Dear Ronnie,

As you may be aware, we have been discussing the statistics from the Parental School Admission Survey with statisticians in the Department of Education. The survey gathers information on attitudes to Integrated Education from parents or guardians whose children have gone through the school admission process. Integrated Education brings together children from different religious beliefs and cultures, socioeconomic background and ability in the same school.

The Integrated Education Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 has a pronounced emphasis on the identification, assessment, monitoring and measurement of parental demand for Integrated Education. The Act establishes parental demand as a core statutory construct and values high-quality and transparent data to demonstrate legislative compliance.

Given the Act’s focus on data, and the public profile and value of statistics on Integrated Education, we consider that there is a strong case for publishing statistics on demand for Integrated Education as official statistics. Producing the statistics in line with the standards of the Code of Practice for Statistics would help demonstrate best practice and support the Department in meeting its statutory duties.

To fully meet the Act’s requirements, the Department may also need to draw on a broader set of measures that capture both societal demand and behavioural demand within the current system.

We would welcome continued engagement on publishing the statistics under the Code of Practice framework.

I am copying this letter to Philip Wales, Chief Executive and Registrar General at the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency and Pauline Donnan, Principal Statistician at the Department of Education.

Yours sincerely,

Ed Humpherson
Director General for OSR