SEND demand and school absence
EHC plans maintained by Portsmouth are up 73% in seven years. Severe absence — missing at least half of school — has more than doubled since 2018/19 and is still rising. Portsmouth suspends pupils at around half again the England rate.
SEND is raised persistently by parents and appears in the council's own budget documents as a named pressure, but it receives far less public and media attention than the more visible environmental issues.
2,616 children and young people hold an EHC plan maintained by Portsmouth. 934 pupils were severely absent in 2024/25. 4,650 suspensions were issued in a single year. These are large numbers against a school population of about 29,600.
Severe absence has risen every year since 2018/19, from 1.69% to 3.55%, and the gap to England has widened. Suspensions have risen from 6.95 to 16.58 per 100 pupils since 2015/16. EHC plan numbers are accelerating. The one improving measure is EHCP timeliness, recovering from 1.6% to 42.9%.
Just over a third of Portsmouth pupils — 760 of 2,157 — left school in 2024/25 with a grade 5 or above in both English and maths. Nationally it is 45.4%. Southampton, the closest comparable city, manages 38.9%.
DfE key stage 4 performance, 2024/25 · Portsmouth state-funded schools
Grade 5+ in English and maths
Portsmouth is below Southampton in every year on record.
Attainment 8 score
The average pupil's best eight GCSE results, scored out of 90.
Portsmouth trails England on every GCSE measure, and has done for the whole published period. But it also trails Southampton — a city with a very similar population profile — by 3.7 percentage points on the strong-pass measure. That second gap is the more useful one, because it is not explained away by Portsmouth being poorer or more urban than the national average.
Severe absence — missing half of school or more
Rising every year in all three areas. Portsmouth is highest.
Pupils holding an EHC plan
Portsmouth was lowest of the three local areas until this year.
Persistent absence is falling everywhere as the post-pandemic peak recedes. Severe absence is not: it has risen every single year in all three areas, and Portsmouth is highest of the three. Portsmouth's severe absence has more than doubled since 2018/19, from 1.69% to 3.55%.
One Portsmouth pupil in fourteen now has an EHC plan — 7.17%, up from 3.64% in 2018/19. Against its neighbours the pattern is not the one usually assumed: Portsmouth had the LOWEST rate of the three local areas from 2021/22 to 2024/25, below both Southampton and Hampshire, and only overtook Southampton in 2025/26. Hampshire is now highest at 7.37%.
Portsmouth's rate rose 1.35 percentage points in a single year, from 5.82% to 7.17% — a bigger one-year jump than Southampton (+0.50) or Hampshire (+0.96). That is consistent with the assessment backlog clearing rather than with need suddenly appearing: timeliness collapsed to 1.6% in 2023 and recovered to 42.9% by 2025, and plans delayed out of one year land in the next. It is consistent with, not proof of — DfE publishes no explanation.
Hampshire County Council is included because it is the other education authority Portsmouth families move between, and because it would matter more if reorganisation proceeds: the March 2026 decision — withdrawn on 7 September 2026 and now under government review — would have merged Portsmouth into a South East unitary alongside Fareham, Gosport and Havant, all currently Hampshire.
The 2026 SEND reforms — has Portsmouth published a plan?
No plan responding to the February 2026 White Paper has been found.
The Schools White Paper "Every Child Achieving and Thriving" was published on 23 February 2026. It shifts SEND support towards inclusion in mainstream settings, introduces a four-tier model (universal, targeted, targeted plus, specialist), and requires settings to create digital Individual Support Plans for children with identified SEND.
Local authorities are required to sign a written agreement with government to prioritise increasing SEND places in mainstream schools, including reducing how far children with SEND travel to school and ensuring every child who needs an Inclusion Base place can get one. Portsmouth's local area inclusion arrangement is to be known as an Inclusion Hub.
No Portsmouth plan responding to the February 2026 White Paper has been identified. The most recent SEND strategy published on the council's own site dates from 2020, and the Special Provision and Alternative Provision Place Strategy ran 2019-2024 and has now expired without a published successor being located.
Portsmouth is carrying 2,121 pupils with EHC plans on school rolls, a rate that jumped more in the last year than either neighbour, and an EHC plan timeliness rate of 42.9% — below the England average. The reforms change what the council is obliged to provide and where. A published plan is how residents and schools find out what is intended.
How this was checked, and its limits
This is an absence of evidence from a public search, not proof that no work is under way. Planning may be in progress, or held in committee papers not surfaced by search. If Portsmouth has published a plan, this entry should be corrected.
What is not measured
Emotionally based school avoidance. There is no official EBSA statistic. Emotionally based school avoidance is not a DfE absence category, is not recorded in the school census, and no national or Portsmouth-level count exists. Absence codes capture whether a pupil was absent and whether it was authorised — not why. The nearest measured proxy is severe absence, shown above, and it is only a proxy: it includes children absent for reasons that have nothing to do with anxiety. Any figure presented elsewhere as "the number of EBSA children" in Portsmouth is an estimate, and should be treated as one.
NEET comparator. A Southampton comparator for 16-17 NEET is not included. That series is published by DfE as a local-authority release but is not exposed through the statistics API used for the other measures on this page, and no figure is shown here that has not been retrieved from the primary source.
Sources and how these were derived
Rates are the published EHCP headcount divided by the published total pupil headcount for the same geography, year and school-type total. DfE publishes both figures; the division is ours.
What the EHC plans are for
Correct as of January 2026 school census, published 25 June 2026Portsmouth's EHC plans are not shaped like Southampton's. Speech, language and communication is the largest single need here at 29.2%, against 21.5% in Southampton. Autism is the largest in Southampton at 38.3%, against 26.0% here. Social, emotional and mental health is 24.6% in Portsmouth and 14.6% in Southampton — two-thirds higher.
A caseload total tells a council how many plans to administer. The mix tells it what to commission. Three needs account for four in five Portsmouth plans, and the two where Portsmouth most exceeds Southampton — speech and language, and social/emotional/mental health — are the two most dependent on therapy and specialist staffing rather than physical places.
How primary need is recorded, and what is not published here
Primary need records the main reason a plan was issued, not the only need a child has. A child with autism and significant speech and language needs is counted once, under whichever was recorded as primary. Differences between authorities can therefore reflect assessment and recording practice as well as underlying population. This is a well-documented limitation of the measure and no causal reading should be taken from it.
Requests for assessment, refusals to assess, mediation and tribunal appeals are published by DfE in the separate Education, health and care plans release, which is not exposed through the statistics API used here. Those figures are therefore not shown, rather than being estimated. EHC plan timeliness, which IS held on this site, comes from that release and is shown above.
Percentages are each need as a share of that authority's EHCP pupils on a school roll. The seven smallest needs are not charted, to keep the chart readable; they are included in the totals.
The SEND funding position — and why it is not simple
Portsmouth holds a Dedicated Schools Grant surplus where most authorities hold a deficit. That is unusual, and it is not self-evidently good news.
The absence of a "DSG Adjustment Account" in Portsmouth's unusable reserves independently corroborates the surplus — that negative reserve is what every deficit authority is required to carry, and Portsmouth does not have one.
What the money bought, against its neighbours
A grant balance only means something next to the outcomes it was supposed to fund.
| Measure | Portsmouth | Southampton | Hampshire | Period |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Severe absence (missing half of school or more) | 3.55% | 3.36% | 2.44% | 2024/25 |
| Persistent absence | 19.74% | 21.40% | 15.77% | 2024/25 |
| Pupils holding an EHC plan | 7.17% | 6.72% | 7.37% | Jan 2026 |
| EHC plans issued within the 20-week deadline | 42.9% | Not retrieved | Not retrieved | 2025 |
Reading one: the money was managed well
- •Portsmouth avoided the accumulated deficit that engulfed most authorities, so it would enter any reorganisation without a liability its partners may carry.
- •Its EHCP rate has risen sharply to 7.17%, above Southampton, which is consistent with need being identified and met.
- •Timeliness recovered from 1.6% in 2023 to 42.9% in 2025, close to the England average, which is consistent with a backlog being cleared rather than ignored.
- •Persistent absence is lower than Southampton's.
Reading two: the money went unspent while need went unmet
- •Portsmouth held the LOWEST EHCP rate of the three authorities from 2021/22 to 2024/25 — below both Southampton and Hampshire — in the same years it was carrying an £11m surplus. A surplus alongside comparatively few plans is what under-identification would also look like.
- •Severe absence is the highest of the three and has risen every single year, from 1.69% to 3.55%. Severe absence is the nearest measured proxy for unmet need, including emotionally based school avoidance.
- •EHC plan timeliness collapsed to 1.6% in 2023 and remains below the England average. Children waiting for a plan are children not receiving the provision the grant funds.
- •A surplus is an accounting outcome, not a service outcome. Money not spent on high needs is money that did not reach a child in that year.
Both readings are consistent with the published data and this site does not choose between them, because nothing published resolves it. What would resolve it is the council's own account of why the high needs block was underspent in those years — which is not published, and is a fair question for a councillor or MP to ask.
The DSG override ends 31 March 2028. What happens to Portsmouth's position after that is unsettled.
A statutory override currently keeps DSG deficits off councils' main revenue budgets. It ends on 31 March 2028 under Regulation 30L of the Local Authorities (Capital Finance and Accounting) (England) Regulations 2003. Government has confirmed that in-year deficits from April 2028 become its responsibility, but has made no commitment to fund accumulated deficits existing at that date.
Under the March 2026 reorganisation decision, Portsmouth City Council would have been abolished on 1 April 2028 — the day after the override ends — and its DSG position would have transferred into a new South East unitary alongside those of Fareham, Gosport and Havant. That decision was withdrawn on 7 September 2026 and the programme is under government review, so the council continues for now. Portsmouth is budgeting its first deficit in 2026/27.
Whether accumulated DSG positions would be netted, written off or carried into any successor authority is not published. For a city that has been in surplus, that remains a material question if reorganisation returns.
What is not compared here, and one correction
Southampton's and Hampshire's DSG balances are not compared here. DSG reserve positions are published in each authority's statement of accounts and Section 251 outturn rather than in any central dataset, and neither was retrieved for this page. Requests for both have been made. Until they are answered, Portsmouth's surplus is stated without a like-for-like local comparison, rather than against an estimate.
The DfE Safety Valve intervention programme, which this site previously cited, closed on 1 April 2026 and was replaced by the high needs stability grant. Membership of it is therefore no longer a current indicator of anything, and is not used here.
A persistent gap, not a widening one
Portsmouth's Attainment 8 score has sat consistently below England for the whole published period — 39.5 against 46.0 in 2024/25. On the headline "grade 5 or above in English and maths" measure the gap is wider still: 35.2% against 45.4%.
The 2019/20 and 2020/21 years used centre- and teacher-assessed grades rather than exams and are not comparable with the years either side. Progress 8 is not published for 2024/25 because that cohort's KS2 baseline tests were cancelled in 2020.
The gap is ordinary — the starting point isn't
Portsmouth's disadvantage gap (15.8 Attainment 8 points in 2024/25) is close to England's (15.5) — but that similarity hides the real problem. Disadvantaged pupils in Portsmouth score 29.8 against 34.9 for disadvantaged pupils nationally. The gap is ordinary; the starting point is not.
Attainment 8, 2024/25. Gap figures are the arithmetic difference between two DfE-published values, not a DfE-published statistic. DfE's own "disadvantage gap index" is published for England only, not by local authority.
Severe absence is still climbing
Persistent absence is falling back from its post-pandemic peak, but severe absence — missing at least half of school — is still rising. 3.55% of Portsmouth pupils were severely absent in 2024/25, against 2.39% nationally. That is 934 children, up from 418 in 2018/19.
Persistent absence (10%+ of sessions)
Severe absence (50%+ of sessions)
2019/20 is not published on a comparable full-year basis because of COVID closures, so it is omitted rather than interpolated.
Suspends more, excludes less
Portsmouth suspends pupils at around half again the national rate — 16.58 per 100 pupils against 10.88 in 2024/25, or 4,650 suspensions in a single year. Permanent exclusions, by contrast, run BELOW the England rate (0.068 against 0.118). Portsmouth suspends more and excludes less.
2019/20 and 2020/21 are depressed by COVID school closures. Portsmouth recorded 4,650 suspensions and 19 permanent exclusions in 2024/25.
From best in England to almost zero, and back
Portsmouth was one of the best performers in England on getting EHC plans out within the statutory 20 weeks — 96 to 97% for three consecutive years. In 2023 that fell to 1.6%. It has since recovered to 42.9%, just below the England average.
% of new EHC plans issued within the statutory 20 weeks.
Read with caution
This is a very large discontinuity. It is internally consistent in DfE's own data — in 2023, 180 plans took between 20 weeks and a year and 9 took over a year — so it is not a suppression artefact. But no explanation is published alongside it, and none is inferred here. Anyone citing this should check the release's local-authority footnotes first.
EHC plans maintained by Portsmouth
Portsmouth maintained 2,616 EHC plans in January 2026, up 72.9% in seven years. England rose 103.1% over the same period, so Portsmouth's caseload has grown more slowly than the national picture — though it accelerated sharply in 2025 and 2026, which is consistent with the assessment backlog clearing.
The 2026 rise is mostly a tracking problem
The headline "NEET or not known" figure for Portsmouth jumps to 11.53% in 2026 — but measured NEET actually FELL, from 5.97% to 5.48%. The rise is almost entirely in young people the council could not track, which went from 1.75% to 6.05%. Those are different problems and are shown separately here.
16–17 year olds. Splitting the stack matters: the two components are different problems. A young person the council cannot trace may be in education, in work, or genuinely NEET — combining them into one headline obscures which.
Portsmouth City Council, with schools and academy trusts
The 2026 EHC plan timeliness figures, and the DSG position before the March 2028 override ends
Appeal an EHC plan decision to the SEND Tribunal; raise systemic delay with the council and your MP
Raised consistently by parents and SEND campaigners, and named by the council itself as one of its three main budget pressures alongside social care and homelessness.
Public and political discussion indicates what people are raising. It is not evidence that a claim is true.
Verified facts
Full detail — why it matters, who else is involved, what is being done
- •Portsmouth City Council — Statutory duty to assess and issue EHC plans, and to promote school attendance
- •Schools and multi-academy trusts — Day-to-day attendance, behaviour and suspension decisions — most are academies, not council-run
- •Department for Education — The SEND system, the high-needs funding block, and the statutory override ending March 2028
- •No published explanation for the 2023 collapse in EHCP timeliness — anyone citing it should check the DfE release's local-authority footnotes first.
- •DfE publishes its disadvantage gap index for England only, so Portsmouth's gap can only be derived by subtracting two published figures.
- •No sub-city breakdown of absence, suspension or SEND is published.
- •Progress 8 is not published for 2024/25 because that cohort's KS2 baseline was cancelled in 2020.
Sources & methodology (3) · last verified 2026-08-26
- DfE — Education, health and care plans, 2026 — 2026-06-25
- DfE — Pupil absence in schools in England, 2024/25 — 2026-03-26
- DfE — Suspensions and permanent exclusions, 2024/25 — 2026-07-09
What could be done, and what it would cost
Full action plan →UK Facts's own analysis — not Portsmouth City Council or government policy. Each item states what is officially happening, if anything.
Sustained, targeted literacy/numeracy tutoring in the highest-deprivation wards
Not proposed officiallyWhy it might work, and the trade-offs
The Education Endowment Foundation's own evidence base rates structured small-group tutoring among the higher-impact, evidence-backed interventions for closing a disadvantage gap — the case for it rests on that established evidence base, not a Portsmouth-specific study.
Trade-offs. Evidence-based tutoring only works if sustained for years, not as a single-year pilot — a genuine risk is funding being time-limited while the gap it addresses is not.
How we would know it worked. KS4 disadvantage attainment gap in the targeted wards, tracked over multiple years