How PickMySchool Rates SEN Provision: Our Methodology Explained

Parents of children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) don't choose a school the same way other families do. Ofsted ratings, GCSE results, and Progress 8 are only part of the picture. What actually matters is whether the school can meet your child's specific needs — and that data isn't easily visible anywhere. So we built the SEN Experience Indicator, and several supporting features, to make this information clearer. This page explains exactly how each SEN feature works, where the data comes from, and — most importantly — what they can't tell you.

Every school with available data gets a score from 0 to 5 showing how experienced it is at supporting children with SEN. The score combines several factors, each contributing a weighted amount: • Has a dedicated SEN unit: +5 points • Has resourced provision: +4 points • Supports 3+ specific need types: +4 points (or +2 for 1–2 need types) • SEN population above national average (13%): +3 points • Ofsted Outstanding: +5 points; Good: +3 points We then take the average of all factors that had data, rounded to one decimal, and cap it at 5. Important: this is a score of experience and infrastructure, not a recommendation. A 5/5 score means the school has substantial SEN capacity. It does NOT mean it's the right school for your child — that depends on your child's specific needs, the school's current staff, and factors no public dataset can capture.

We use DfE's own categories. A school might have any combination of these: Special school — a school exclusively for children with SEN, usually requiring an EHCP for entry. About 1,100 in England. SEN unit — a dedicated specialist unit within a mainstream school. Children spend some time in the unit and some in mainstream classes. Resourced provision — a specialist provision attached to a school, with reserved places for children with a specific type of SEN. Special classes — designated SEN classes within a mainstream school, usually not as structured as a unit. Mainstream with SEND support — most schools, with a SENCO and in-class support. Not flagged specifically in our data because every school has this. All of these are recorded in GIAS (Get Information About Schools), DfE's master database. We import these fields directly — no interpretation involved.

DfE classifies SEN into 12 primary need categories. We show which of these each school supports (where data is published): • ASD — Autistic Spectrum Disorder • SEMH — Social, Emotional and Mental Health needs • SLCN — Speech, Language and Communication Needs • MLD — Moderate Learning Difficulty • SLD — Severe Learning Difficulty • PMLD — Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulty • SpLD — Specific Learning Difficulty (dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia) • HI — Hearing Impairment • VI — Visual Impairment • MSI — Multi-Sensory Impairment • PD — Physical Disability • OTH — Other Note that mainstream schools supporting, say, ASD at SEN Support level may still support children without listing ASD as a primary provision — the codes apply where the school formally identifies the need as a specialism.

Two headline numbers on every school page: EHCP pupils: children with an Education, Health and Care Plan (the legally binding document that describes required support). National average: about 4.8% of the school population. SEN Support pupils: children receiving SEN support without an EHCP. National average: about 13.6%. Added together these give you the Total SEN %. A school well above the national average isn't necessarily better at SEN — it might simply attract SEN families because it's geographically placed near specialist services, or because a specific unit draws pupils from a wide area. But it does mean the school has practical experience of supporting these children daily. Source: DfE's annual "Education, Health and Care plans" release, school-level data file. We update this yearly when new figures are published.

We let parents leave reviews tagged specifically as "SEN support" reviews. These are aggregated into a separate SEN Support Rating on each school, alongside their specific feedback. This is crowd-sourced data. We moderate for obvious spam, but we don't vet every claim — readers should weigh reviews as one data point among several. Small review counts are particularly noisy; a 5/5 rating from two parents doesn't tell you much. If you're considering a school and there are no SEN reviews, consider writing one after you've experienced the school — you'll help the next family.

SEN decisions aren't just about the school — they're about the council too. Every English LA has its own Local Offer, its own EHCP processing times, and its own track record at SEND tribunal. We built a dashboard per LA at /send/[la-slug] showing: • EHCP timeliness — % of new EHCPs issued within the 20-week statutory limit, vs. national average of ~50% • Tribunal stats — how many SENDIST appeals the LA faced, and how often parents won • Total SEND population — EHCPs and SEN Support, with national benchmarks • All schools with SEN provision in that LA • Direct link to the LA's official Local Offer Data sources: DfE EES for timeliness and pupil counts, HMCTS SENDIST quarterly statistics for tribunal data, and direct-verified Local Offer URLs for all 153 LAs in England.

Be careful about reading too much into any of these numbers. Specifically: An EHCP count is not a quality measure. Two schools with 40 EHCPs might have very different cultures — one genuinely inclusive, one where children feel isolated. The SEN Experience Indicator is an infrastructure signal. It rewards schools that have invested in SEN capacity. It says nothing about the specific staff, their current morale, or how they'll interact with your child. Ofsted reports have a SEND section but Ofsted visits are 2 days every few years — they miss day-to-day practice. The best research is your own visit. Ask specific questions: how is your SENCO deployed? What adjustments have you made recently that felt hard? How do you communicate with parents when support isn't working? And — crucially — talk to current parents of SEN children at the school. Your local Facebook groups, IPSEA forums, and SEND charities are better sources than any dataset.

Some schools don't have EHCP counts published. This is common for: • Small schools — DfE suppresses counts under a threshold to protect pupil privacy • Special schools — where every pupil has SEN, the percentages don't make sense in the same way • Independent schools — private schools are not required to report SEN data to DfE Where we show a dash (—) in a column, it means "not published" rather than "zero". If you need this information, the school itself is the best source — every school's SEND Information Report is legally required and answers most of these questions.

We update SEN data annually when DfE publishes new releases — typically June/July each year. LA-level stats update when HMCTS and DfE release their annual bulletins. If you see a factual error — a missing SEN unit, an incorrect need category, or out-of-date council contact — please let us know via our Contact page. We respond to corrections within a few days and generally have them live within a week.

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