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Why does this matter?

Some children need extra help at school because of a disability, a health condition, or difficulties with learning or development. This is known as special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support. The amount and type of support children receive can vary between schools. We wanted to understand whether these differences are related to children's needs and whether getting support makes a difference to their health and education outcomes.

What did we want to find out?

We wanted to find out which children in England receive SEND support, when they receive it, how support varies between schools and areas, and whether receiving SEND support is linked to better health and education outcomes.

What we did

We used ECHILD to carry out a set of studies looking at children's health conditions, school results, school absences and information about children, their schools and their local areas. We used statistical methods to compare children who received SEND support with similar children who did not. Some studies looked at particular groups of children, including children with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, major congenital conditions and neurodisability.

 What we found

By age 11, about 1 in 3 children had some recorded SEND support.

Children with health conditions were more likely to receive SEND support. However, other factors also mattered. Children living in more disadvantaged areas, boys, children with lower test scores and children attending some types of schools were more likely to receive support.

We also found differences between schools in the amount and type of SEND support recorded.

When we looked at the effects of SEND support, we found limited evidence that it reduced unauthorised school absences. We did not find evidence that it reduced hospital admissions or improved school test results.

These findings do not mean that SEND support does not help children. ECHILD does not tell us exactly what support a child received, how much support they received, or how good that support was. This is an important limitation of using administrative data.

What this means, and what's next

ECHILD provides a powerful way to study SEND support across England because it brings together information about children's health and education. However, there are important gaps in the data. They do not fully show which children need support or what support they receive. Future research needs better information about children's needs and the support they receive. Linking this information to ECHILD could help us understand which types of SEND support work best, and for which children.

Introduction: 

The ECHILD component of the HOPE programme investigated variation in special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision in English primary schools and the relationship between SEND provision and health and education outcomes.

A set of studies using ECHILD addressed three main questions:

1. Which health conditions are associated with outcomes that might be improved by SEND provision?

2. Which factors influence whether children receive SEND provision, and when and where this happens?

3. What impact does SEND provision have on children's health and education?

Methods: 

The studies used ECHILD to follow children from birth through primary school. Analyses examined associations between health conditions, educational outcomes, social and demographic characteristics, school characteristics and SEND provision. A range of statistical methods was used, including cohort analyses and target trial emulation, to compare outcomes among children who received SEND provision with similar children who did not receive provision.

Results:

Across the ECHILD analyses, 30% of children had some recorded SEND support by age 11. Health conditions were associated with receiving SEND provision, but social disadvantage, educational attainment and school characteristics were also important.

There was variation between schools and local areas in recorded SEND provision, including variation in Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs).

Causal analyses found limited evidence that early SEND provision reduced unauthorised school absences. We found no evidence of an improvement in school test scores or a reduction in hospital admissions in the groups studied. For example, among children with cerebral palsy, Year 1 SEND provision reduced unauthorised absences but did not improve school test scores or reduce hospital use.

Conclusions: ECHILD provides an important population-level resource for studying SEND provision and children's health and education outcomes.

The research shows substantial variation in recorded SEND provision and provides some evidence about its effects on children's outcomes.

However, administrative data alone cannot capture all aspects of children's SEND needs or the support they receive. Better information about children's needs and the type and quality of support they receive is needed, alongside robust methods for evaluating its effects.

‍HOPE outputs

One page summaries of the studies

Further information on HOPE for members of the public