The Identification Trap Mabina Zinga →

The public sector epidemic financially crippling schools and local authorities may not be what it seems.

They can’t all have special needs.

It is usually said as an accusation. I want to take it seriously as a question, because nobody has yet given a good answer to it. Including me.

One in five children in England now has special educational needs. A number that’s increased year on year since 2016.

But the figure behind every headline about a system in crisis is almost exactly where it sat sixteen years ago. Falling by nearly a third in the six years from 2010 to 2016, then steadily climbing back up ever since.

So, what changed? Did children get better and then worse again? Or is something more complicated happening?

The question we are now left with is not why has the figure gone up, but why did it go down?

21.1% 14.4% 20.8% 2010 2016 2026
Pupils with identified special educational needs, England. Source: Department for Education school census.

What changed is not the number of children with needs. But the number of children who require a legal document to access support.

For eighteen years the share of pupils holding a statement or an education, health and care plan sat almost still at around 2.9%. Through three governments, two recessions and a complete overhaul of the statutory framework, it barely moved. However, now it is at 6.0%.

So, everyone who needs support must now get a label, a declaration in writing confirming their needs, usually after a lengthy process of multiple assessments and meetings.

However, this creates a queuing system that leaves children with the most complex needs waiting in line with everyone else.

This is the identification trap. And I think it explains a great deal. I do not think it explains everything…

The questions

Researched from published data, ruling explanations in or out.

  1. Why are there so many children with SEND?Coming October 2026
  2. How a funding threshold frozen since 2013 built the queue
  3. What a diagnosis is actually for
  4. Where these children were before we counted them
  5. What is rising internationally, and what that rules out
  6. The explanations that turn out to be too small
  7. Four countries, one island: why identification ranges from 11% to 37%
  8. Who gets identified, and who gets excluded: race and intersectionality
  9. Boys, girls, and the attainment flip
  10. What other countries actually do, as opposed to what we imagine
  11. Being in the building is not being included
  12. What I would change

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Who is writing this

I am Mabina Zinga, an inclusion and SEND consultant based in London, where I support schools with their SEND provision.

I occasionally freelance lecture at UCL’s Institute of Education, and before consultancy I taught children with complex needs in special and mainstream schools. I hold an MA in Special and Inclusive Education, a PGCE with QTS, and a BSc in Applied Psychology and Criminology.

I write about systems, not cases. Nothing here draws on any individual school, child, family or local authority I have worked with. Every figure comes from published national or international data and is cited.

Speaking, training and consultancy enquiries: hello@mabinazinga.com