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Notes -
Highly anecdotal but my mom is a now-retired teacher who did about 40 years of special ed across UK/New Zealand/Australia, generally focusing on a band between say the 5th-percentile to the 15th-percentile. She had a very clear seat to see the diagnostic drift of stuff like that, considering to her eyes the 'intellectual level' of the kids stayed consistent but the amount of formal diagnoses absolutely exploded between the start of her career and the end of it.
There were always kids given actual diagnoses to begin but they tended to be the ones on the absolute bottom end of the scale who were essentially incapable of functioning in society at all. Over time, due to a mixture of increasing availability of psychologists, shifts in the diagnostic criteria and frankly shifts in how public funds are allocated towards special education students the diagnoses proliferated. What used to be a fairly vibe-driven system of 'kid seems unintelligent, gets funneled into my mom's classes' 40 years ago became 'Kids with diagnoses for XYZ get funneled to that class, kids who seem unproductive get diagnosed, sent into my mom's classes'
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