Executive Summary Introduction to the review Official statistics produced by governments should uphold the highest standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in order to serve the public good. In 2017 we championed the Reproducible Analytical Pipeline (RAP), a new way of producing official statistics developed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the […]
Learning lessons from the approach to developing models for awarding grades in the UK in 2020 Executive Summary Purpose of this report In March 2020 the ministers with responsibility for education in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland announced the closure of schools as part of the UK’s response to the coronavirus outbreak. Further government […]
Executive Summary This report sets out the findings from our review of statistical leadership. It looks at how statistical leadership can be strengthened across government. Strong statistical leadership is essential to ensuring statistics serve the public good. Many decisions draw on statistics published by governments across the UK. Successful implementation of government policies can be […]
This assessment report was produced during the COVID-19 pandemic which has seen dramatic shocks to the labour market and placed increased pressure on the welfare system. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has continued to produce its statistics despite significant resource pressures, and we highlight the impact of COVID-19 on these statistics where relevant […]
In 2020, we fully assessed the NHS Business Service Authority’s (NHSBSA) Prescription Cost Analysis (PCA): England statistics against the Code of Practice for Statistics. NHSBSA are a new official statistics producer and this assessment was prompted due to a change in publication ownership from NHS Digital to NHSBSA. Key Findings The PCA is a valued, long-standing and trusted […]
Judgement on National Statistics Status Estimates of station usage provide a valuable, trusted source of information about the use of the rail network across Great Britain (GB). They are used by a broad range of people, who appreciate the granularity of the data and the ability to use these statistics for further analysis. We identified […]
In 2020, we fully assessed ONS Business Demography statistics, reviewing their compliance against each of the pillars in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Key Findings Our view is that ONS should aim for its business demography statistics to be considered key economic indicators. But they are not regarded as such at the moment, because they are […]
Attitudes towards mental health have changed in recent years. Mental health, which was often stigmatised and not discussed openly, is receiving increasing public, media and government attention as an important public health issue. There is a greater awareness that mental health is something we all have and, just like physical health, it can sometimes be good and […]
We have been looking in detail at the value of the current data and statistics on post-16 education and skills. As an independent UK wide regulator, we are in a unique position to take a broader look at issues of importance to society and to make the case for improved statistics, across organisational and Government boundaries. This report, our second report in this […]
Why we did this review Understanding how statistics are used and what users and other stakeholders need is critical to ensuring that statistics remain relevant and provide insight. To achieve this, statistics producers must engage with users. To explore this aspect of statistics production, we carried out a review of user engagement in the Defra […]