Education Health and Care Plans

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information:

1) The total number of children of typical primary school/secondary school/sixth form/college age (4-18) at either a state-funded mainstream school or a state-funded Special Educational Needs school with either 1) an active Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) with your council, or 2) awaiting the outcome of an EHCP needs assessment from your council,:

Please see the table below:

For those awaiting an EHCP this includes all children and young people at this time who had submitted a request but were awaiting a decision for an assessment, it also includes those where an assessment is in progress but a decision to issue a plan is also still pending.

We are unable to provide figures for 2020-2022 as we did not store data relating to daily caseloads at this time.

We therefore do not hold this information

2) The total number of children of typical primary school/secondary school/sixth form/college age (4-18) that attended either a state-funded mainstream school or a state-funded Special Educational Needs school that either 1) formerly had an active EHCP with your council, or 2) were awaiting the outcome of an EHCP needs assessment from your council, that were permanently deregistered from formal education between the following dates:

– 1st January – 31st December 2020
– 1st January – 31st December 2021
– 1st January – 31st December 2022
– 1st January – 31st December 2023
– 1st January – 31st December 2024
– Please provide the total figure per year, and then break this down into separate figures for ‘children who formerly had an active EHCP’ AND ‘children who were awaiting the outcome of an EHCP needs assessment’

We do not collect or collate information relating to children and young people who held an EHCP or requested an EHCP and were deregistered

Reasons for Deregistration may include:

• Elective Home Education (EHE) – Parents choose to educate their child at home.
• Permanent Exclusion – The pupil is formally removed following disciplinary procedures.
• Medical Reasons – The pupil is certified as unlikely to return to school due to long-term illness.
• Failure to Return – The pupil fails to return after an agreed extended leave and cannot be located.
• Ceased Attendance – The pupil has stopped attending and no longer resides at a reasonable distance.
• Custody or Detention – The pupil is detained for a period of more than four month.

To check just those who are EHE would be over 3000 records to ascertain if they have had a an EHCP and/or applied for one would require at least 2 minutes per record this would be 100 hours for this category alone.

The time required is therefore above the appropriate time limit of 18 hours and disclosure of this information is therefore exempt pursuant to section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.