Children, Education and Skills

Our Children, Education and Skills domain oversees the regulation of data and statistics concerning all stages of education from early years to university and beyond, including statistics on teachers and lecturers, learners, and looked after children.

Education and training, from providing the best start for young people to equipping the workforce, has a profound impact on the society, business and the economy of the countries of the UK. High quality statistics and data to support effective decision making and evaluate policy implementation are crucial.

Our priorities reflect areas of public interest, both in terms of the use of statistics and where there have been recent policy changes.

As a result of COVID-19 and the concerns around the models used to award grades across the four nations this year, we undertook a Review into the approach taken to developing statistical models designed for awarding 2020 exam results. We published our report in March 2021.

We published the report of review of Children and Young People statistics in March 2022. We are working with official statistics producers, users and other bodies with an interest in children and young people statistics to identify how the improvements we have set out can be made. We are also exploring undertaking and publishing research with groups of children and young people to understand their views of official statistics and the value they can bring to them.

We recently carried out a routine assessment of the  Key Stage 4 Performance statistics produced by the Department for Education (DfE). We published our report in July 2022.

We advocate the use of new technologies by producers, such as the Department for Education’s move to the Explore Education Statistics platform and continue to encourage data access through the Secure Research Service. We will further consider what society’s key questions are in this area and support producers in answering them.

Contact our regulators for this domain Emily Carless, Nicky Pearce, Nisha Bunting, and Emma Harrison for more information.

Planned Work

Published Correspondence – Children, Education and Skills domain

Publications – Children, Education and Skills domain