(England) 80% increase in special needs students since 2018; "greater awareness"
- The end of childhood
- Sep 13
- 2 min read
Sept 12, 2025, Telegraph: Special needs spending crisis ‘will trigger council bailouts’
Spiralling spending on children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) will force the Government to bail out indebted councils, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has warned.
The think tank said local authority spending on Send was becoming “financially unsustainable”, with councils set to rack up deficits of £8bn [$11B] by 2027.
That comes despite a £4bn [$5.4B] annual increase in central government support for “high needs” children since 2018, a rise of more than 50pc.
This absorbs most of the entire increase in central government school funding over the same period.
“The Government is allowing these overspends to be kept off the books to avoid financial collapse,” said the IFS.
“This accounting fudge (technically known as the statutory override) has recently been extended to March 2028, but this is just putting off the inevitable date when these deficits will have to be addressed (almost certainly with a bailout from central government).”
The number of children requiring extra support has jumped by 80pc since 2018, the IFS said, with more diagnoses of conditions including autism and ADHD. Much of the increase comes from greater awareness of the conditions and lower thresholds for diagnosis, the report said, rather than entirely a rise in the prevalence of special needs.
Spiralling spending to support such children was not a deliberate policy, said Luke Sibieta, author of the IFS report.
Mr Sibieta added: “The previous government never set out to increase spending on Send by over £4bn or 50pc – it just drifted into it. If that money had been invested in a coherent transformation of provision, the system would be in far better shape today. Policymakers cannot afford to miss the opportunity again.
“The system is not financially sustainable and there is almost no way to judge whether the £4bn increase in funding since 2018 represents value for money.
“Costs are spiralling, the quality of provision is patchy, and almost everyone involved – schools, councils, parents and children – is at breaking point.”
Wider issues with support
The report warns that children are often being let down, despite the high level of spending.
“Many children are pulled out of lessons for support from poorly trained teaching assistants, missing time with qualified teachers,” the IFS found.
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