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Department for Education · Explore Education Statistics: absence, SEN, attainment, apprenticeships, NEET, class sizes

Pupils on SEN support, share

2025/26 academic year Final

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)

  1. Department for Education percentage
  2. 2025/26 academic year
  3. published 4 August 2026
  4. 019df85e-ab00-7458-a4ff-b381997776cb
  5. row “Hospital school flag=Total; Phase type of school=Total; Pupil SEN provision=SEN support / SEN without an EHC plan; School type (detailed)=Total”
  6. column “Percentage of pupils”
  7. 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

Pupils on SEN support, share: 2015/16 academic year to 2025/26 academic yearConservativeConservativeConservativeConservativeConservativeLabourLabour0%5%10%2016201820202022202420262015/16 academic year: 11.6% percent · published 4 August 20262016/17 academic year: 11.6% percent · published 4 August 20262017/18 academic year: 11.7% percent · published 4 August 20262018/19 academic year: 11.9% percent · published 4 August 20262019/20 academic year: 12.1% percent · published 4 August 20262020/21 academic year: 12.2% percent · published 4 August 20262021/22 academic year: 12.6% percent · published 4 August 20262022/23 academic year: 13% percent · published 4 August 20262023/24 academic year: 13.6% percent · published 4 August 20262024/25 academic year: 14.2% percent · published 4 August 20262025/26 academic year: 14.8% percent · published 4 August 2026
Published valueProvisional or revisedLatestShaded bands: governments (see labels)Hover or use arrow keys to read a value

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

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 2024–13%2022/23 academic year14.8%2025/26 academic year↑ 13.4%
Conservative 2019–202411.9%2018/19 academic year13%2022/23 academic year↑ 9.8%
Conservative 2017–201911.6%2015/16 academic year11.9%2018/19 academic year↑ 2.5%

Full comparison with chart

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)