½¿É«µ¼º½

The special educational needs and disability (SEND) tribunal in England was launched in 1994 to hear appeals from parents. Statements of SEN were replaced with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) by the . The SEND reforms were specifically designed to make the support system less adversarial (MoJ, 2018), as appeals to the tribunal incur significant costs in terms of time, emotional wellbeing, parent–professional relationships and finance as set out in 2025 by the .

Conversely, the latest data from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and Department for Education (DfE) depict that the number of appeals registered to the tribunal have increased by a factor of eight in the past decade, from 3,147 in 2014/15 to 25,002 in 2024/25, and by an unprecedented 83 per cent in the past 24 months (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Registered Appeals to the SEND tribunal

Source: Gov.UK Tribunals statistics quarterly: July to September 2025: SEND Tribunal Tables 2024 to 2025

Figure 1 illustrates the steep rise from 1995 to 2025 reflecting growing pressure on the system.

After 20 years, a was undertaken to assess how well the arrangements for SEND disagreement resolution were working.ÌýOne of the outcomes of the review suggested that the appeal rate should be amended. The extended age range was modified in the Children and Families Act from 19 to 25 years, thereby altering the denominator to potentially underreport the rate of appeal. Previously, the rate of appeal was calculated by the number of appeals registered to the SEND tribunal per year and displayed as a rate per 10,000 of the school population.

A new English appeal rate was approved based on the number of appealable decisions, which looks at the rate based on the eligible opportunities to appeal rather than age (MoJ, 2018). The effect of the new appeal rate was to reduce the metric from 24.7 to 3.2. (see table 1). This decline in the appeals system of measurement has been described as ‘spectacularly reasonable’, as it has attempted to normalise comparisons rather than use two separate data points: pre-16 and post-16 (Marsh, 2022).

Table 1: UK Tribunal appeals comparing 2014 and 2024

Sources: Gov.UK (2025) Education, health and care plans. Additional supporting files SEND Tribunals and appeal rate 2014-2024.

NI Department of Justice (2025) NICTA annual report and accounts 2024-25

Scottish Tribunals Annual Report (2025)

The Education Tribunal for Wales (2025)

Table 1 also shows the extraordinary increase in the number of appeals over the past decade in both England and Northern Ireland. Scotland has also seen an upturn in appeals but at a much lower rate of 3.1 appeals per 10,000, whereas the appeal rate in Wales has been relatively even.

‘There are significant regional differences in the appeal rate … supporting the finding that there is a significant difference in appeal rates between areas of high and low social deprivation.’

However, there still remains a good correlation between appeals per 10,000 and the new appeal rate, but with some notable outliers (see figure 2). Furthermore, there are significant regional differences in the appeal rate, with the south-east region having an appeal rate of 4.3 per cent compared to 2.0 per cent in the north-west (see figure 3), supporting the finding that there is a significant difference in appeal rates between areas of high and low social deprivation (Marsh, 2022).

Figure 2: Appeals per 10,000 against appeal rate 2024

Source: Gov.UK (2025) Education, health and care plans. Additional supporting files SEND Tribunals and appeal rate 2014-2024.

Local Authority appeal rates for the calendar year 2025 will be published in June 2026 by the DfE.

Figure 3: Appeal rates to the SEND Tribunal by English region 2024

Source: Gov.UK (2025) Education, health and care plans. Additional supporting files SEND Tribunals and appeal rate 2014-2024.

The Government’s open consultation entitled was published in February 2026 alongside the White Paper: The closes on 18 May 2026 and proposes that the tribunal should remain as a backstop and as a last resort. The Children’s Commissioner has similarly announced a which also includes suggested key changes to structural and resource-related barriers to effective support.

The consultation also advocates that greater efforts are needed to prevent cases from escalating to tribunal by prioritising good partnership working between parents and carers with effective mediation in the resolution of disagreements. The challenge for the next decade is how to move the goalposts to and long-term .

This blog post is linked to previous ½¿É«µ¼º½ Blog posts about EHCPs and high needs funding.

References

Marsh, A. J. (2022). Special educational needs and disability tribunals in England 1994–2019. Research Papers in Education, 37(6), 797–821.

Ministry of Justice [MoJ]. (2018). Response to consultation on changes to the rate of appeal to the special educational needs and disability (SEND) tribunal.