Quality, uses and methodology document: SFR25/2015
Source: data.gov.uk (2017-07-24)

Special educational needs in England: January 2015. Information from the school census on pupils with special educational needs (SEN), and SEN provision in schools. Information on the characteristics of pupils by their: level of SEN provision - education, health and care (EHC) plan or SEN support type of SEN It is based on pupil-level data collected by the Department for Education via the school census. This SFR series previously included information on statements of SEN, based on data from the SEN2 survey. In 2015, The DfE published this information separately as Statements of SEN and EHC plans: England 2015 . The technical note explains the statistics. Information for London Borough of Barnet can be obtained by carrying out a search query on individual datasets. For more recent data related to the London Borough of Barnet, we have also published our most recent 2015 SEN2 return .

Special educational 
needs in England: 
January 2015 
Quality, uses and methodology 

2 
Contents 
Summary 
3 
Users and usage 
3 
Data sources 
3 
Methodology 
4 
Free school meals 
4 
Ethnic group 
4 
First language 
4 
Quality 
5 
Special educational needs provision 
5 
Transfers to EHC plans 
5 
Transfers to SEN support 
5 
Changes to the type of need 
6 
General Hospital Schools collection issue 
6 
Presentation 
7 
Related information 
7 
 
 
 

3 
Summary 
1. 
This document provides information on the use of statistics published in the 
Special educational needs in England statistical first release (SFR). It provides 
information on how the data is generally used as well as information on the quality and 
reliability of the data. There are a number of points to consider following the 
implementation of the SEND reforms under the Children and Families Act 2014. 
Users and usage  
2. 
The information collected on SEN via the school census provides the only 
individual level source of data on children and young people with SEN. Ministers, 
Parliament, central and local government, external organisations and the public use this 
data to monitor government policies and their effectiveness. 
3. 
We are very familiar with the uses made of the data by local authorities, within the 
Department for Education and by the UK government. However, we have less clarity on 
the uses made of this data by other organisations. 
4. 
We would like to know more about our users and would encourage and welcome 
any feedback on how the data is used. Comments on any issues relating to this 
publication are also welcomed and encouraged. If you would like to be involved in future 
user engagement consultations then please do get in touch. Please email us at: 
xxx@xxx.xx 
Data sources 
5. 
This SFR contains information about pupils with SEN. This information is derived 
from school census returns and school level annual school census returns made to the 
department in January each year. The pupil referral unit census has now been 
discontinued and these institutions complete the school census. 
6. 
Guidance on the school census is available on gov.uk. The technical specification 
for school census explains what data are collected and what validation is in place and 
includes the business rationale for the collection. Similar information on the school level 
annual school census can be found here. 
7. 
Local authorities and schools return their data to the Department for Education via 
the COLLECT (Collections On-Line for Learning, Education, Children and Teachers) 
system. COLLECT has built-in validation rules which flag up data which is invalid or 
where the quality is questionable. This allows schools and LAs to identify errors and 
clean the data before they submit it to DfE. Users are encouraged to clean all errors and 
double-check data where queries are flagged. Users can add notes to their return if there 
is a genuine reason for “unusual” data. 

4 
8. 
Once all users have submitted and cleaned their data, a final dataset is formed. 
The underlying data used in this publication is available to download on the publication 
page. The underlying data zip file contains the data itself in .csv format and metadata 
which contains a list of the variables and their definitions. 
9. 
The SEN2 survey collects aggregate information from local authorities on children 
with statements of SEN and EHC plans. It records information on those children for 
whom the local authority is responsible for, regardless of whether they are educated in 
the local authority’s own maintained schools, in another local authority’s school, in the 
non-maintained or independent sectors or educated outside of school. For this reason 
figures sourced from the school census and the SEN2 survey are not directly 
comparable. In 2015 the SEN2 information was published separately on 21 May in SFR 
14/2015 Statements of SEN and EHC plans: England 2015. 
Methodology 
Free school meals 
10. 
The figures reported here are based on those pupils known to be eligible for and 
claiming free school meals. As the data published here is reported by schools, if a pupil 
comes from a family that would meet the eligibility criteria, but does not report this to the 
school, then they are not reported here as eligible for free school meals. 
11. 
From September 2014 all infant pupils in state-funded schools have been entitled 
to a free school meal. 
12. 
Free school meals are available to pupils who attend sixth forms attached to a 
maintained school, as long as the course of study began before the pupil reached age 
18. Free school meal eligibility relates to those who meet the eligibility criteria and make 
a claim.  
Ethnic group  
13. 
Pupils who have been classified according to their ethnic group and are other than 
White British are defined as minority ethnic. 
First language  
14. 
The language to which a child was initially exposed during early development and 
continues to be exposed in the home or in the community. Exposure to a language at 
home is not an indication of a pupil’s proficiency at speaking English. 

5 
Quality 
15. 
The 2015 school census return changed to take account of the implementation of 
the SEND reforms introduced in September 2014. Systems and processes may still be 
bedding in with this first collection. More specific points are outlined below: 
Special educational needs provision 
16. 
Two new codes were added to the SEN provision field within the School Census in 
autumn 2014, as highlighted below.  
 
Code 
Pupil SEN provision 
N 
No SEN 
A 
School Action 
P 
School Action Plus 
S 
Statement 
E 
Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan 
K 
SEN support 
 
The changes to these new codes should take place as follows: 
Transfers to EHC plans 
17. 
The transfer of statements to an EHC plan is due to take place by April 2018 and 
is phased giving priority to certain groups such as those transferring from primary to 
secondary school.  
18. 
Analysis of the data suggests some schools have recorded some or all of their 
pupils who were previously recorded as ‘statement’, as ‘EHC plan’ regardless of whether 
a formal needs assessment (transfer review) has been completed and a final EHC plan 
issued. Because of this, we have presented combined figures for pupils with a statement 
and those with an EHC plan within the publication. 
Transfers to SEN support 
19. 
The transition from school action plus and school action to SEN support should 
take place during the first term after implementation of SEND reforms so we would 
expect the majority to be on SEN support at January 2015 – and analysis shows this is 
the case. However, within the publication we have presented one category of ‘SEN 
support’ which includes some pupils who still have the SEN provision codes of school 
action and school action plus (this is with the exception of the type of need tables where 

6 
school action hasn’t been included within SEN support because those on school action 
are not required to provide type of need). 
Changes to the type of need 
20. 
There are three main changes to note: 
Coverage  
21. 
In 2014, the type of special educational need was only collected for those with a 
statement or on school action plus. In 2015, the type of special educational need was 
collected for all those with:  
 a statement 
 an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan 
 on School Action Plus 
 on SEN Support.  
22. 
In January 2014, 675,095 pupils had a primary need recorded, this has increased 
to 1,011,525 pupils in January 2015. 
New type of need code  
23. 
A new code entitled ‘SEN support but no specialist assessment of type of need’ 
was introduced and aimed at those who transferred from School Action to SEN Support 
but are yet to be formally assessed for their type of special educational need.  
24. 
In January 2015, 28,490 pupils had their type of need recorded as ‘SEN support 
but no specialist assessment of type of need’, the vast majority of which are on ‘SEN 
support’. Of the 28,490 pupils, 43% were on School Action, 45% had no SEN and 12% 
were on School Action Plus, in January 2014. 
Type of need code change  
25. 
The previous code for type of need ‘Behaviour, Emotional and Social Difficulties’ 
(BESD) has been replaced with ‘Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH)’. Those 
with a primary need of BESD in 2014 were not all expected to move to SEMH in 2015.  
General Hospital Schools collection issue 
26. 
General hospital schools provide aggregate information on the numbers with SEN 
in their School Level Annual School Census data return. Following the closure of this 
data collection, we have identified some minor discrepancies in the numbers with SEN 
for two schools. Additional validation rules will be added to this data return in future years 
as a result of this issue. 

7 
Presentation 
27. 
When reviewing the tables, please note the following: 
We preserve 
confidentiality  
The Code of Practice for Official Statistics requires we take 
reasonable steps to ensure that our published or disseminated 
statistics protect confidentiality. 
So we round 
numbers 
Pupil numbers at national and regional levels have been 
rounded to the nearest 5. Pupil numbers of 1 or 2 have been 
suppressed. Where any number is shown as zero (0), the 
original figure was also zero. Where the numerator or 
denominator of any percentage calculated on pupil numbers is 
less than 3, this has been suppressed.  
This suppression is consistent with the Departmental statistical 
policy which can be found at: 
Departmental statistical policy. 
And adopt symbols 
to help identify this 
Symbols are used in the tables as follows: 
.   not applicable 
x  suppressed figure 
Related information  
28. 
The section below provides links to further information. 
Previously 
published SEN 
figures 
The series of publications is available online at:  
Statistics: special educational needs (SEN). 
Local authority 
comparisons 
A range of SEN data is available at local authority level in a 
comparison format produced by the Department in the Local 
Authority Interactive Tool (LAIT) 
Wales 
Welsh Assembly Government: School census results: Welsh 
Government: School census results 

8 
Scotland 
Scottish Government: In Scotland there is different legislation 
and instead of having SEN they have pupils with Additional 
Support Needs (ASN). Information on this is included in the 
below publication. 
Summary Statistics for Schools in Scotland. 
School Education Statistics 
Northern Ireland 
Department for Education, Northern Ireland: Special 
Educational Needs (SEN) pupils by Education and Library 
Board (ELB). 
ELB 
Special schools data. 
School level data 
 
 

9 
 
 
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