We and our partners are committed to delivering high quality support for all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
You have told us that transparency of the performance of timely statutory needs assessments, quality of education, health and care (EHC) plans and communication with the SEND Casework Team are important to you.
We will therefore update this page on a bi-monthly basis.
The SEN2 data is released every year. Local authorities provide the Department for Education with their data, so it can all be stored in one place.
The data includes information about individuals with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs), and appeals.
It is used to make sure that local authorities are doing their jobs how and when they should be. The data is one year behind, and is published in June with the data from the whole of the year before.
An easy read version of our analysis allows children, young people and their families to see how Swindon performed last year compared to the rest of the country.
The trend shown by this graph is a gentle decrease in the number of statutory assessment requests over the course of 2025.
The average number of monthly assessment requests for 2025 was 72.
This chart shows that the majority of requests for statutory assessment – over half - were made by education settings / schools. Almost a third of statutory assessment requests were made by parents, with the next highest proportion (6%) being a result of mediation or tribunal following a Refusal to Assess decision.
This chart shows again that the majority of NEW requests for statutory assessment (two thirds) were made by education settings. Almost a third were made by parents, and 3% by other professionals. In a minority of cases, the young person referred themselves for a statutory assessment request.
This image shows that during both calendar years, requests for tribunal peaked towards the end of the Summer term (June/July) and were at their least at the beginning and end of the year. Overall, more requests for tribunal were made during 2025 than in 2024.
The majority of requests for tribunal during 2024 were relating to Section I of the EHCP (placement) – almost two thirds. The second largest proportion of requests was relating to sections B, F & I of the EHCP. The minority of requests were regarding a cease to maintain decision (1.16%). Just over 10% of requests were following a refusal to assess decision, with almost 7% of requests relating to a refusal to issue.
During 2025 slightly less requests for tribunal relating solely to Section I of the EHCP were received – made up by an increase in requests for tribunal that related to multiple sections of the EHCP (in most cases including Section I as part of this). The percentage of requests for tribunal following a refusal to assess rose to 18%, and the percentage of requests following a refusal to issue dropped to just 2%. No tribunal requests arose from a case to maintain decision in 2025.
