Children with learning disabilities in schools in England: 2023 update

 

The Department for Education has released its latest annual statistics concerning children and young people identified within the English education system as children/young people with learning disabilities, recorded in an annual census of schools that takes place in January each year.

 

In the Special Educational Needs (SEN) statistics there are a number of mutually exclusive categories of SEN, three of which concern children with learning disabilities – Moderate Learning Difficulties (MLD), Severe Learning Difficulties (SLD) and Profound & Multiple Learning Difficulties (PMLD). There are a number of other SEN categories recorded within these statistics (Specific Learning Difficulties; Speech, language and communication needs; Social, emotional and mental health; Autistic spectrum disorder; Visual impairment; Hearing impairment; Multisensory impairment; Physical disability).

Within the annual census, a child can be classified as having a ‘primary need’ in one of these categories, and optionally classified as having an additional, ‘secondary need’ in another category. Most importantly in terms of how children are supported, children may have a special educational need that has been judged to require specific support in the form of an SEN statement (historically) or now an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan. Beyond that, DfE statistics now only report an additional much larger number of children at a level of ‘SEN support’, which has no requirements to specifically support a child.

This blogpost simply updates a post I did last year on Department for Education (DfE) statistics, and goes through what some of these statistics say about the education of children and young people with learning disabilities, as identified within the education system. For a brilliant analysis of what these statistics say and what they mean for children with SEND generally, I highly recommend the Special Needs Jungle analysis, and I would urge you to read it.

The first question is simply – how many children and young people with learning disabilities are recorded in DfE statistics?

The first graph below shows the number of children with a statement/EHC plan with a ‘primary SEN need’ of MLD, SLD and PMLD, from 2010 to 2023 (apologies for the acronyms).

The graph shows that in 2023, over 74,000 children in England had a statement/EHC plan and were identified as children with learning disabilities. For children with MLD this was 32,898 children in 2023, with a large decrease of 31% from 2010 to 2018 but an increase of 16% from 2018 to 2023.

In 2023, there were 31,322 children with a statement/EHC plan and identified with a primary need of SLD, an increase in numbers of 24% from 2010 to 2021 but no increase from 2021 to 2023. Finally, in 2023 there were 10,120 children with a statement/EHC plan and identified with a primary need of PMLD, an increase of 16% from 2010 to 2018 but with fluctuating numbers since.

 

The second graph below shows the number of children with a ‘primary SEN need’ of MLD, SLD and PMLD at the level of SEN Support, from 2015 to 2023 (the reporting of statistics changed in 2015).

The graph shows that in 2023, over 190,000 children in England were identified as children with learning disabilities at the level of SEN Support. For children with MLD this was 189,375 children in 2023, with a large increase from 2015 to 2016 and a decrease from 2016 onwards.

In 2023, there were 2,277 children with a primary need of SLD at the level of SEN Support, with numbers fairly steady until 2020 but decreasing after then. Finally, in 2023 there were 824 children at the level of SEN Support with a primary need of PMLD, again with a recent decrease.

How many children with learning disabilities are being educated in mainstream schools or special schools? The graph below shows the number of children with a statement/EHC plan and primary needs of MLD, SLD and PMLD being educated in mainstream schools and special schools in England, from 2010 through to 2023. These figures don’t include potentially substantial but often not really known numbers of children not in school (including those being educated at home), or in places like residential special schools or specialist inpatient units.

The graph has quite a lot of stuff in it, so let’s take it bit by bit. The lilac lines are for children with MLD in mainstream schools (diamonds) and special schools (circles). As we know from earlier on the number of children with statements/EHC plans associated with MLD decreased from 2010 to 2018 but increased from 2018 to 2023. This graph shows that the number of children with a statement/EHC plan and a primary need of MLD in special schools declined steadily from 2010 to 2023; the number of children in mainstream schools declined rapidly from 2010 to 2017 but has been rapidly increasing since then.

For children with statements/EHC plans associated with SLD (the blue lines), the number of children with SLD in mainstream schools slightly decreased, with fluctuations, from 2010 to 2023, while the number of children with SLD in special schools rapidly increased up to 2022 but decreased slightly in 2023.

For children with a statement/EHC plan associated with PMLD (the purple lines), the numbers of children with PMLD in both mainstream and special schools has very gradually increased from 2010 to 2018 but has fluctuated since.

Another way of looking at this is to look at the percentage of children in mainstream vs special schools. The graph below shows this from 2010 to 2023 for children with a statement/EHC plan. As the graph shows, the percentage of children with a primary need of MLD and a statement/EHC plan in mainstream school dipped from just over 50% in 2010 to 43% in 2017, with the percentage returning to above 50% from 2021 onwards. For children with a statement/EHC plan and a primary need of SLD, the percentage of children in mainstream schools decreased from 17% in 2010 to less than 12% from 2018 onwards. For children with a statement/EHC plan and a primary need of PMLD, the percentage of children in mainstream school has remained fairly consistent around 14%-16%.

For children identified at the level of SEN Support (I haven’t included a graph on this), in 2023 almost all the children with a primary need of MLD (99.97%) and the vast majority of children with a primary need of SLD (92.3%) or PMLD (85.3%) were in mainstream schools.

Although it’s not an ideal marker of the financial circumstances of families, eligibility for free school meals is collected within DfE statistics. The graph below shows the proportion of children with statements/EHCPs associated with MLD, SLD and PMLD eligible for free school meals compared to the proportion of all children eligible for free school meals in 2023. For all children on the school roll, 23.8% of children in 2023 were eligible for free school meals. For children with a PMLD label the proportion of children eligible for free school meals is higher (36.2% for children with a statement/EHC plan), then higher again for children with an SLD label (43.5% for children with a statement/EHC plan), and highest for children with an MLD label (46.9% for children with a statement/EHC plan). It is worth mentioning that the proportion of children in all groups eligible for free school meals has increased in recent years.

A brief summary of the main points:

•  While the number of children identified as having special educational needs associated with severe learning difficulties or profound and multiple learning difficulties and needing statements or EHC plans have changed gradually over time, the number of children identified as having a special educational need associated with moderate learning difficulties has been plummeting but for the last five years has increased rapidly.
• There are slightly different trends for different groups of children with learning disabilities in terms of the proportion of children in mainstream vs special schools, but some earlier trends towards special education seem to be starting to reverse for children with MLD in the last few years. Less than 20% of children with an EHCP/statement and a label of SLD or PMLD are being educated in mainstream schools.
• Children with learning disabilities are much more likely to be eligible for free school meals than children generally.