The Authority awarded National Statistics status in 2014 to school-level attainment statistics for England as presented in DfE’s Performance Tables. Following an enquiry about access to education attainment data highlighting the absence of unregulated IGCSEs from attainment statistics, the Director General for Regulation commissioned an investigation to gather new evidence about the school-level attainment statistics and the underlying data, and to consider the implications for the National Statistics status of these statistics.
Our overall conclusion is that the National Statistics status of the school-level attainment statistics for England – as presented in DfE’s Performance Tables – should continue, on the understanding that DfE implements the requirements that we have set out in the report.
We concluded that there was a gap in coverage across the suite of statistics and that DfE’s planned actions – along with information available from other organisations – should be sufficient to meet most needs associated with the gap. We have asked DfE to keep demand under review to ensure that this is and remains the case.
Before the enquiry, DfE had begun to put in place actions that will improve access to education attainment data and has identified others that will help to meet the gap in coverage that the enquiry identified. The Authority welcomes these actions and looks forward to seeing improvements to the statistics that result.
We will continue to keep the National Statistics status of the school-level attainment statistics for England as presented in DfE’s Performance Tables under review.
This document was republished on 11 August 2016 to remove references to IGCSEs â – which is the registered trademark of Cambridge International Examinations – and replaced it with international GCSEs.
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