Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the principal factors driving the increase in the number of Education, Health and Care Plans; and what proportion of the associated increase in expenditure she attributes to unmet need at an earlier stage.

In February 2026, the department published the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) reform ‘Putting Children and Young People First’. The consultation’s case for change noted that education, health and care (EHC) plans had doubled since 2014 after two decades of stability, mostly due to three types of primary need: Autism Spectrum Disorders, Social; Emotional and Mental Health; and Speech, Language and Communication Needs.

Comparisons with Wales, where increases were roughly half those in England, suggested that the rise in England reflected wider societal factors and features specific to England, such as how the SEND system operates. These features included cuts to support services, the inability to secure reliable high-quality special educational needs support in mainstream settings and the de facto financial threshold for an EHC plan being frozen in cash terms for over a decade. It did not estimate what proportion of the rise was due to need being unmet at an earlier stage, but it did hypothesise that the system had shifted away from making support available early and providing a strong Universal offer, including ordinarily available provision or early access to multi agency support.

The department is committed to generational SEND reform and early intervention will be central to this. This will be supported by strengthened partnership working between local authorities, health, and education settings. As set out in the SEND consultation, we will update the SEND Code of Practice and publish partnerships guidance to provide clearer expectations of the Local SEND partnership, the collective responsibility for outcomes, and the respective role of the local authority and local area partners in transforming the SEND system.