To ask you to explain SEND funding and bankrupt councils to me?

[Myanna]

I've read a few articles like this one:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/feb/05/send-costs-bankrupt-english-local-authorities

But I don't understand why the cost of funding SEND is so high that it's going to potentially/actually make most councils insolvent.

It's not like provision is generous or easy to get, from what I've read (I don't have a child who is supported).

Were these kids previously just not supported in any way by the state and was it left to families to cope as best they could?
Are these kids who previously wouldn't have survived, but now do because of better medical care and therefore need a lot of help?
Is this private equity running enterprises and charging huge amounts to local authorities?
Is it just inflation and the cost of employing people?

I really don't know much about this at all but I'm sure many on here do, so I'd really welcome your knowledge.

Ok so I started a thread to ask teaching staff what % of their mainstream schools are diagnosed ASD, ADHD or both.

The responses range from the very lowest (and a minority of responses) of around 10%. The vast majority say 20-60%.

Anyone saying this is a small minority and therefore there should be no issues meeting need are plain wrong. With these numbers, I doubt meeting need is even possible. This doesn’t include SEN schools.

I'll leave my reply unedited generally, but have realised you said 'non-specialist'. There are differences in non-specialist independents. Often school size and class size.

My reply was:

DDs 2&3 go to an independent special school. They don't fit the typical profile of the school - it's mostly for children who have been excluded from school several times - but they need the special provision.

The school has 28 pupils in total, and every student has 1:1 support at all times throughout the day with a bespoke timetable. Every student is taught individually (although sometimes DD3 chooses to double up with another student for an activity, so they will go with their two staff). The staff will drive the students out to activities so, for example, they can go to the forest to do their English lesson. DD2 (18) doesn't cope with a full day, so staff come to collect her and drop her off according to her shortened timetable.

There is no way that any adaptations could be made to a mainstream secondary with 1300 pupils to match that provision.

Hopefully you saw my reply where I explained this doesn't necessarily mean they're hard to teach.

As a matter of fact, having a diagnosis often means someone really strongly advocated for that child.

I think something very strange is going on.

The BMA did a report on diagnosis of autism specifcally in 2024 and they had that 1 in 100 school children with a diagnosis. They thought it should be 1 in 57.

My understanding is the rate is higher in younger year groups but the latest stats still seem to be under 3.4% of school children with a diagnosis.

Yet anecdotally schools are reporting much bigger percentages of diagnosed children. And not just on your thread.

Why is there such a mismatch between gp records and school experience.

Adhd, they estimate 5% of children should have a diagnosis but havent. I cant find an actual diagnosis figure but stats saying prevelance is 5% and there is underdiagnosis. So the two combined should sit at under 10%.

The national average for sen is 20% which isnt just asd/adhd? Why arent schools recording this properly on the census returns. Its a legal requirement. They last update has have the late primary group as the biggest group on sen support and ehcp and that hits 22%.

I cant work out why anecdotally its so high, but records dont reflect that. It must be very uneven across the country and school to school. Perhaps those struggling are the most likely to speak up.

Why arent schools recording this properly on the census returns. It's a legal requirement.

We have a number of children who absolutely have ASD but don't yet have a diagnosis. They can't be listed as 'ASD' on the census (though would still be SEND-based on need).

I imagine because it can take years to get an official diagnosis because the waiting lists are so long and schools can't record it officially until they actually have an official diagnosis?

I wonder if many of the school aged children diagnosed have what's called a "provisional" autism diagnosis? I heard of this from a friend of mine - autism in England is supposed to be diagnosed via 2x HCPs in different fields, but because demand is so high and waiting lists are so long, the waiting lists are being split in some areas where the diagnosis is being given as provisional when a child has seen only the first HCP and then they are put back on the waiting list to wait (often several years) for the second assessment.

Under official/national statistics, likely only the full diagnosis would "count" whereas the provisional one seems sufficient for schools (good, as it means DC can access support sooner).

Or possibly these threads attract people with experience of higher rates so you're getting a skewed view on the anecdotal side.

Or possibly there is something strange going on.

I do think it's an interesting question why the national stats and anecdotal experiences aren't matching up.

No sen support doesnt need a diagnosis. And neither does an ehcp.

So they would appear in the overall 20% stat but categorised under speech and language or semh?

I think they’re just very outdated.

It really cannot be some kind of extreme and niche coincidence that virtually every single poster either has a child with autism/adhd, knows several children with autism/adhd, or teaches a class with 20-50% diagnosed children.

I deliberately didn’t put anything about neurodiversity in the title as I know it would attract the usual ND bunfighters, or skew the responses in the way you suggest.

I don’t think anything ‘funny’ is going on as such - as in, I don’t think child behaviour is wildly different inherently to how it was 30 years ago. I do though think that modern life is placing huge stress on people and neurodiversity is a kind of belief system that has been used to explain this away rather than address it. That’s not to say people aren’t genuinely autistic (like with trans - some people really truly have gender dysmorphia), but I think the true numbers are very low (1/2%) and the numbers we see now are more a reflection of the environment.

So they would appear in the overall 20% stat but categorised under speech and language or semh?

Yes, mainly SLCN.

BTW there are some figures for child diagnosis of ADHD in this study. Based on a couple of things I've seen, it seems that diagnosis rates of children are much more accurate these days so it's not necessarily the case that 5% of children diagnosed means there is a further 5% of children who are undiagnosed.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-open/article/attentiondeficit-hyperactivity-disorder-diagnoses-and-prescriptions-in-uk-primary-care-20002018-populationbased-cohort-study/E0818CCAE895FF273C7448756CFB0066

When we are talking about underdiagnosis of ADHD in general, while children may still be underdiagnosed and waiting lists are definitely long, I think the figure is much closer to accurate whereas adults are lagging hugely behind due to historical underdiagnosis and a massive backlog.

Hopefully if more children are being diagnosed today then in the future, the number of adults seeking diagnosis will reduce because they are much more likely to have been picked up earlier in life.

I know. I imagine if they don't have a diagnosis of ASD/ADHD then they can't be counted on the census as ASD/ADHD though?

It really cannot be some kind of extreme and niche coincidence that virtually every single poster either has a child with autism/adhd, knows several children with autism/adhd, or teaches a class with 20-50% diagnosed children.

The thing is I think this is actually a misconception, particularly the idea that a majority of MNers have a child with ADHD/ASD. I don't think that is the case, at all. It's certainly a minority, and quite possibly a smaller minority than it seems. Even if you have a conservative estimate like 5% of families in the UK have a child with ADHD/ASD diagnosis, that's still a huge amount being 1 in 20. 5% is not rare, and it would be extremely likely to know someone in a position that 5% of people are in. For reference this is about as common as being a natural redhead (in the UK) - I think it would be very rare not to know anyone with red hair at all.

It is not actually true that every other thread is about ADHD/ASD. If you take a random sample of threads from Active Convos or Last Hour, the majority of them don't involve these issues. They do come up frequently, but not especially more frequently than you'd expect with a prevalence of 5% for reference, especially as (unlike being redheaded) it's something which tends to have a large impact on people's day to day lives and/or be something which causes problems that people would like to get input on.

I can't speak for the teachers because I did also see your other thread and noticed the lack of responses with smaller numbers, although going through again now, I notice a lot of the responses are referring to classes they have experienced with particularly high numbers, not all are talking about averages or numbers across the whole school. And one was an OT (so not a teacher) and pediatric OTs work primarily with children with SEN. It was also not really clear in many of the posts whether children actually had a diagnosis or simply recognised needs/suspected, so the sample isn't especially "clean" in that sense.

Those in MS independent schools wouldn’t have it named in their EHCP if state MS could meet needs. Just because an independent MS can meet needs doesn’t automatically mean state MS can. This can be for several reasons. A common reason is because of the smaller class sizes.

Which could potentially be replicated in state schools if anyone had the will to do so / there were enough children in that area needing it.

Really? My sister, 30 years ago, was clearly dyslexic. I remember watching her in assembly at school, unable to sing with the school because she couldn't read the hymn book. Back then, no one really got diagnosed. Yet she was totally unable to read until she was 11 and even after that struggled.

Would diagnosing her have been non-credible? Or would a diagnosis for her have been OK because no one else in the class had one?

So, now, given that approximately 10% of the population are dyslexic (as opposed to other SENs), if there were THREE children diagnosed with dyslexia (recognised as a disability under the UK's Equality Act 2010) in her class if she were a primary student today, would that have demonstrated a loss of credibility?

How can you believe a diagnosed, legally recognised disability lacks credibility?

Your point is bullshit. Your attitude is prejudiced. I hope to god you're not a teacher.

In theory yes, it could be. In reality, such schools don’t exist at the moment. So in the meantime, such children need independent MS placements because state provision cannot meet their needs.

I can explain about specialist schools, because DD1 went to four at secondary.

All four were charities, so there was no profit making there! They just charged the LAs their costs. Even when they had to put up their fees, due to inflation (or like the recent increases in NI ers), some LAs refused to pay the increases. Parents sometimes had to consider high court action against the LA to get them to pay the fees.

The specialist speech and language schools had classes of 10 children, with a language based approach to the National Curriculum, no foreign languages, two TAs and a full time speech therapist per class. So children were taught literacy and numeracy in groups of about three, and the school used vertical streaming to group children by ability. The children had to be in the normal intelligence range. DD1 had to do foundation GCSEs due to her poor memory, but others could do the higher GCSEs. Children either went into college/university to do visual subjects like art, photography, graphics, etc or vocational courses like catering, animal care, horticulture, etc. Afaik, all DD’s friends were in employment in their 20s, had relationships, babies etc - because if you met them, you wouldn’t know they had any specific learning difficulties.

What is fundamental about special/specialist schools are the classes of ten, specialist SEN teachers and a differentiated approach to the curriculum. These cannot be delivered in mainstream classes of thirty with ordinary teachers. Some ND children have sensory processing problems and are overwhelmed by the sensory input in a class of thirty. They can’t learn. That’s why parents who can afford it, go for ordinary independent schools with experience of SEN, for the small classes and nurturing environment.

DDIL is from Poland. She tells me in Poland, DGC (who are both in primary) would have a staff ratio of 1 teacher to 10 children. If Poland can afford it, why can’t the UK?

As for the specialist schools charging 6 figures, they are likely to be residential and the children need high staff ratios like 1:1, 2:1, 3:1 or 4:1 care. These schools are just as much about social and medical care, as education. Even if you took out the education element, the care is still likely to cost 6 figures. These schools deem the children need say 3:1 care to keep the staff safe; and the children are either there for child protection concerns; or the family is on the verge of or has broken down. There may be child protection concerns about the siblings too.

All those posters, who talk about these schools being parents’ “preferences”, or say parents should have to cope with disabled children, they chose to have, are really saying:

“Let’s throw these exhausted women and the vulnerable siblings under the bus, in a situation I couldn’t cope with either!”

Speaking personally, DD1 went to specialist epilepsy schools, because it was cheaper for the onsite medical staff look after her in emergencies than call 999 three times a week. Then there were the knock on costs to the NHS of the rest of our family’s physical and mental health breaking down, instead of DH being a higher rate taxpayer and me an ordinary rate taxpayer! Closing the school down, as some propose to save education money, would have just cost the NHS more! Hint - DD2 has cost society probably just as much as DD1, in terms of the emergency services!

In my experience taxing in England, what happened was the LA closed specialist provision and set “inclusion” as the good standard.

2 or 3 children who would have been in specialist provision were now in mainstream with EHCPs.

“Including” these children meant less time and resources for children who able to access the curriculum but perhaps need strategies and support (adhd, pda, anxiety etc. kind if things). This led to diagnoses and EHCPs being sought for these children.

And at the same time the academisation and national curriculum made schools more single track and packed the timetable with route learning in a way these particular children would always have struggled with anyway, not because of their ability though.

Anyway, in my first year of teaching, a cohort of 97 had 6 statements. In my last year in England a cohort of 98 had 26. Not all had funding, but all cost money to create.

PS - DD’s last specialist school, another charity, just charging costs, was a 52 week placement, because I couldn’t cope with her and DD2, with severe mental health problems for 14 weeks of the year; and DD1 was deemed to need 2:1 staffing to go out of the house, as it was too stressful for one person on their own with her. There were times, I had to leave her unconscious on the ground with complete strangers, while I went to get the car.

Thank you. Shinyabdnew1 explained they are categorised under SCLN mainly which makes sense. Oddly adhd doesnt seem to have its own box at all.

But I still feel there is a mismatch between people saying large percentages with a definite diagnosis and the census return saying all sen of all types hits 20%

That is really interesting @BlueandWhitePorcelain. Thank you for explaining all that. I had a friend growing up who lived at a special boarding school (her dad taught there). Obviously as a child I didn't understand the set up although they catered to physical disabilities too so had hydrotherapy etc.

I didn't know there were specialist epilepsy schools.

"As for the specialist schools charging 6 figures, they are likely to be residential and the children need high staff ratios like 1:1, 2:1, 3:1 or 4:1 care. These schools are just as much about social and medical care, as education. Even if you took out the education element, the care is still likely to cost 6 figures. "

Yes you can get day placements that cost up to £150k but these will be children with very complex needs who need 2:1 or higher support to keep themselves and others safe. There will not be many of these because most children with that level of support in special school are residential.

Astonishingly on this thread there have been posters saying children with this level of needs, should be educated and cared for full time by one untrained parent.

Wow that’s sad. Thank you for sharing that does help with understanding.