The SEN crisis is not just an EA problem: it is built into the structure of our school system…

Northern Ireland argues about special educational needs as a problem of delivery. The first question is where in the school system the need is concentrated, and its selective structure has already decided that before any reform has begun.

The long-awaited reform of special educational needs (SEN) in Northern Ireland is now being pursued from several directions at once. In February, the Education Minister, Paul Givan, wrote to every school leader, requiring all mainstream schools the Education Authority (EA) considers suitable to establish specialist provision, in response to a projected shortfall of around 400 places for 2026/27. The Authority has set out its Enhanced Support Model, which moves away from individual classroom-assistant support towards what it calls greater flexibility for schools, on the stated view that one-to-one assistance is not the right answer for every pupil. Statementing is moving online, inspection is to be placed on a statutory footing, and behind all of it sits the number the Authority uses to justify the urgency: on current trends, its own briefing projects the SEN budget rising to between £991m and £1.07bn by 2030/31. Each of these answers the same question: how to deliver SEN support more cheaply, more quickly, and more flexibly. None of them asks a more basic question, which is why the need they are delivering against is distributed across the school system as unevenly as it is.

That distribution is the argument of this article. Pupils with SEN are not spread evenly across post-primary education; they are concentrated in the non-grammar sector, which also carries most of the system’s social disadvantage. A reform programme that treats SEN as a delivery problem, to be solved by faster statements and more flexible support, can raise the floor without touching the structure that decides where the burden will fall. Academic selection is part of that structure. It is not the whole explanation for the crisis, but it is one mechanism through which need and disadvantage are sorted into the same half of the system, and no reform that leaves it unexamined can do more than manage the result.

Where the need actually lies

The headline figure is familiar. In 2024/25, the Department of Education (DE) recorded 19.8% of pupils, around one in five, as having some form of SEN, 8.3% of them with a statutory statement. What the headline conceals is the split beneath it. The most detailed published breakdown by school type, O’Connor and colleagues’ analysis of the enrolment census at Ulster University, shows that in non-grammar secondary schools, well over a fifth of pupils are on the SEN register and close to eight per cent hold a statement, against roughly six and two per cent in grammar schools. The gap has held across more than a decade and has widened at the statemented end. Grammar schools are not free of SEN, and their statemented numbers have been rising, but the weight of need rests on one half of the post-primary system. If anything, the recorded figures understate the imbalance, since identification thresholds tend to rise where difficulty is common: a pupil with a given level of need is less likely to be picked up in a school where many peers struggle than in one where few do.

The deprivation that accompanies it

The same sector carries most of the disadvantage. The Department’s 2024/25 examination-performance report records free-school-meal entitlement (FSME) at 30.8% in non-grammar schools against 11.3% in grammar schools, and notes that 78.4% of the Year 12 FSME pupils were taught in the non-grammar sector. Educational need and social need are not separate problems arriving at separate places. They are concentrated together, in the same schools and often in the same children, and that concentration is the fact that the reform programme does not engage.

Why distribution governs provision

The distribution matters because the quality of SEN provision depends on the very things that disadvantage erodes: manageable class sizes, strong pastoral and specialist staffing, parents with the time and confidence to advocate, stable attendance, and schools that are not themselves in permanent financial crisis. Where need and deprivation accumulate together, each of those supports is under more strain than it would be elsewhere. A reform written as though every school begins from the same position will not land as though it does. The Minister’s requirement reaches only those schools the Authority “considers suitable”, a filter that raises the obvious question of which schools are judged suitable and which are passed over; at present, only around a quarter of mainstream schools host specialist provision, and the two post-primary schools the Authority has held up as exemplars are both non-grammar. The Enhanced Support Model points in the same direction: devolving discretion over classroom support to schools places the most weight on schools already carrying the greatest need with the least slack. The Children’s Law Centre and the main teaching unions have read the move as a transfer of statutory responsibility onto schools managing complex needs in unsuitable settings, and have warned that elements of the reform were commenced before the legal framework beneath them was settled. Even that criticism, though, is pitched at capacity and legality rather than distribution; the question of where the need sits goes unasked on both sides of the argument.

Selection as a structural amplifier

Academic selection enters here, and it should be considered with care. Selection sorts children at eleven by measured attainment, and many forms of identified SEN either affect, or are identified through, the same measures of classroom progress on which selection turns; the research on identification finds it both strongly related to attainment and socially patterned (Anders and colleagues; Knight and colleagues). Because attainment at eleven also tracks social background, the transfer process is associated with both need and disadvantage moving in the same direction, into the non-grammar sector. This is not a new observation. Gallagher and Smith’s 2000 review of the selective system concluded that it layered social differentiation on top of ability differentiation, concentrating difficulty in the schools left outside the grammar gate. The claim has to be bounded. Selection is not the sole cause; some clustering of need would occur under any arrangement, and the available evidence cannot show that a non-selective Northern Ireland would distribute SEN evenly. The defensible claim is the narrower one: selection is not the whole explanation for the crisis, but it is part of the architecture within which the crisis is distributed.

England as a comparator

England is the obvious test of that bounded claim, and it cuts both ways. Most of England is comprehensive, yet the House of Commons Library’s local data on special educational needs shows need clustering sharply by area, a pattern researchers have described as a “postcode lottery” in effective support. That England concentrates need without selection at eleven is precisely why the claim made here is bounded rather than monocausal: distribution is a problem in non-selective systems too. The comparison also locates what is distinctive about Northern Ireland. Where England’s clustering follows deprivation and the unevenness of local provision, Northern Ireland adds a formal sorting mechanism at eleven that routes need and disadvantage together through the transfer process, on top of the deprivation gradient it shares with England. Selection does not invent the distribution problem; it sharpens and entrenches it.

Managing the crisis, or addressing it

The reform programme is not wrong about delivery. Statements do take too long, classroom support is not always well matched to need, and the budget trajectory is real. A system can nonetheless be repaired at the level of process, with faster statements, an online portal and more flexible support, and still leave untouched the arrangement that decides where the need it is delivering against will fall. That arrangement is not within the Authority’s reach. It is shaped by the school system into which these children are sorted, and selection is part of how that sorting is done. A reform that makes delivery quicker and more flexible while leaving the distribution in place is managing the crisis, not addressing it. That is not the worst outcome, but it leaves Northern Ireland organising support around a concentration of need it has chosen not to acknowledge.

This is the thirteenth article in a series examining educational governance in Northern Ireland. Previous articles: ‘The Transformation Majority That Doesn’t Count’ (I); ‘It’s Not Just Protestant Schools’ (II); ‘Take Down the Hurdles’ (III); ‘The Irony of Integration’ (IV); ‘Time to Flip the Switch’ (V); ‘Beyond Indoctrination’ (VI); ‘Eight Per Cent After Forty Years’ (VII); ‘Good in Parts’ (VIII); ‘Gone Girls’ (IX); ‘New Wine, Old Wineskins’ (X); ‘Epistle to the Parents: RE Withdrawal’ (XI); ‘After JR87, the question is not how parents withdraw, it is why they need to’ (XII).

Sources: O’Connor, U., Courtney, C., Mulhall, P. and Taggart, L. (2023) ‘The prevalence of special educational needs in Northern Ireland: a comparative analysis’, European Journal of Special Needs Education; Department of Education (2025) Annual Enrolments at Schools and in Funded Pre-School Education in Northern Ireland 2024/25; Department of Education (2026) Year 12 and Year 14 Examination Performance at Post-Primary Schools in Northern Ireland 2024/25; Education Authority (2026) Enhanced Support Model briefing, and BBC News NI, ‘What changes are being planned for SEN support?’, 25 April 2026; BBC News NI, ‘Schools told to set up SEN classes to reduce shortfall’, 25 February 2026; Gallagher, T. and Smith, A. (2000) The Effects of the Selective System of Secondary Education in Northern Ireland; House of Commons Library (2026) Local area data: Special educational needs and disabilities; Anders et al. (2010) and Knight et al. (2024), on the identification of SEN and its association with attainment and social background.