with infographics by Tania Tirraoro
The Department for Education (DfE) has published its annual statistical summary of Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) in England for 2026.
If you’re new to SEND, EHCPs are issued to individual children and young people from the ages of 0 to 25 whose needs and required support are greater than those ordinarily met and provided by mainstream settings. They set out the child or young person’s aspirations, their needs, the provision required to meet those needs, the outcomes being worked towards, and (in most cases) the placement where education is supposed to take place.
EHCPs contain detail that is legally binding—at least, they do for now. If you’re reading this, you’re probably aware that the government is planning deep and far-reaching changes to the English SEND system. The proposed changes are designed to keep more children and young people with SEND in mainstream schools, with more of them supported through provision that’s readily and quickly available via mainstream school budgets. In short, with fewer EHCPs.
These stats provide both a snapshot from January 2026, and a guide to how things went in 2025. They reflect a period with a lot of uncertainty about whether EHCPs would still be a going concern in the near future.
Points to remember
So when reading these figures, bear the following in mind:
- They don’t cover all children and young people with SEND, just those with EHCPs. Only one in every four school pupils with SEND has an EHCP. If you want data that covers all school pupils with SEND, we wrote about that a fortnight ago.
- The EHCP data comes from a local authority census return that was conducted in January. That means the data mostly just tracks EHCP paperwork and processes. The stats don’t tell you anything directly about the quality of the EHCPs, or whether the provision specified in the EHCPs was even provided.
- The reliability of some of this data varies at LA level. To its great credit, the DfE is trying to collect a lot of worthwhile data about the EHCP process, and the DfE publishes a lot of it in its statistical releases. However, the DfE’s data expectations don’t always match what local authorities feel able to provide. Each year, a few LAs simply fail to pony up some of the more granular data.
The DfE has made it fairly simple to interrogate the data yourself. You can do that here—but bear in mind the caveats above, particularly when asking about types of educational placement, types of SEND, EHCP annual review statistics, and the reasons why plans have been ceased.
Finally: these are statistics that are used to measure performance. When you make a statistic a target, people will often do dodgy things—and people who aren’t subject to real accountability are even more likely to do dodgy things.
This is SEND, and these are local authorities. So when you see suspiciously good-looking stats for things like compliance with EHCP statutory deadlines, make sure you’ve got plenty of salt handy.
What have this year’s stats told us then? If time is short, check out our infographic below – but otherwise, keep reading….
Growth in EHCP Numbers
The overall number of children and young people with an EHCP has risen at a steady 10%-12% annual rate for years now, and that’s still happening. When people talk about an exponential rise in EHCPs, this is what they mean.
In mid-January 2026, there were around 713,800 EHCPs, 12.5% more than last year.
Although the number of children and young people with EHCPs is rising across all types of placement, over the last few years, growth has been faster in the mainstream sector than in the special school sector.
- In January 2026, the number of pupils with EHCPs in mainstream schools was up by 17% on the previous year, at around 326,800.
- Those numbers include the mainstream independent sector, where the number of pupils with EHCPs is up by 18%. At January 2025, there were around 8,600 pupils in this category.
- Mainstream SEN units and resourced provisions are currently in vogue. The number of pupils in these settings is up by 16% on last year, but is still pretty small at around 29,000.
- As at January 2026, the number of children and young people with EHCPs in special schools was around 211,400—up 8.5% on the previous year. Most of that increase was in state special schools, but the growth rate was highest in the independent special school sector.
Is that a sign that needs are being met in full more frequently in mainstream schools? There’s a big clue in the DfE’s school capacity data, which tells us that two-thirds of state special schools are at or over capacity. It looks likely that thousands, probably even tens of thousands, of children and young people with EHCPs are sat in mainstream schools waiting for the special school place listed in Section I of their plan.
No place to go to school
But the most depressing part of this picture? The same as it is every year. The EHCP growth rate is fastest in a statistical group called “educated elsewhere.”
In January 2025, there were 49,700 children and young people in this group. One year on, that number is 25% higher – nearly 62,400.
Roughly one kid in every 11 with an EHCP is in this group. Very few actively want to be in it: most are here because SEND system leaders have failed them.
This is a group, by and large, of children and young people for whom formal education and training just isn’t working. It includes kids in ‘elective’ home education, kids in education other than at school (EOTAS / EOTIS), and a disgracefully high number of young people who have an EHCP, but who are not in education, employment or training (NEET).
The long-heralded 2026 Schools White Paper has nothing to say about this group of children and young people. The DfE belatedly seems to have noticed them, pledging to open up a consultation on EOTAS soon, claiming this is what it always intended.
Assessments, New EHC Plans, and Annual Reviews
The 2026 data contains a lot of information about the EHCP process itself:
- In all, around 111,000 new EHCPs were issued in 2025. That’s 13% up on the number of new plans issued in 2024 – a high growth rate, but one that’s slightly slowing
- Phase transfers are the most common point in time when kids get their first EHCPs – when they move to primary school, and when they move to secondary school.
- A strong majority (77%) of kids get their first EHCP in mainstream settings. Over time, the percentage of kids who only get their first EHCP when starting in special school has fallen steadily, from around 14% in 2019, to around 8% today.
There were 167,000 initial requests for an EHC needs assessment (EHCNA) in 2025. That’s a 5% increase on 2024 – a much smaller increase than people were expecting, including me. The speculation and concern in 2025 about what the SEND reforms would bring does not appear to have sparked much of an extra rush to get an EHCNA request in whilst they’re hot.
We know from our own FOI investigations back in 2024 that most EHC needs assessment (EHCNA) requests come from schools, and that fewer than 30% come from parent carers.
The DfE now asks LAs to submit this data. For 2025, the results look pretty similar to what we collected.
- For all the high-paid, high-frequency whining about insatiable parent demand for EHCPs, most requests for EHCNA in 2025 came from public sector organisations: 56% from schools, 5% from ‘others’ who aren’t families, and around 1% from health and social care professionals.
- Just under 30% of EHCNA requests in 2025 were initiated by parent carers or young people – a very similar percentage to the figures we collected via FOI in 2024.
It’s best to treat these stats with care. As we found back in 2024, there are still many LAs who don’t have a clue who submitted EHC needs assessment requests.
Who’s refusing who?
Once they’ve received an EHCNA request, LAs are given the option to refuse to conduct it. The legal threshold to assess is low, but many LAs continue to be very trigger-happy.
- The overall LA refusal rate to conduct an EHCNA has risen steadily. 26% of these requests were refused by local authorities in 2025 – just over one in four.
- This refusal rate is an underestimate because it includes EHCNA requests that were still being processed. If you strip the data back to actual decisions made in 2025, then the actual percentage of refusals is nearer 30%.
- EHCNA refusal rates continue to vary hugely from LA to LA – check our Hall of Shame at the bottom for more. Some LAs refuse most of these requests, others are much more lenient.
- These requests are much, much more likely to be refused if they come from families. Most requests from families get refused – in some LAs, over 90% of requests from families are turned down.
If the LA agrees to conduct an EHC needs assessment, they then decide whether to issue an EHCP or not. The rate at which LAs refused to issue an EHCP after an EHC needs assessment is steady at around 6%.
- Again, this is an area with massive postcode lotteries. The LAs at the top of the Hall of Shame are refusing to issue at three and four times the national average, whereas others will issue a plan in almost every case.
LAs have a statutory requirement to produce new EHCPs within 20 weeks. Remember, this is a legal duty, not a target or a service benchmark, so it should be close to 100%. In 2024, the percentage of new EHCPs produced within the statutory 20-week timescale in 2024 was 46.1%, slightly lower than last year, and the lowest on record. There’s always been a lot of variation in LA compliance with this duty, and the spread was just as wide in 2025. Twenty-six LAs issued 90% of their EHCPs within the 20-week timescale: 12 LAs issued fewer than 10% of them in 20 weeks.
A special shout-out here to Norfolk, who told the DfE that every single one of the new EHCPs it issued in 2025 was exempt from the 20-week statutory duty. The SEND Regulations allow for some circumstances where EHCP production can be exempted from this duty—check this post for more—but it’s laughably implausible to claim this for all newly issued EHCPs in a calendar year.
*UPDATE ON THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH: Norfolk County Council has informed us there is an error in the DfE statistics reported (not an SNJ error). According to its press office, Norfolk completed 62.9% of new EHCPs within the statutory 20-week deadline (excluding exception cases) in 2025, rather than the 0% in the DfE’s published data. It’s unclear what caused the error. Norfolk says it thinks the error is on its own end and is investigating. The DfE’s data guidance document states that “for 2025, Norfolk classed all newly issued EHC plans as having permitted exceptions to the 20-week statutory timeframe.”
All going to plan?
When the DfE issued its SEND reform proposals in the spring, it said that it would spend the next few years prepping the system for change. The legal changes would arrive in 2029, and there’d be a years-long process of transitioning from one system to another.
The most recent SEND stats show the number of EHCPs continuing to rise. That’s all part of the DfE’s plan.
By 2029-30, the DfE expects the proportion of school pupils with EHCPs to peak. And from then, through the magic of more inclusive mainstream schools, earlier intervention, and reforms that make everyone in the system play nicely together, the DfE expects that the number and percentage of school pupils with EHCPs will start to drop.
You can decide for yourselves how likely that vision is to succeed. You can also decide for yourselves what the DfE might end up doing if the reforms look like they’re not working, and the graphs refuse to point downwards.
We’re a year into this ten-year vision now. How’s it looking?
Ball gazing and numberwanging
When they got their crystal ball out last year, the DfE predicted that somewhere between 5.5% and 6% of school pupils would have an EHCP in January 2026. The real-life figure is 6%, so they’re already at the top of their prediction range, and look set to overshoot it next year.
But it doesn’t look as if people in the education system are (yet) reacting to reform proposals as many system leaders feared they would, ie, by rushing for EHCPs and special school placements whilst they’re still worth something. There’s plenty of time for that to happen, but it doesn’t look like it’s happening yet.
Things look much worse when you examine funding. LAs are starting to cough up their accounting ‘out-turn’ figures for the last financial year, including the Dedicated Schools Grant, the main pot for education funding, including SEND. The DSG forecasts look much worse than Whitehall’s crack numberwangers were predicting. Deficits look bigger by at least several hundred million pounds, possibly even a billion worse than the forecasts suggested.
Central government is going to eat most of this deficit, provided that LAs do what they’re told as they get ready for SEND reform. And that adds to the long-term pressure on the DfE to get EHCP numbers down, By hook. Or by crook.
EHCPs 2026 Infographic
The local authority Hall of Shame 2026
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Also read:
- Beyond EHCPs: Why Inclusion Needs More Than a Document
- The Unacceptable Truth: 20 SEND legal rights at risk from the Government’s SEND reforms
- How health and family support systems are failing children starting school
- WEBINAR RECORDING! The implications for children’s legal rights to EHCPs and EOTAS of the Government’s SEND proposals
- When things go right: Shining a light on SEND Practitioners making a positive impact [Giveaway!]
- From suspicion to support: why the Government’s child protection reforms matter for disabled children
- Have your say on the future of transport for disabled children and young people
- Unison voices major concerns over SEND reform health plans for sick and disabled children out of school in the EOTAS consultation
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- Navigating constraints: Why a former PCF chair thinks the current model is missing the mark for families
- Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SEN
- Research: Disabled young people define inclusive education as “learning in the place that’s right for them”
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters
- EHCPs 2026: A relentless rise, but who’s surprised? Plus SNJ’s annual LA Hall of Shame
- SEND 2026: Tracking a decade of rising need with earlier EHCPs and moves to specialist provision for secondary
- Using “Not Quite Experts” at Hand will be the only solution to staff the Government’s big new plan for school support
- The Government thinks Ofsted will ensure SEND reform accountability. This evidence suggests ‘significant concern’.
- Experts At Hand: A good idea built on wishful thinking and shaky foundations
- Capital carrot, SEND steamroller: The Government’s evidence-light reform route isn’t waiting for anyone
- Accountability after SEND Reform: A system that marks its own homework
- Schools White Paper: What do we know so far about funding for SEND?
- A sceptics eye on government EHCP prep research shows the “deranged” numbers just don’t add up
- SEND cash splash: What does it all add up to—and will ditching debt improve provision?
Key Content
Let's write the true narrative of the SEND reform proposals: We want your unfiltered-by-AI viewsJune 23, 2026
When “fine” at school isn’t fine at home: the hidden cost of autistic masking on familiesJune 16, 2026
Dear Secretary of State for Education, Lucy Powell: an Open Letter from Special Needs Jungle and SEND legal charity SOS!SENAugust 4, 2026
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Matt specialises in SEND stats, data analysis, and in-depth investigations of policies. He has given evidence to several Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries, and his articles for SNJ on SEND funding, local government policy, and the SENDIST Tribunal have been quoted in Select Committee inquiry reports and national media.
- Top Tips for the EOTAS & EHCP consultation: Protect your child’s rights to statutory SEND support - August 19, 2026
- Mainstream SEND Funding: A simple explainer, another consultation, and why it really matters - July 22, 2026
- EHCPs 2026: A relentless rise, but who’s surprised? Plus SNJ’s annual LA Hall of Shame - June 27, 2026
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