Huge increase in Education, Health and Care Plans as statistics released

The facts and figures around EHC plans from the January census have been released and there have been increases across the board.

The key headline measures are:

• Number of EHC plans up 9.9% to 473,255
• Initial requests are up 23% to 93,302
• Number of new EHC plans is up 3% to 62,180

On top of this only 59.9% of new EHC plans were issued within the statutory deadline of 20 weeks. This means over 40% of EHC plans were delivered late and while this figure is an improvement upon 2020 it remains lower than pre-pandemic levels.

The number of mediations has continued to increase with 2021 seeing the biggest increase year on year since the current Code of Practice was introduced in 2015.

Just over 40% of pupils with an EHC plan are educated in mainstream settings with just under 35% in a special school. The worrying increase has been that nearly 8% of children and young people with an EHC plan are not within an education setting, with a staggering 2.6% or over 12,000 pupils with an EHC plan identified as NEET.  
The biggest area of growth in new EHC plans was in the under 5’s, with just under a quarter of new plans being issued in this age group. The 5 to 10 year old age group remains the highest group for new plans with 46.2% of new plans issued.