The Children’s Plan: The Children’s Commissioner’s School Census

Read The Children’s Plan: The Children’s Commissioner’s School Census in full.

For the first time as Children’s Commissioner, I have used my statutory powers to ask all schools, and colleges, a set of questions. A census in response to what children told me they wanted and needed to attend, engage, attain, and excel. I want to thank every school and college leader who took the time to respond and helped provide this unique national picture of children’s experience of education. Without them it would not have been possible to get, for the first time, such comprehensive proof of how much schools and colleges are doing to support every child, how much they are trying to know and care for their children despite the challenges.

When I became a teacher more than 30 years ago, and later, a headteacher, I saw firsthand the transformative power of great teaching. I was part of the first wave of education reform 20 years ago that brought energy, urgency and a belief that every child could achieve their potential with the right support and ambition. It was exciting.

Those reforms worked. Schools got better, standards rose, and outcomes improved – but not for every child. In that, we failed.

For most children, their educational experience will be radically better than it would have been had successive governments not prioritised reform, investment and ambition in education.

But those reforms did not reach a significant group of children, including some of our most vulnerable. The next great wave of education reform must focus on them: those who face barriers to attending, engaging, attaining, and excelling. Those who find learning hard, or for whom home is not always safe or warm. Those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

It was the pandemic that brought this into sharpest relief.

I was still a school leader, not yet Children’s Commissioner. As I looked around my school, it was impossible to ignore the vital wider role we were playing in children’s lives – far beyond teaching them to read and the best of what has been thought and known. We were keeping children safe. Providing food and beds. Some things that had been perhaps thought implicitly became explicit: even at the height of the pandemic, we kept schools open for vulnerable children because we acknowledged as a society that children seeing professionals who know and care about them every day is a safeguarding intervention. The challenges brought by Covid were new. This wider role was not.

That broader commitment to children’s social, moral, spiritual and cultural development is something I believe sets us apart as a nation. It is a big reason I wanted to become a teacher. I wasn’t just interested in educating, but also in forming, shaping, and developing children. I knew, from my own experience of education, the ability of a great teacher to inspire a child and direct their chosen path in life – and I made it my mission to pay back that great debt in my own career.

From the earliest days of our public education system in England, teachers and schools have recognised this fundamental truth: that their role is not just to teach children and impart knowledge, but to shape them into citizens, full of character, confidence and compassion, to tend to not just their minds but their spirit. Schools carry that mission today. My census confirms this.

That pastoral role has not always been reflected in the public debate about education or the role of schools. But we must double down on it now. Children have asked us to. And leaders have told me, in this census, that they are already are doing so much more, often without the structures and systems to support them. School leaders understand that they have benefitted from the energy, investment and focus of reform, in ways that other services – wider children’s services, early help services, youth services, youth justice services, services for disabled children, mental health services and family support – simply did not. And they too agree we must either turn our energy and investment to rebuilding those services or we must support schools to continue fulfilling some of those roles.

That includes providing more and better support for children with disabilities, special educational needs, or additional learning needs, those living in destitution, those for whom the state is their parent, those who are struggling with their mental or physical health and those who do not attend school regularly or are excluded. For most of those children, we should redouble our efforts to make sure they are in the best schools, with the best teachers. They do not require something different when it comes to pedagogy. That is the best way help a child to engage and attain, especially for children with SEND. But for that to be the case, you have to be in school. And you have to have stability and care at home.

For some of these children, brilliant teaching – and a brilliant teacher – is foundational, but it’s not enough on its own. They need far more. Good teaching alone can’t keep children safe at home, can’t mitigate the impact of living in temporary accommodation, can’t make living with domestic abuse easier. And without that additional support, the gap between them and their peers will continue to grow. Their challenges lie not only in the classroom but beyond it, from housing and health challenges to having a parent in prison, bereavement, needing a social worker, or being at risk of criminal or sexual exploitation, or having caring responsibilities.

It is those services outside the classroom which – as evidenced by the findings in this report – are often the key to unlocking effective support for children’s wider needs. They have not benefited from the same rigour, focus, or investment as schools. And, if we are to smash the glass ceiling on attendance, engagement, attainment and excellence, they must be where we turn our collective energy.

These are not marginal issues. They are barriers that millions of children across the country face every day. Nearly 4 in 10 (37%) of children will need additional support with learning at some point in their education[i], and 25% will need a social worker.[ii] A million children live in destitution[iii] and over a million children miss a day of school a fortnight.[iv]

For too many of them, our response is not yet good enough. My Big Ambition survey found children deeply value their teachers and their education, yet about a third of them told me they didn’t enjoy school.[v] Among teens, this figure rose to over half. But, reassuringly, when it works, children tell me school is a place they trust. A place of safety and of community.

That’s why I used my statutory powers to launch the largest-ever survey of schools and colleges in England for the first time, a census to better understand the challenges that children are bringing into school, how schools support them and what more is needed to make sure every child, everywhere, has what they need to thrive.

Shockingly, much of this data has never been collected before. The findings are powerful.

They show that schools and teachers are stepping up to fill the gaps in wider services and support, doing remarkable work to support children with a wide range of needs, many of which are not formally measured or resourced. The results also reveal that schools are working in a national and regional context that too often fails to acknowledge, let alone support, this work. These efforts by schools are not consistent across the country. Too often, there is insufficient coordination and expertise needed to make it happen.

This report lays out my vision for reform based on what a million children have told me, and now, what school and college leaders have said. It lays out a vision to transform our education system ahead of the Government’s School’s White Paper, to make sure those children who need more than just brilliant teaching, including those children with disabilities or additional needs, can have their ambitions met. As politicians return to Westminster after the summer recess, this is the single biggest issue facing them – families, parents and children are desperate for change.

Our current system focuses on three main routes for support: pupil premium, special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and support for looked-after children. This doesn’t capture the full complexity of children’s lives. Wider needs are too often either unrecognised, ignored, or shoehorned into a SEND system which isn’t designed to provide the right support, where wider needs often manifest as learning needs. No child should be pushed to getting a medical diagnosis for behaviours that are natural responses to the challenges they are facing in their lives. No child should think they are the problem for feeling sad, or different.

I see this squarely as a children’s rights issue. We shouldn’t tell children there is something wrong with them because we can’t support them. Our education system needs a more nuanced understanding of those additional needs and the impact they have both on children’s lives and their ability to succeed. A move away from ‘special’, a term children tell me they find stigmatising, to ‘additional’, because most children will need something extra from the adults in their lives at some point over their childhood. It must be about more support, more easily, more locally, not exceptionalism. We must guarantee that hard-won support will remain, but that we will also do more, for more children, without telling them they are the problem. Offering them ‘can and will’, not ‘can’t and won’t’.

We need an education system that is inclusive by design, where all schools, and all classrooms, are equipped and supported to meet the needs of all children. We need a system that’s built on what children tell us they want: to go to a good school and spend time with their friends. To learn and have fun. To get a great job. To feel safe and happy.

It may not sound groundbreaking – but it cannot be optional. If we believe that these things are the rights of every child, then we must act like it. It must be the case for every child that they can go to their local school, learn and make friends, and have their needs met. And so, every school must be as good as the best, with the professional expertise needed to transform that child’s life at the time and place that they need it. Where they need support to access that school, it must be delivered in their local community. Where they might need to speak to a specialist, that too should be local. Children have told me how important schools are in their lives – trusted, reassuring, the place they want to receive help.

I have seen examples of bold, purposeful thinking that takes the scale of this issue seriously in other countries.

In England, we must go further. Now is the time to change how we think about schools, education and their place in wider society. As the government develops its White Paper, it is essential that all additional needs – as well as special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) – are at the heart of the agenda. The data shows that even in outstanding schools, children with additional needs still face worse outcomes. To close that gap, we must build an education system that works with the realities of children’s lives, not against them. One that is more ambitious about the role of schools.

That is something we have done before – in extended schools and in teams around the school. And something that the best schools are doing today.

Great teaching remains the single most powerful driver of success. Teaching a child to read is the most radical way of changing their life. But, for some children, it must be part of something broader that recognises the pastoral, social, emotional, and moral role that teachers have always played. It means ensuring schools are backed up by strong multi-agency partnerships in their local area, brilliant and resourced children’s services and properly funded specialist staff. It means having inclusion as the foundation of a strong and fair education system. For every child.

Children – and their parents – deserve to feel confident that their school has the professional expertise and resource required to support them well.

This report is a first step in that direction. It gives us a clear picture of what schools are facing – a detailed state of the nation of our education system.

It calls for some significant changes: a new focus on additional needs; more specialist staff in schools; integrated specialist provision; a statutory framework for multi-agency working and greater delivery capacity across children’s services; a unique identifier that makes the state easier to navigate for children, parents and professionals. Ultimately, it calls for a plan to support every child who falls behind developmentally or academically.

Above all, it requires a dedication to the guiding principle behind every successful education reform: that every child has a right to access a brilliant education which unlocks a joyful and successful life, whatever that looks like – with the support to attend, engage, attain, and excel at school. That every child deserves a plan that is ambitious, with the right support and the chance to thrive – no matter their starting point and no matter where they live. If we continue to leave it to chance, to luck, to goodwill, the gap will continue to widen. Postcodes will confirm destinies. Opportunity will stagnate.

The next great education reform starts now. It must have ambition, drive, and the same unshakeable belief that I had as a headteacher: that education can transform lives, so that every child has the chance to attain, excel and achieve their ambitions. We’ve done it for some. Now is the time to do it for all.

[i] Identifying SEND: Final Report on Special Educational Needs & Disabilities and contact with CAMHS, Jo Hutchinson, Dr Johnny Downs & Professor Tamsin Ford (2025). Link

[ii] Estimated cumulative incidence of intervention by children’s social care services to age 18: a whole-of-England administrative data cohort study using the child in need census, Jay et al. (2024). Link

[iii] Destitution in the UK 2023, Joeseph Roundtree Foundation (Accessed August 2025). Link

[iv] Term-time holidays ‘small part’ of attendance woes – Minister, Schools Week (2025). Link

[v] The Big Ambition: Research, Children’s Commissioner for England (2024). Link