Schools seeing rise in special educational needs since Covid-19

BBC News

24-03-2025

Five years ago, schools and nurseries across the UK closed to most children as the first Covid-19 lockdown began. A year of online learning, bubbles, flow tests and little social contact followed and school leaders say they are still dealing with the impact - rises in special educational needs (Sen), exclusions, absenteeism and a wider attainment gap between pupils from different socio-economic backgrounds.
'Daily battle'
In a classroom in Luton, 27 children are reciting their school values. They include being kind to their friends and reflecting on their feelings, which has proven a challenge for many. These five and six-year-olds are in Year 1 at Chantry Primary Academy and their teacher, Feroza Turk, believes they are the age group most affected by the pandemic."We've seen a big rise in special educational needs," she said. "It's particularly speech and language development and how they interact with each other."It's a daily battle to get them to use kind hands [a method of teaching kindness and appropriate behaviour] and many of them have attachment issues because they had their parents with them all through Covid."
The school is run by the Pioneer Learning Trust and its chief executive Cori Bateman said the rise in additional needs since 2020 has forced them to completely change how they teach."What we used to do for one or two children, we're now doing for the whole class," she said."We just don't have the staff to give one-to-one support anymore because there are so many children who need it." All learning is now broken down to be Sen-inclusive. Ms Bateman insists the approach does not disadvantage pupils who do not have special educational needs.The school has also introduced class breathing exercises, ear defenders and sensory gadgets which they believe help some children to concentrate. Pupils explain their feelings by attaching a peg to a picture of a character who is happy, angry or sad.
Nationally, the number of children receiving Sen support has been rising steadily since 2016. Now, some 14.1% of primary school students have Sen support and 3% have more complex Education Health Care Plans (EHCPs). At Chantry Primary the Year 1 figures is 31% and 7.1% respectively. But how much is the pandemic to blame?
"We have a strong reputation for Sen teaching, so families choose us, which raises our figures," Ms Bateman said."But the clear rise in speech, language and social communication difficulties, I feel, has been because of the pandemic."We know that from nine to 18 months old children really start to notice their wider world but, without toddler groups and health visits, those children and families lost so much support at a key time. "They've started school unable to fasten their zips, or understand tone of voice. "Even recognising facial expressions was harder for this group because people wore masks."
Chantry said it was trying to address these issues before children move on to secondary school, where teachers also face Covid-related challenges.Comberton Village College is a secondary school near Cambridge with almost 2,000 pupils, aged 11 to 18. "We definitely saw more challenging behaviour after the pandemic and a rise in exclusions, but that has started to come down now," said its principal, Peter Law.
"Pupil attendance is lower. There's a legacy that 'work can be done online, so you don't have to go to school' and it's a challenge to restore that contract with some parents," said Mr Law."The pandemic was an amplifier of situations so we saw plenty of families thrive, but for those with less supportive situations, children didn't have supervision because parents were working, and some drifted into more difficult situations and saw content online that was unhelpful."
Freya, 16, is about to take GCSEs. She feels comfortable with school now, but said "it's taken a lot of work to catch up".Having had to do schoolwork at home from March 2020 until the summer term or September, a second lockdown was introduced in January 2021 - with many children having only just gone back to school after the Christmas holiday."I moved from primary to secondary school in the pandemic," said Freya."In my first term here, everyone was in bubbles and not used to talking to people, so it was hard to make friends and then we were back at home again [in 2021] with online learning where you could only see the teacher. "It was isolating and demotivating. I think it affected a lot of my age group."
Max, 17, believes his year was the "luckiest" in the pandemic. "We were in Year 8 so we'd done our SATS, made good friends, and GCSEs didn't start until Year 10 so this was the best year of education to miss," he said.Max did not think his A-Levels would be affected by any "lost" learning, but said his GCSEs were. "I definitely took a hit in maths in Covid and it didn't recover because the GCSE builds on what you've learned before," he said.
Sarah, 17, moved to Comberton after the pandemic but she recalled being "12 at the time and it was so scary"."I lost the motivation to work from home and I couldn't even get online at first - my friend had to explain how to do it," she said."Things you didn't understand kept piling on top of each other. It affected all the core subjects of science, English and maths. It made me really anxious." Five years on: How Covid had an impact on the lives of young peopleThese experiences are reflected in the findings of the Nuffield Foundation report. Its co-author Prof Lee Elliot-Major said: "School is a leveller, but when you take that away, people's home lives are very different. "Many lower-income families didn't have the resources, so Covid has widened the attainment gap. It's going to take a long time to address those divides. "We also found that children's social and emotional development has a big impact on their academic results so it's been a double whammy and we predict that GCSEs won't recover for a decade." That would mean four-year-old children starting school this September may be the first children in 15 years to be unaffected by the pandemic.The Department for Education said "this government is determined to get tens of thousands more children school-ready by the age of five and break down barriers to opportunity".
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