Is your school equipped to handle rising EHCP numbers?

Is your school equipped to handle rising EHCP numbers?

What would your school do if the number of learners who need reading support doubled by 2030?

It’s not an unrealistic prediction. New data indicates that teachers are already facing a monumental increase in the amount of Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) provisions they’re expected to implement. A large proportion of these EHCPs have been issued for Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN) and require literacy support – without which thousands of learners won’t be able to access learning materials, read with confidence, or reach their potential.

Just how are schools supposed to support increasingly prevalent and diverse reading needs in the classroom? Especially while tight budgets already make it difficult to keep teacher wellbeing front and centre.

Understanding the increase in EHCPs

In a sea of questions, we’ll start with what we know: new data released in June 2024 tells us that EHCP numbers skyrocketed from 517,049 in 2023 to 575,963 in 2024. That marks a record yearly increase of 11.4%, with 58,194 more pupils in schools who need Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) support to learn accessibly.

It goes deeper: as the Times Educational Supplement (TES) highlighted in the new data, these numbers don’t necessarily correspond directly to the real number of new EHCPs active in the system at the moment.

Whilst there’s been a 58,194 increase in the number of active EHCPs, this doesn’t account for the fact that more students are being issued an EHCP than there are leaving, either due to that plan ending or it being withdrawn as they age out of the bracket. So the real number hovers somewhere in excess of 84,000 – and when we average that out, it means that every single school in the country is going to be gearing up to support multiple new learners on EHCPs.

Why are EHCP numbers increasing?

The proportion of pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) who have an EHCP increased from about 2.8% of pupils in 2015 to just over 4.8% in 2024. Why?

• Increased awareness of SEND and neurodiversity. More children are being recognised as having special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) as a result of greater awareness of symptoms of dyslexia across the board. This may be due to the increased availability of information online.
  
  
• Legislative changes. The introduction of the Children and Families Act in 2014 expanded the criteria for EHCPs, making more children and young people eligible for them than were under the old Statements of Special Educational Needs system.
  
  
• Parental advocacy. Parents are becoming more knowledgeable and more proactive about the systems that support their children and their rights as part of them.
  
  
• School resources. Mainstream schools often identify learners who need additional support due to previously undiagnosed SEND, but struggle to resource this organically. Here’s where EHCPs can open new streams of support.
  
  
• The pandemic. Extended school closures widened the SEND learning gap and created new literacy challenges for those with SEND, meaning that students who were previously keeping pace with their peers without an EHCP found that they needed one as they returned to class in the Spring of 2021.

A new wave, an old problem: EHCP provision into the 2030s

The breakdown of the new EHCP numbers issued makes for interesting reading: whilst children of compulsory school age make up just over two-thirds of EHCPs issued, and whilst there has been an increase in the number of learners with an EHCP in almost every age bracket in 2024, the most notable uptick has been in under-5s.

Children under five now account for 4.6% of EHCPs issued, which is an increase of more than 25% on 2023’s figures, and a huge increase from when the EHCP first came in under the new SEND Code of Practice a decade ago. Many of these new EHCP holders will have SLCN, more so than in older groups.

This means as the 2020s turn into the 2030s, even accounting for some drop-off as a percentage of those learners with SLCN find that they no longer need support, more students with EHCPs progressing from early years settings to primary and then secondary ones. So there’s set to be more learners with an existing EHCP coming into every KS1 and KS2 teacher’s classroom every September, in addition to the students who seek out diagnosis and apply formally for an EHCP along the way.

That’s a lot more students – and a lot more to ask from teachers.

What about students without an EHCP?

As the number of ECHPs issued has increased, so has the amount of rejected EHCP applications: 33,141 in total, an increase of almost 8,000 in 2023.

Many of these learners, if they are unsuccessful in an appeal, will join the large body of learners in the school system who are in receipt of SEND support without an EHCP in place. Across state-funded nursery, primary, secondary and special schools, non-maintained special schools, PRUs and independent schools, there are around 1.2 million students, whose provision is largely sourced from the school’s notional SEN budget, without the top-up funding from the Local Authority that comes with an EHCP. As EHCP applications increase – and as rejections increase in line – notional SEN budgets will be increasingly stretched, even if they do shift alongside National Funding Formula values.

There’s another demographic of learners without EHCPs: those who are waiting for an EHCP to be delivered. As of the most recent data, there are significant delays in EHCP delivery. A large number of councils are struggling to meet the statutory 20-week deadline for issuing these plans: eight UK councils met the deadline for issuing a plan in fewer than 5% of cases last year.

What does an increase on this scale mean for schools?

Between students with EHCPs, those waiting on EHCPs, and those who need SEND support but are currently without an EHCP, staffrooms are likely to become increasingly tense spaces as we move from 2024 into 2025. We know that any increase is going to compromise existing budgets and have a large negative impact on teacher time and attention, but an increase on this scale is something most schools aren’t prepared for.

Reading support professionals are expensive. Human readers – reading assistants who deliver direct reading support to learners – come with a hefty price tag. On average, they command around £13 an hour, and can be salaried up to £37,000 annually. Many schools are currently struggling to find enough human readers to deal with current levels of demand, let alone an increase.

Tech is expensive. Reading support technologies often come with a hefty price tag, especially when they require individual units to be rolled out per learner.

So is administration. More EHCPs likely means that administration costs are set to increase, too – the more students who need support, the more administrative duties there are in relation to that, especially when it comes to finances, sourcing and exam provision. This means new roles need to be created in schools – compromising yet another area of an increasingly tight budget: recruitment.

The impact of an increase in EHCPs on classroom teachers

It’s important to remember that classroom teachers are the demographic to whom much of the extra labour will fall: these new learner needs must be fulfilled every lesson, every day, and every week of term.

• Whole-class focus gets lost, and time budgets get squeezed. When a teacher concentrates on students who require additional support, and they’re called on multiple times to help them decode the words on the page or create an alternative paper copy of the text, that’s a lot of whole-class time compromised, often at the expense of important plenary sessions and learning recaps.
  
  
• One support system never fits all. It’s rare that every learner is at the same level, and needs the same kind of support. That means educators now need to manage multiple different support systems like reading pens, eReaders, AI LLMs, laptop software, and human support in every single lesson.
  
  
• Stress levels skyrocket, and work-life balance is compromised. We know that we ask a lot of teachers in terms of stress, and navigating a difficult work-life balance. Adding in the stress of juggling multiple provision systems, spiralling time debt and missed learning opportunities means that a lot of educators simply can’t find a way.
  
  
• Somewhere between the time constraints, the increase in demand, and the pressure of knowing there are students in the classroom with needs that teachers don’t have the time or the resources to meet properly, teachers say ‘no more’.
  

It’s hugely emotionally demanding to be an educator, and more so when stress levels are high. Teachers are abandoning the profession at a rate we’ve never seen before, citing mental health and workload stresses as reasons. This means the sector loses vital trained professionals, and those recruitment budgets from before become a lot more demanding.

That’s why flexible reading support is the rescue package teachers really need!

Dolphin EasyReader Premium Education Plan is the simplest way that a school can deliver accessible reading to all its students. It makes curriculum resources accessible for all –meaning that whatever their educational needs, with EasyReader Premium on hand, everybody can read with confidence.

It considers the sheer diversity of classroom needs as it delivers a customisable support experience that teachers can manage from the central Education Plan Dashboard. It’s designed to support students with vision impairments, dyslexia, and other reading needs in a bandwidth-friendly, user-led way… without the high costs of new tech.

Using EasyReader Premium, students can customise their reading experience to the level that they need, experiencing the words on the page in a variety of colours, fonts, and via clear, customisable text-to-speech. They can also download as many high-quality voices as they require, and synchronise reading preferences and libraries across devices.

What’s inside an EasyReader Premium Education Plan?

With EasyReader Premium, students gain access to books, educational texts and their own classroom materials in an accessible, customisable and comfortable way. This includes a direct connection to 1.1 million education titles in various accessible formats via RNIB Bookshare, which is free to all educational institutions that are currently directly supporting print-disabled learners, i.e. those with visual impairments, learning disabilities and physical disabilities.

RNIB Bookshare can also support learners across the educational landscape, too, with titles ranging from those designed for early years students and those developing literacy to students who are learning at a college or university level.

Easy access to texts and these kinds of libraries not only supports students at the point of need, but also frees up a lot of educator bandwidth – teachers no longer have to go and source accessible copies of books, implement coloured overlays or quickly re-type content for their learners, as the ability to make these customisations is always right there, on the student’s screen.

But it’s not just about access to published works. An Education Plan also allows students to import files to EasyReader in several formats. So it makes it simple to access online learning materials: students just sign in via Google Classroom or Microsoft Education for immediate access to the learning materials saved by their class teacher, making reading comfortable and accessible across far more learning formats than just books.

How EasyReader Premium supports teachers to manage an increase in EHCPs

• With EasyReader Premium, teachers can support learners with different types of reading needs using the same easily-managed system. This includes dyslexia, vision impairments, or neurodiversity such as ADHD or autism. The high levels of customisation mean students can read their way, whatever their needs and preferences, and there’s no need for educators to juggle multiple different support platforms.
  
  
• In-class teacher bandwidth demands drop. Using text-to-speech, students can self-support through the majority of reading struggles, with room to change and develop. They can challenge the idea that reading support has to come from an adult, or that they can’t tackle things alone. It offers independence and confidence in their own ability to read.
  
  
• It’s also a powerful tool for inclusion. With EasyReader Premium, a student with SEND can read the same book as their classmate at the same time and never have to feel isolated or excluded. It goes further, too: because students can access their text and notes at the point they left off on any device, whether they’re in class or at home, learning is always accessible – wherever they are, in the exact, accessible format that they’ve chosen.
  
  
• You can use EasyReader Premium on laptops, phones and tablets. There’s no need for human readers or tech with a hefty price tag.
  
  
• Whole-setting sign-up and access to the Education Plan Dashboard means that there’s a lot of available data on student reading patterns. Because of this, teachers, SENCos and librarians have direct access to information on the impact that reading support is having on their learners. They can also explore student engagement with reading, and how this is changing over time.
  
  
• Teachers can also be added to the plan so that they can manage their own groups of students. More data and insights for everyone means that it’s easier than ever before to develop an in-depth, accurate picture of reading skills in the learners in your care.
  
• EasyReader Premium creates a vital bridge between classroom learning and homework too. It enables students to use the EasyReader App on home devices, meaning they can access books and teacher-uploaded content even outside the classroom. This ongoing support can help beat any anxieties that might have emerged around learning without teachers or support staff in attendance.
  
  

Whatever their needs - whatever they need

While accessibility and inclusion are the goal, accessibility and inclusion will mean something different to every learner: a student with dyslexia may have different needs compared to a student who is visually impaired, or a student who has ADHD, and even to another student with dyslexia. It’s vitally important that the support solutions schools are turning to can adapt to those variations and serve those with EHCPs with support that fits and grows with them.

With EasyReader Premium reliable, adaptable support doesn’t have to be at the expense of teacher bandwidth or learner engagement. Students can simply read their way – and teachers can get back to whole-class activities and re-align their support workload, to focus on the learners who need the most help.

Join us on the reading journey!

If you are wondering what else Dolphin EasyReader Premium can do, and how it might support the increase in EHCPs and SEND reading provision in your setting, head to the EasyReader Premium page to discover more, and find out why it’s the SENCo’s secret weapon.

Educators can also arrange a trial of EasyReader Premium Education Plan, to explore how customisable reading support can transform learning in their setting.