Department for Education · Explore Education Statistics: absence, SEN, attainment, apprenticeships, NEET, class sizes
Pupils with an EHC plan, share
6%
Pupils with an EHC plan, share was 6% in 2025/26 academic year, up 0.7 percentage points from 5.3% in 2024/25 academic year.
▲ +0.7 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=Education, health and care plan; School type (detailed)=Total”
- column “Percentage of pupils”
- cell value 6.03736877996
2025/26 academic year is the highest figure in the published series: 6%. Rule: highest of the 11 periods published here (2015/16 academic year to 2025/26 academic year).
The latest year is the largest rise in the published series: up 0.7% from 2024/25 academic year to 2025/26 academic year. Rule: largest year-on-year increase across the 10 year-on-year changes the series supports.
2015/16 academic year to 2025/26 academic year
What this measures
Pupils with an education, health and care plan as a percentage of all pupils in England at the January school census.
What this doesn’t measure
Whether needs are being met: a plan is a legal entitlement, not an outcome.
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=Education, health and care plan; School type (detailed)=Total
- Column
- Percentage of pupils
- Cell value
- 6.03736877996
- Geography
- E92000001
- Unit
- percent
- API
- /api/metrics/ehcp_rate · /series · /vintages
Related metrics
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– | 4.3%2022/23 academic year | 6%2025/26 academic year | ↑ 40.8% |
| Conservative 2019–2024 | 3.1%2018/19 academic year | 4.3%2022/23 academic year | ↑ 39.5% |
| Conservative 2017–2019 | 2.8%2015/16 academic year | 3.1%2018/19 academic year | ↑ 11.1% |
- 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)