The state of additional support needs and services in English schools

This blog is the second of a two-part series considering the challenges impacting schools as they return in September 2025.

Schools have been playing an important role in supporting pupils and staff in the wake of the pandemic and amid pressures on households and public services during the recent cost-of-living crisis.

As schools return this September, how have pupil needs changed, how are teachers being supported, and how are senior leaders responding?

This blog explores these questions by drawing on responses from over 350 senior leaders and 800 classroom teachers to NFER’s June 2025 Teacher Voice Omnibus Survey.

Pressing support needs in schools

Schools continue to face high levels of additional needs among pupils, albeit with slight improvements since 2022/23

Figure 1 presents senior leaders’ estimates for the share of pupils in their schools requiring additional support (over and above what is covered by pupil premium, special educational needs (SEN) funding and Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans) across a number of areas. It shows that levels of additional pupil needs remain high: senior leaders estimate that nearly a quarter of pupils need extra support for general wellbeing, mental health and to access learning, social and extracurricular activities. Improvements compared to 2022/23 and 2023/24 remain small.

This is despite it being five years on from the Covid-19 pandemic, inflationary pressures on families easing since the peak of the cost-of-living crisis, and schools having taken steps to help meet additional needs.

Figure 1: Proportion of pupils in schools requiring additional support as reported by senior leaders in 2022/23 to 2024/25, by phase

 
Source: NFER Teacher Voice Omnibus Surveys. The minimum number of responses given to an individual item in the 2024/25 survey was 129.

Access to support is uneven among teachers, highlighting disparities across the system

We asked teachers to what extent they accessed the support they needed in their current roles from a range of external services in 2024/25. In general, teachers reported receiving low levels of support across the five types of support services in Figure 2.

Indeed, at least seven in 10 teachers reported they received less than a good level of support across the support services presented (except for secondary teachers accessing social/welfare services, where slightly fewer indicated this).

Figure 2 Teachers' reported level of access to different types of support in 2024/25, by phase

 
Source: NFER Teacher Voice Omnibus Survey. The figure does not include respondents who selected ‘Not applicable’ or ‘Don't know’. The minimum number of responses given to an individual item in the 2024/25 survey was 155.

Our findings also point to differences in the extent to which teachers feel they are supported across both phases of the education system. In general, more primary teachers in Figure 2 report accessing at least a little support (as opposed to not being able to access any support) compared to secondary teachers.

This is evidenced by the following patterns: 

• Primary teachers were less likely than secondary teachers to report not getting any access to support from four services: social/welfare services (six percentage points less), local authority education services (10 percentage points), physical health services (one percentage point) and external expertise in Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) (10 percentage points).
  
  
• Primary teachers were more likely than secondary teachers to report very little support from services: social/welfare services (13 percentage points more), local authority education services (three percentage points), physical health services (six percentage points), external SEND expertise (nine percentage points) and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS)/mental health services (11 percentage points).

In contrast, secondary rather than primary teachers were more likely to report at least a good amount of support across the different types of services, although this represented a minority view across both phases. More generally, it would be worth examining why primary and secondary teachers feel differently about the support they receive. This, in turn, raises questions about how pupils with longer-term needs are supported as they transition through the school system.

Teachers’ access to most types of support in 2024/2025 was comparable across academies and local authority-maintained schools, with one key exception: teachers in local authority-maintained schools were more likely to report receiving support from local authority education services than their academy counterparts.

Mental health services for pupils are reported as widely inaccessible

Teachers reported particularly low access to mental health services for pupils. As seen in Figure 2, over half of classroom teachers at primary (67 per cent) and secondary (55 per cent) – more than for any other service – reported getting little or no help from the CAMHS/mental health services.

While there is variation across schools, with many children in need of mental health support in the wake of the pandemic, these findings reflect a concerning gap in specialised support for pupils facing mental health difficulties.

However, there are green shoots compared to previous years, particularly for secondary schools. In 2024/25, as Figure 3 shows, secondary teachers were nine percentage points more likely to report receiving a good amount of support or all the support they needed from CAMHS/mental health services as compared to 2022/23 and 2023/24, at 24 per cent.

This is part of a broader trend across support areas in Figure 3, where secondary school teachers are more likely than before to report receiving a good amount of support or all the support they need. This is different for primary school teachers, where more teachers are now reporting receiving at least a good amount of support from different services compared to last year, but levels remain lower than in 2022/23.

Figure 3 Proportions of teachers accessing at least a good amount of support from different services in 2022/23 to 2024/25, by phase

 
Source: NFER Teacher Voice Omnibus Surveys. The minimum number of responses given to an individual item in the 2024/25 survey was 155.

To what extent are schools bringing in external services to plug gaps in support?

Widespread reliance on external services where needs are unmet by the wider support system around schools

We asked senior leaders whether they had recently commissioned a number of external services because these were not available through their local authority or trust. As shown in Figure 4, many senior leaders report commissioning external counselling services to support pupils and teachers in 2024/25.

Four in five secondary senior leaders report commissioning it for pupils, and more than three in five did so for teaching staff. This was lower in primaries where three in five commissioned external counselling for pupils, and half of them for teachers.

Figure 4 Proportion of senior leaders in 2024/25 who reported commissioning or contracting services unavailable through their local authority or trust, by phase

 
Source: NFER Teacher Voice Omnibus Survey. The minimum number of responses given to individual items was 89 among primary senior leaders in academies, 90 among secondary senior leaders in academies, 123 among primary senior leaders in local authority-maintained schools and 36 among secondary senior leaders in local authority-maintained schools.

Many primary schools only started commissioning counselling services in 2024/25

Figure 5 presents when schools reported first beginning to commission or contract these external services. It shows the practice is more established in secondaries than in primaries. For example, 30 per cent of primary senior leaders reported commissioning counselling support for pupils within the last year. In contrast, comparable or even higher proportions of secondary leaders were already doing this five years ago.

Nevertheless, it is uncertain whether schools will be able to absorb the costs of these services going forward. As highlighted in the first blog of this series, two-thirds of the senior leaders surveyed are expecting to have an in-year budget deficit in 2025/26. For many, cuts to staffing, provision and enrichment activities are on the horizon.    

Figure 5 Proportion of senior leaders reporting in 2024/25 when they first commissioned or contracted services unavailable through their local authority or trust, by phase

 
Source: NFER Teacher Voice Omnibus Survey. The minimum number of responses given to an individual item was 55.

Schools under pressure to fill gaps in pupil support

As schools return this September, they continue to face a demanding context in supporting pupils and staff. Although there are some signs of improvement with schools reporting having slightly lower proportions of pupils with additional support needs, progress is limited. In addition, there is still a gap between what support teachers feel is required and the support services available.

While schools appear to be commissioning external services to fill these gaps, this may not be sustainable in the longer term as financial pressures on school budgets and wider public services stretch resources further.  

The previous blog in this two-part series further explores the challenges faced by schools as they return in September 2025 by investigating school budgets and the demographic decline in pupil numbers.