This blogpost updates previous blogposts I've written about Department for Education 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).
From 2024/25, an additional mutually exclusive category of Down syndrome has been added, related to the Down Syndrome Act (2022). I highly recommend this column by Sharon Smith in Special Needs Jungle which clearly explains the context of the Act, and the potential implications of adding this new category to the SEN statistics.
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. While the categories of MLD, SLD and PMLD can be both primary and secondary needs, it appears from my reading of the statistics so far that Down syndrome has only been used as a primary need.
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 Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan (previously an SEN Statement). 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 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.
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 (and, from 2025, Down syndrome), from 2010 to 2026 (apologies for the acronyms).
The graph shows that in 2026, over 78,000 children in England had a statement/EHC plan and were identified as children with learning disabilities in one of these four categories.
Interpreting change over time in very recent years is complicated by the addition of Down syndrome as a category of primary need in 2025, as presumably many of these children would have previously been placed in the MLD, SLD or PMLD primary need categories. It is also highly likely that this new category of primary need will take some time to bed in, so it is possible that the seeming numbers of children with Down syndrome will continue to increase quite sharply in these statistics for a while as children are recategorised.
For children with MLD there were 35,475 children in 2026, with a large decrease of 31% from 2010 to 2018 but an increase of 25% from 2018 to 2026 - the number of children in 2026 is still substantially less than the number of children in 2010.
In 2026, there were 31,246 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 with numbers staying static from 2021 to 2026.
In 2026 there were 9,339 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 and a possible small decrease since.
It is early days for statistics concerning children with a primary need of Down syndrome, but in 2026 there there 2,242 children with a statement/EHCP and a primary need of Down syndrome.
The second graph below shows the number of children with a ‘primary SEN need’ of MLD, SLD and PMLD (and, from 2025, Down syndrome) at the level of SEN Support, from 2015 to 2026 (the reporting of statistics changed in 2015).
The graph shows that in 2026, 164,294 children in England were identified as children with learning disabilities at the level of SEN Support. For children with MLD this was 161,933 children in 2026, with a 16% increase from 2015 to 2016 and a 34% decrease from 2016 through to 2026.
In 2026, there were 1,592 children with a primary need of SLD at the level of SEN Support, with numbers increasing by 5% from 2015 to 2016 and decreasing by 52% from 2016 to 2026.
In 2026 there were 503 children at the level of SEN Support with a primary need of PMLD, with an 11% increase from 2015 to 2018 and a 50% decrease from 2018 to 2026.
Finally, in 2026 there were 266 children at the level of SEN Support with a primary need of Down syndrome.
How many children with learning disabilities are being educated in mainstream schools or special schools? The graph below shows the percentage of children with statements/EHCPs in mainstream vs special schools from 2010 to 2026.
The percentage of children with a primary need of MLD and a statement/EHC plan in mainstream school dipped from 51% in 2010 to 43% in 2017, with the percentage increasing again to 63% in 2026, it's highest since statistics in this dataset began in 2010.
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 12% in 2018, and has stayed static from 2018 to 2026.
For children with a statement/EHC plan and a primary need of PMLD, the percentage of children in mainstream school was around 14% from 2010 to 2016, 15% from 2017 to 2020, and 16% from 2021 to 2025, reducing again to 15% in 2026.
For children with a statement/EHC plan and a primary need of Down syndrome, the percentage of children in mainstream school was 64% in 2026.
For children identified at the level of SEN Support (I haven’t included a graph on this), in 2026 almost all the children with a primary need of MLD (99.7%), the vast majority of children with a primary need of SLD (91.7%), and substantial majorities of children with a primary need of PMLD (76.5%) or Down syndrome (83.5%) were in mainstream schools.
How many children are eligible for free school meals? 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. PMLD and Down syndrome (from 2025) and the proportion of children at the level of SEN Support eligible for free school meals, from 2016 to 2026. There are a number of trends in this graph:
1) There are big increases over time in the percentage of children eligible for free schools across MLD, SLD and PMLD groups in the graph
2) A greater percentage of children with a statement/EHCP are eligible for free school meals compared to children with the same label at the level of SEN Support
3) Children with a label of MLD are most likely to be eligible for free school meals, followed by children with a label of SLD, then children with a label of PMLD, and finally children with a label of Down syndrome.
In 2026, 53% of children with a label of MLD and a statement/EHCP were eligible for free school meals (48% for children with MLD at the level of SEN Support). 49% of children with a label of SLD and a statement/EHCP were eligible for free school meals (43% for children with SLD at the level of SEN Support). 42% of children with a label of PMLD and a statement/EHCP were eligible for free school meals (33% of children with PMLD at the level of SEN Support). Finally, 29% of children with a label of Down syndrome and a statement/EHCP were eligible for free school meals (18% for children with Down syndrome at the level of SEN support.
These figures compare to 27% of all children on the school rolls being eligible for free school meals in 2026 - the graph below shows this for 2026.
At what age are children with learning disabilities identified in schools? The graph below shows how many children for every 1,000 total children in school had a statement/EHCP at each age from age 5 to age 15 in 2026.
For children with MLD, there were big increases in the number of children with a statement/EHCP through the later ages of primary school and into the early years of secondary school, with slight decreases beyond this point.
For children with SLD, there was a steady increase in the number of children with a statement/EHCP through the school years.
For children with PMLD and children with Down syndrome, the highest numbers of children with a statement/EHCP were in the earlier years of primary school, with slight decreases beyond this point.
I'm not in a position to offer a deep interpretation of these numbers, but I hope it is useful to see them set out like this. As Sharon Smith says in her column, the implications of the introduction of a new Down syndrome category of primary need are as yet unclear, and it is unclear whether using Down syndrome as a primary care need is more meaningful than existing categories in terms of working out what education and support would be most helpful for the child and their family (there are similar questions about the usefulness of the category of Moderate Learning Difficulty).
A very rough handle on the diversity of educational and support needs children with Down syndrome can be gained by looking at children's secondary needs. I'm not totally convinced by the quality of the data when it comes to the categorisation of primary and secondary needs. For example, in 2026 there were 40 children with a primary need of MLD recorded as having a secondary need of PMLD, which in my naivety seems unlikely. But the range of secondary needs recorded for the 2,242 children with a primary need of Down syndrome in 2026 is very broad. In descending order, they were: Speech, language and communication (395 children); severe learning difficulty (142 children); moderate learning difficulty (133 children); specific learning difficulty (108 children); hearing impairment (82 children); autistic spectrum disorder (62 children); physical disability (50 children): other difficulty or disability (44 children); profound and multiple learning difficulty (28 children); vision impairment (23 children); multi-sensory impairment (12 children); and social, emotional and mental health (11 children).
In summary, I'm not seeing a massive and sustained increase in the number of children with the labels of MLD, SLD and PMLD, certainly taking 2010 as the baseline. If anything, recent years suggest that the number of children with these labels being supported with an EHCP is flatlining, and the number of children in these categories is relatively small compared to the most common primary needs recorded, including autistic spectrum disorder (165,399 children in 2026); speech, language and communication needs (108,936 children); and social, emotional and mental health (83,339 children).
On the long view from 2010, there may be some signs of changes in the proportion of children with these labels in mainstream schools, with the proportion of children with MLD in mainstream schools increasing and the proportion of children with SLD and PMLD in mainstream schools gradually beginning to decrease. Poverty amongst children with the labels of MLD, SLD and PMLD is continuing to increase year on year, and to much higher levels than the overall figure for all children on the school rolls.
We have had only two years of statistics using the category of Down syndrome, so it is too soon to report any trends over time for this group. Children with Down syndrome, together with children with MLD, are more likely to be in mainstream schools compared to children with SLD or PMLD. Eligibility for free school meals is at a similar level for children with Down syndrome compared to all children on the school rolls, and is lower compared to children with a primary need of MLD, SLD and PMLD. These broad-brush statistics give little indication that legislation specifically focused on people with Down syndrome is required.
What all of these statistics miss is children who are not in school, for any number of reasons. Without having some understanding of this, we only have a partial picture of children with learning disabilities in England.
