Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what comparative assessment he has made of the number of school children with visual impairments who are subject to (a) Education Health Care Plans and (b) statements under the previous SEN and learning difficulties assessments in each of the last five years.

We publish the number and proportion of pupils with special educational needs (SEN), including the type of need in the annual ‘Special educational needs in England’ statistical release:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-special-educational-needs-sen.

Pupils with SEN are recorded according to their primary type of need. The current types of need were defined in 2015, including visual impairment.

The attached table shows a breakdown of the number of pupils by each primary type of need available for the last five years (as at January each year).