Evidence of Ethnic Disproportionality in Special Education in an English Population

Differences in the proportion of students identified as having Special Educational Needs (SEN) across different ethnic groups has historically been of concern both in the UK and US. However the absence of student level data has hindered the investigation of the reasons for such disproportionality. This paper presents an analysis of the 2005 Pupil Level Annual School Census for 6.5 million students aged 5-16 in England. Logistic regression analyses were completed to calculate the odds-ratio of having an identified SEN both before and after adjusting for the influence of age, gender and socio-economic disadvantage (poverty). Poverty and gender had stronger associations than ethnicity with the overall prevalence of SEN. However, after controlling for these effects significant over- and under-representation of different minority ethnic groups relative to White British students remained. The nature and degree of these disproportionalities varied across category of SEN and minority ethnic group and were not restricted to judgmental categories of SEN.The final, definitive version of this paper has been published in The Journal of Special Education 43(3), November 2009 by SAGE Publications Ltd., All rights reserved. © 2009 Hammill Institute on Disabilities