Chart update: percentage of children with a statement

We've updated one of the charts on the Statements page that compares the number of children with a statement in North Yorkshire to those in all other local authorities in England. It includes all types of SEN, not just autism. Because local authorities are all different sizes, the most meaningful way to do this is to calculate the number of statements maintained as a percentage of the total school population in each authority. We have then calculated the lower, median and upper quartiles for all local authorities for comparison. For an explanation of quartiles see here.



North Yorkshire continues to be one of the lowest statementing, most highly delegating local authorities in England, pulling further away from the majority of other local authorities year on year. If North Yorkshire maintained the English average, there would be a total 2596 children with statements, 966 more than there are as of Jan 2011 (1630 statements).

This is because the County gives most of its special educational needs money directly to schools and retains very little centrally to fund statements and assessments. It is entitled to do this, but has provided little by way of evidence that this is an effective way of funding students with SEN- ie in outcome measures.

We can look too at the percentiles. This is a way of ranking North Yorkshire against all other local authorities in England and is given a score out of 100. The local authority that maintains the most statements will have a ranking of 100%, the least 0%:

Percentile rank
2005 9.3%
2006 9.3%
2007 8.7%
2008 7.4%
2009 8.0%
2010 7.3%
2011 7.2%