Department for Education · Explore Education Statistics: absence, SEN, attainment, apprenticeships, NEET, class sizes
Pupils on SEN support, share
14.8%
Pupils on SEN support, share was 14.8% in 2025/26 academic year, up 0.6 percentage points from 14.2% in 2024/25 academic year.
▲ +0.6 percentage points against 2024/25 academic year (previous period)
- Department for Education percentage
- 2025/26 academic year
- published 4 August 2026
- 019df85e-ab00-7458-a4ff-b381997776cb
- row “Hospital school flag=Total; Phase type of school=Total; Pupil SEN provision=SEN support / SEN without an EHC plan; School type (detailed)=Total”
- column “Percentage of pupils”
- cell value 14.79536339153
2025/26 academic year is the highest figure in the published series: 14.8%. Rule: highest of the 11 periods published here (2015/16 academic year to 2025/26 academic year).
2015/16 academic year to 2025/26 academic year
What this measures
Pupils receiving SEN support without an education, health and care plan as a percentage of all pupils in England.
What this doesn’t measure
The severity of need, which SEN support does not grade.
Important caveat
Figures come from the January school census and cover state-funded schools in England unless the metric says otherwise. A pupil enrolled at more than one school in a year can be counted at each. Absence measures use possible sessions, so a school's timetable affects them; the persistent absence threshold was changed to 10% of sessions from 2015/16 and earlier years are on the old basis.
Revision history
No period of this series has been revised since it was first ingested here. Revisions are recorded automatically when a later release publishes a different figure for the same period.
Source
- Publisher
- Department for Education
- Publication
- Explore Education Statistics: absence, SEN, attainment, apprenticeships, NEET, class sizes
- Release
- Explore Education Statistics: releases to August 2026, published 4 August 2026
- Source file
- dfe_education.json
- File SHA-256
- 301a1eda429205c90247cc4efad5564351b549d7772715a628d8459e360d8b47
- Retrieved
- 3 September 2026
- Sheet
- sen
- Table
- 019df85e-ab00-7458-a4ff-b381997776cb
- Row
- Hospital school flag=Total; Phase type of school=Total; Pupil SEN provision=SEN support / SEN without an EHC plan; School type (detailed)=Total
- Column
- Percentage of pupils
- Cell value
- 14.79536339153
- Geography
- E92000001
- Unit
- percent
- API
- /api/metrics/sen_support_rate · /series · /vintages
Government periods
Change during each government, from the level inherited to the last complete period before it left office. Describes the period; does not attribute cause.
| Labour 2024– | 13%2022/23 academic year | 14.8%2025/26 academic year | ↑ 13.4% |
| Conservative 2019–2024 | 11.9%2018/19 academic year | 13%2022/23 academic year | ↑ 9.8% |
| Conservative 2017–2019 | 11.6%2015/16 academic year | 11.9%2018/19 academic year | ↑ 2.5% |
- Release
- Explore Education Statistics: releases to August 2026 · publication page
- Last updated
- 4 August 2026
- Next release expected
- Not yet announced (estimated from the usual cadence)