The Department for Education’s latest Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) statistics provide useful national context, however, their real value lies in what they reveal about your area. How does your authority compare with similar places? What are the implications for your reform plans? The answers should shape where you focus next.
The publication also comes at a key point for local authorities. With SEND Reform Plans now submitted, the priority is establishing a robust baseline against which to assess whether those plans are delivering the intended improvements.
What the latest figures show
The national headlines are familiar. The EHCP cohort continues to grow, with more than 110,000 new EHCPs issued last year, and growth across all but two local authorities: the Isles of Scilly and Derby. The cohort has now doubled in size since 2019. However, the growth in requests for assessments is beginning to slow.
While EHCP numbers have increased in almost every local authority, the pace of growth varies considerably. London illustrates how local trends can differ. The EHCP cohort in London has grown more slowly than the national average since 2019. Similarly, the growth in requests for assessment has slowed considerably in London. Requests increased by just 2% this year, compared with 11% the previous year, while nationally they increased by 5%, following growth of 12% and 21% in the previous two years. Growth in EHCPs among children under five has also slowed markedly. Nationally, this age group grew by just 1.8%, while London’s under-five cohort fell slightly. This does not appear to reflect population decline, implying that London’s decline in EHCPs is being driven by factors other than demographic change.
More children with EHCPs are now being educated in mainstream schools. London has seen faster growth in mainstream placements than England as a whole, while independent placements have increased only slightly and the proportion of children educated in state-funded special schools has fallen.
As we forecasted last year, the three largest primary need groups, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Speech, Language, and Communication Needs (SLCN), and Social, Emotional, and Mental Health (SEMH) accounted for almost 90% of the growth and now make up three quarters of the EHCP cohort. All other needs combined grew by just 8,382 across England.
With more assessments carried out than ever before, local authority teams continue to struggle to hit the 20-week statutory deadline for issuing plans. The proportion of EHCPs issued within 20 weeks has decreased marginally, by 0.3% year-on-year to 46.1%. However, the London average has declined by more – by 3% at 67% of EHCPs issued on time.
Interpreting your local picture
As you review your own local authority data, consider the following questions:
• Is growth in EHCP requests beginning to slow in your area?
• Is mainstream placement increasing in line with your expectations?
• Are independent placements continuing to rise and, if so, why?
• Are your EHCP numbers for early years starting to stabilise?
• And is that trend replicated in other age brackets?
Over recent years, our work supporting more than 50 local authorities with SEND analysis, forecasting and reform planning has shown us that national and regional averages provide useful context.
Turning reform plans into measurable progress
Over recent weeks, our conversations with the 16 local authorities who we have supported with their SEND reforms have shifted from preparing plans to how they can monitor, and understand, whether the rollout is delivering the intended results.
The questions we’re hearing are practical. Is local need changing in the way we expected? Are our inclusion strategies making a measurable difference? Which initiatives are showing early signs of success? Where should we focus next? Is sufficiency planning reducing our dependency on independents? Are early interventions reducing requests? These are the questions that good data should help answer.
The challenge now is to develop a monitoring framework and set up a streamlined data collection process for reporting, something we have a lot of experience in. In Wandsworth, for example, we linked together finance, schools and assessment data and built automated quality assurance and reporting dashboards. This reduced reporting time, improved data quality and gave leaders faster access to reliable information to understand whether interventions were working. In Barnet, we developed a Multi-Agency SEND dashboard, while in Hounslow we have carried out a statistical evaluation to identify whether their early intervention programme is reducing requests for EHCPs.
Better insights enable better decisions
As reform planning moves into reform delivery, leaders need confidence that the measures they are tracking reflect real change. That means agreeing meaningful KPIs, improving the speed and quality of reporting, benchmarking performance and evaluating whether interventions are achieving their intended outcomes.
Although every area’s priorities are different, the purpose is the same: giving leaders clearer evidence to make confident decisions.
If you’d like to discuss your own findings, compare them with similar authorities based on our work with numerous other local authorities , or explore what the data means for your SEND Reform Plan, we’d be pleased to talk them through with you.
The Mime team
