of pupils
- Percentage of pupils
- Filters
- Phase type of school
- Primary type of special educational need
- SEN provision
- Time period
- 2015/16 to 2025/26
Ethnicity by type of SEN provision and type of need - 2016 to 2026
Available by APILocal authority, National, Parliamentary constituency, Regional
Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools and AP schools by SEN provision, type of need, and ethnicity.
- API data set ID
- 019df85c-f5a6-7217-87ff-6ef033fc1e9c
- Number of rows
- 12,560,016
- Indicators
- Count of pupils
- Percentage of pupils
- Filters
- Phase type of school
- Primary type of need
- Pupil minor ethnicity breakdown
- Time period
- 2015/16 to 2025/26
Pupils in all schools, by type of SEN provision - 2016 to 2026
Available by APILocal authority, National, Parliamentary constituency, Regional
Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools, AP schools and independent schools by SEN provision, type of need and school type.
- API data set ID
- 019df85e-ab00-7458-a4ff-b381997776cb
- Number of rows
- 591,117
- Indicators
- Headcount of pupils
- Percentage of pupils
- Filters
- Hospital school flag
- Phase type of school
- Pupil SEN provision
- Time period
- 2015/16 to 2025/26
School level data - 2026
School
School level underlying data file, containing total pupils, SEN provision and primary need at a school level including school information.
- Number of rows
- 759,469
- Indicators
- Count of pupils
- School open date
- School postcode
- Filters
- Admissions policy
- All through school description
- Hospital school flag
- Time period
- 2025/26
NC year by type of SEN provision and type of need - 2016 to 2026
Available by APILocal authority, National, Parliamentary constituency, Regional
Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools and AP schools by SEN provision, type of need and national curriculum year.
- API data set ID
- 019df85e-5c5f-7007-abfd-d3067e63007d
- Number of rows
- 523,334
- Indicators
- Early years
- Early years (%)
- National curriculum not followed
- Filters
- Phase type of school
- Primary type of need
- SEN provision
- Time period
- 2015/16 to 2025/26
SEN provision by ethnicity, FSM, sex, year group and primary need 2022/23 to 2025/26
National
Number of pupils in state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools and AP schools by SEN provision and multiple characteristics.
- Number of rows
- 1,572,032
- Indicators
- Count of pupils
- Percentage of pupils
- Filters
- National curriculum year
- Primary type of need
- Pupil eligibility for free school meals
- Time period
- 2022/23 to 2025/26
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 file
School level data file, showing number of pupils by SEN provision and primary need (pre-2026 format).
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 a new tab) (opens in new tab) and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data (opens in a new tab) (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
- state-funded alternative provision schools (includes pupil referral units, alternative provision academies and free schools)
- independent schools
It includes information on:
- pupil numbers, including, SEN provision, SEN type of need, sex, 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
This dataset has not had suppression applied.
The following convention is used throughout the underlying data.
‘x’ Not applicable
‘z’ Not available
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.ukContact 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)