Dear Ed,

RE: Transparency of trust-led school system evidence for education White Paper

Thank you for your letter dated 17th May regarding the evidence document The case for a fully trust-led system that was published alongside the recent Schools White Paper.

We fully recognise the need to ensure that the statistical information in this document is presented as fully as possible to support correct interpretation, and to allow others to replicate the figures.

As you referenced in your letter, analysts in the Department for Education have published an additional document containing the data and further methodological details in support of the new analysis presented in the White Paper annex. In addition, we have made some minor changes to the annex itself for clarity.

I welcome the productive conversations that our teams have had on this issue, and we remain committed to publishing high quality statistical information in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Yours sincerely,

Neil McIvor
Chief Statistician and Chief Data Officer