Increasing proportions of pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are becoming concentrated in a small number of mainstream schools in England, placing growing pressure on those schools, new NFER research shows.
The new analysis comes as the government’s recent Schools White Paper set out an expectation that every local mainstream school should meet a wider range of need, with legislation now planned through the proposed Education for All Bill.
However, this new research suggests that this ambition will be difficult to realise while pupils with SEND remain concentrated in a minority of primary and secondary schools.
The research was funded by the Nuffield Foundation and draws on national data, a survey of 800 Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) and school leaders, and in-depth school case studies.
The research finds that while some schools are developing deep expertise in inclusion, this concentration is creating pressures that many say are difficult to sustain. It is also limiting the extent to which expertise in SEND is shared more widely across the system.
The research also finds that this pattern is shaped by both “pull” and “push” factors. Pupils with SEND are often drawn towards schools with established reputations and expertise in inclusion, while capacity pressures elsewhere can limit access in other schools. Variation in school practices may further reinforce this pattern, with some schools less willing to develop a reputation for inclusion or discouraging admissions of pupils with SEND.
At the same time as the number of pupils identified with SEND has risen sharply, from 14.4 per cent in 2015/16 to 19.5 per cent in 2024/25 (over 1.7 million pupils), fewer than one in five schools report that they can meet the needs of all pupils on their roll, highlighting a widening gap between demand and schools’ capacity to respond.
While rising prevalence means that all schools are increasingly likely to support a broader range of need, this demand is unevenly distributed, which can further exacerbate these capacity pressures. Primary schools with pupils with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) had, on average, six times as many as those with the lowest rate. A similar pattern is seen in secondary schools, where those with the highest rate had around five times as many pupils as those with the lowest. In absolute terms, this equates to an average of three EHCP pupils per primary school with the lowest SEND levels, compared to 17 in those with the highest.
The evidence also suggests that these high-SEND schools are more likely to serve disadvantaged communities, meaning that concentrations of SEND often overlap with other forms of educational and social disadvantage. This can compound pressures on staffing, pastoral support and school finances.
The report suggests that inclusion bases (a new term introduced in the Schools White Paper to describe special educational needs (SEN) units, resourced provision, and pupil support units) are not a silver bullet for the SEND crisis. While many schools say these arrangements can strengthen expertise and support pupils within mainstream schools, evidence shows provision and integration are currently uneven, with many schools facing significant staffing and resource pressures in delivering them.
Commenting on the research, Matt Walker, Principal Investigator and Senior Research Manager at NFER, said:
“If we want a genuinely inclusive system, responsibility for SEND cannot rest with a few schools. It has to be something every school is expected – and supported – to do.
“Without that shift, the government’s ambition for mainstream schools to better meet a wider range of needs will remain difficult to deliver.”
