Rising to the challenge: the heavy cost of SEND in schools

Educating children with special educational needs has been dubbed a ‘national crisis’ with soaring numbers being diagnosed with conditions like dyslexia, ADHD and autism.

A staggering one in five of all pupils – over 1.7 million – are estimated to have such special educational needs and disabilities, known commonly as SEND, according to the latest Department for Education figures.

Councils are increasingly being crippled by the costs of provision and meeting the legal and financial requirements of educating children with SEND under education, health and care plans (EHCPs), which more and more children are being issued with.

In mainstream independent schools, the numbers of children with SEND have also mushroomed, driven by the lack of state provision and by the same escalating rates of diagnosis.

Where once a special educational needs department might have been something of a peripheral add on, it is now central.

Rachel Mackenzie, head of learning support at Roedean School near Brighton – which is experiencing “a rising number of diagnoses, in particular of autism, ADHD and dyslexia as well as anxiety related needs” – says there had “definitely been a real cultural shift in independent schools over the past decade” with SEND “visible, openly discussed and celebrated”.

At open days, schools report SEND is a frequent and regular topic. “Parents increasingly want clear, practical information about learning support, assessment processes and how the school supports individual needs within a high-achieving environment,” she explains.

At Wellington College in Berkshire, Headmaster James Dahl says all schools were dealing with “increasing numbers of children with educational psychologist reports or children with EHCPs”.

“Of course, it is challenging for all schools whenever you have more stuff to deal with and the same human resource or financial resource, and you have to meet that demand,” he says.

At the co-ed boarding and day school, Dahl says “more people were working in our academic support department than ever before, and people with more specialisms including an ADHD specialist and an autism specialist”.

“You go back 25 years and you maybe had one person who had done a course on dyslexia and that was your academic support department.

“The burden is heavy and unfortunately most schools in this country – state and independent – don’t have the financial or human resources to be able to deal effectively with the wave of diagnoses that are coming through the system,” he warns.

At Hanford School in Dorset, Headmistress Hilary Phillips says one reason diagnosis had increased was because we are “a lot better at diagnosing now”, although she urged real caution in diagnosing children too early when other factors might be involved. “More pupils are getting such a diagnosis as they are going through the system when it could just be a developmental stage. It could be the experiences they had at home or it could be how they have been brought up.”

Hand in hand with this, she believes it is very welcome that the past stigma some parents felt about having their child labelled has dissipated, partly because “younger parents are much more comfortable and open and aware that this is a thing”.

And Phillips says that while small schools like Hanford, an all-girls prep, benefited from small class sizes, meaning SEND children could be helped more, schools with classes of 28-30 “had no chance of addressing their needs”.

However, schools also warn that while provision and resources in independent schools tend to be far better, both sectors are hampered by the sharp rise in diagnosis because of the need for external help.

“We all want to respond as quickly as we can but the state and the independent sector have the same issues – there are a certain amount of professionals out there and we are all using them if we are going to an external source.

“With these increased diagnoses, we have the same number of people trying to deal with this huge volume of children,” she says.

And at Roedean, Rachel Mackenzie says the biggest pressure at the all-girls’ day and boarding senior school is “often not money but people”, pointing to a “national shortage of qualified SEND specialists”.

And she warns: “Nationally, this is leading to burnout among staff who are juggling teaching with learning, pastoral and behavioural demands.”

At Stowe School in Buckingham, special educational needs co-ordinator (SENco) Caroline Bagshaw says the co-ed senior school was seeing increased numbers of children with special educational needs – both pupils with diagnosed needs applying but also existing pupils being diagnosed after concerns were flagged by staff or parents.

Bagshaw believes that increased awareness of conditions like ADHD and autism continues to drive greater diagnosis.

“Teachers are trained to meet the needs in the classroom and, of course, the more they are trained to meet those needs, the more they are becoming upskilled and the more they notice children with undiagnosed needs.”

Stowe has “almost doubled the size of learning support in classrooms in the last 20 years”, with learning support assistants available in every lower set from third to fifth forms in English, maths, physics, biology and chemistry across every week, she explains.

Rachel Mackenzie at Roedean says that “increased levels of flexibility and individual attention for SEND pupils” marked out many independent schools but she adds: “I would argue that state and independent schools face many of the same pressures around SEND, but the challenges play out differently because their structures, funding models, and expectations diverge.

“Whilst state schools typically experience higher volumes of pupils with complex needs, tighter statutory responsibilities and chronic funding constraints, they often struggle with long waits for external assessments, limited specialist staff and large class sizes.

“Independent schools have smaller classes, strong pastoral teams and the ability to buy in specialist support quickly, but there is often a greater level of parental expectations of personalised support.”

At Wellington, over 10 per cent of the pupils have an ADHD diagnosis, although official figures just a few years ago estimated the nationwide figure at only 5 per cent.

“We have seen a rise in ADHD and autism diagnoses over the last five years. I have no doubt that the figures we see at Wellington reflect what is happening nationally,” says James Dahl. “It might be that we have a higher proportion than is the case but, talking to colleagues in the state sector, I suspect the 5 per cent figure is an under-estimation.”

Meanwhile, medical intervention for children with SEND is a strong bone of contention.

“I have seen the positive benefits of medication with neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD, and also the judicious use of medication in and around young people with chronic anxiety or depression, being an important part of their road to recovery,” says Dahl.

At Stowe, where Caroline Bagshaw says parents “agonised” over medication for conditions like ADHD, children on medication are closely monitored by a consultant paediatrician.

She says: “I think it can be eye opening for some children for whom it helps to start to concentrate or focus, but it is not a panacea”.

Experts also agree that Covid affected the SEND picture, with Rachel Mackenzie at Roedean saying “it shifted SEND needs and the way they were discussed”.

And James Dahl says: “I don’t think we are there with understanding the nuances and complexities of what’s been happening in the last 20 years – and how we cope with this is arguably the biggest challenge facing the education sector.”

This article first appeared in The Week’s Independent Schools Guide Spring/Summer 2026, edited by Amanda Constance.