This study investigates the loss of Special Educational Needs (SEN) Support when children move between stages of school, and the impact on learning, attendance and health.
Why is the research needed?
Over 1.8 million pupils in England have special educational needs. Around 1.3 million of them receive SEN Support: extra help arranged by their school without a legal plan. Unlike children with an Education, Health and Care Plan, these children have no legal guarantee that their support will continue. Councils spend around £10.7 billion a year on special educational needs, and by March 2026 had built up deficits of around £5 billion. Under this pressure, support may be withdrawn from children who still need it.
Moves between stages of school, from Reception to Year 1 and from primary to secondary school, are points where support often changes. Yet no one has measured, across the whole country, how often children lose support at these moves, which children are affected, or what happens to their learning, attendance and health afterwards. Without this evidence, decisions about support are being made without knowing their costs to children, families and the wider public sector.
What are we doing?
The project aims to measure how often children lose SEN Support when they move up a stage of school, and what this means for them.
It asks three questions:
- How common loss of support is at these moves, and which children, schools and areas are most affected?
- What happens afterwards to children's school results, attendance, exclusions and use of health services?
- Which groups of children are harmed most, for example by type of need, health condition or level of deprivation?
We use ECHILD, a database that securely links anonymised school and hospital records for around 20 million children in England, accessed through the Office for National Statistics Secure Research Service. We compare children who lose support with similar children who keep it, and follow the same children before and after the move, using methods designed to separate the effect of losing support from other differences between children.
How are we working with communities, services and organisations?
We will work with families, practitioners and policymakers throughout the project. It will be guided by a stakeholder advisory group bringing together national and local policymakers, practitioners and professional bodies, including the National Association for Special Educational Needs (nasen) and the Association of Educational Psychologists, organisations representing children and families, and academic experts in linked education and health data. The group will meet quarterly to advise on the research questions, the interpretation of results and how best to share findings. We will also draw on the ARC East of England network to connect with families and services in the region.
What will the impact and benefits of this research be?
The project will provide the first national evidence on what happens when children lose special educational needs support as they move up a stage of school. Using methods that mimic a randomised trial within existing records, it will estimate the effect of losing support rather than simple associations, and show which children are most affected. Results will be reported in terms decision makers already use: lost learning, extra days absent from school, and extra use of health services such as A&E and hospital admissions. With around 1.3 million children in England receiving SEN Support, the findings are relevant to a large share of the school population.
The findings can inform national reform of the special educational needs system, and help councils, schools and NHS planners see where support is most at risk of being lost, so it can be protected at school moves. Figures for the East of England will be produced alongside national ones for local partners to use. The project will also show how linked education and health records can be used to answer questions that neither system can answer alone, and will document the strengths and limits of these records for measuring changes in support. All analysis code will be shared openly with the research community so others can build on it.
What do we have planned for knowledge mobilisation and implementation?
We will share findings with the people who make and experience decisions about support. For families, we will co-produce plain-English summaries with the parents and carers involved in the project, and share them through parent carer forums and, potentially, ARC East of England channels. For local authorities, schools and integrated care boards in the region, we will produce East of England estimates and short briefings, and aim to share them through the ARC Knowledge Mobilisation and Implementation for Impact workstream and Health Innovation East. We also plan to present the work at Measurement in Health and Social Care theme meetings.
Nationally, we will share findings with the Department for Education, the Department of Health and Social Care and organisations working on reform of support for children with special educational needs. A full-day policy event in London will combine a session for practitioners, local authority commissioners and policymakers with a workshop where families help co-produce recommendations. Findings will be published open access in academic journals and presented at conferences, and the code and definitions used to measure loss of support will be made available so other researchers can reuse them. We will also offer training sessions on using linked education and health data.
Related papers, outputs and resources associated with this project
About the ADR UK Research Fellowship
Learn more about the SENLOSS project
Who is involved?
Dr Angelina Nazarova, Principal Investigator, University of Essex
Get in contact
Email Dr Angelina Nazarova at an21010@essex.ac.uk