What we found

We found a fragmented landscape of statistics and data, with weaknesses in how visible children and young people are in official statistics, how the experiences of vulnerable children and young people can be understood and how children and young people are given a voice through and about official statistics and their data. At the same time, we found clear evidence of good practice within the official statistics system and some significant opportunities for those within the official statistics system to learn from each other and from others. During the time that we have been reviewing statistics on children and young people there have been some welcome improvements.

Our findings - Visibility lens

For statistics and data on children and young people to be used, they must firstly be available. Put simply, children and young people must be visible across the full range of statistics.

We found that children and young people are not as visible in official statistics as they should be. Importantly, many national statistical surveys do not include young people under the age of 16. Whilst we found that children and young people are visible across a range of topics in official statistics, there are some data gaps. These include within topics such as mental health, well-being, homelessness and statistics on very young children and babies. In addition, the experiences of young people in the transition to adulthood are often not analysed separately due to small sample sizes.

It is difficult to see a holistic picture of children and young people’s lives through official statistics. Improvements to the sharing and linkage of data are needed to enable a more rounded picture of children and young people’s lives to be seen whilst protecting their data. Joined up approaches are needed to enable studies to collect, or link, data on children and their families, for more than one aspect of their lives or over time. Good practice examples include the ECHILD project in England and the SAIL databank in Wales. The SAIL databank facilitates linkage of data on the population of Wales including children and their families.

Longitudinal statistical studies, which track children and young people over a period of time, require significant long term financial investment and a sample design that ensures the sample is representative and does not create bias in the survey data. Difficulties in non-government organisations accessing government administrative data to use as sampling frames have delayed or limited some longitudinal studies. There has been a large time gap since the last UK wide birth cohort study. We welcome that an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded feasibility study for a new birth cohort study is now underway and that other longitudinal studies have commenced in England.

Despite us finding some very good examples of data collection and presentation, overall there are weaknesses with the data available to inform decision making at a local level. For example, data from many national surveys are not available at local authority level due to sample sizes and locally run surveys do not provide estimates for neighbouring or similar local areas to enable comparisons. Equally there are limitations with the data that are available to compare across the countries of the UK and to compare the UK with other countries internationally. As many of the areas of responsibility relating to children and young people are devolved, there are differences in government policies and data collections, making comparisons across the UK difficult.

Our findings - Vulnerability lens

The Department for Education’s State of the Nation 2020 report found that many of the statistics on children and young people treat them as a whole group – it is often not possible to examine the experiences of sub-groups of children. Sub-groups of particular interest to many of the users that we spoke to are those that include children who are vulnerable to poorer outcomes.

We found that official statistics on vulnerable children and young people are limited and do not meet the wide range of user needs.

There are many challenges in ensuring the experiences of children and young people who are vulnerable to poorer outcomes can be separately understood. Not least of these are the number of categories or experiences that can make a child vulnerable to poorer outcomes. We identified some significant gaps where children in vulnerable groups are not visible. These include asylum-seeking and refugee children, disabled children and children living in poverty. In addition, most surveys of children and young people are either household or school based. Some of the most vulnerable children in society therefore will not be captured by these data collections as they are less likely to be in mainstream schools and more likely to be living in institutions.

We found that the statistics that are available on vulnerable children tend to be metrics of service use, for example on the number of children under local authority care, rather than statistics about the experiences of the children themselves. It was reported to us that some proxies for vulnerability that are based on a service use are not always fit for purpose in identifying the children who are most vulnerable to poorer outcomes.  For example, the Child Poverty Action Group have found that 4 in 10 UK children under the poverty line are not eligible for free school meals which may reduce the effectiveness of the free school meals metric.

Vulnerability is often a cumulative issue. Having one characteristic or experience that could lead to poorer outcomes may have minimal impact on children and young people’s lives, but having multiple is likely to increase the impact. This makes the need for statistics that give a holistic picture of children’s lives even more important.

It can be difficult to gain a holistic understanding of the lives of vulnerable children and young people through official statistics. Small numbers of children in some vulnerable groups, and the sensitivity of the data, increases the risks around the sharing and linkage of data for research purposes and limits analysis. We welcome that there are ongoing initiatives to securely link data on vulnerable children to give a more holistic understanding of their lives.

Our findings - Voice lens

Children and young people have the most knowledge about their lives and what is important to them. The inclusion of children and young people in surveys, and in the development of statistics, improves the statistics that can be produced for and about them.

Whilst there a number of examples of where children and young people are included in surveys, children and young people are currently not consistently given a voice through official statistics. Where children’s data are collected there can be a reliance on proxy responses by parents in some official sources.

Children and young people are users of statistics, albeit often through an intermediary, and are likely to have different requirements to adults. In general, children’s data requirements are not considered in the development of statistics and they are often not given an opportunity to influence the official data that is collected about them. The ONS’ children’s well-being indicator review carried out focus groups with children aged 10-15 to find out what they need to have a happy life. They used these to inform the set of indicators of children’s well-being which they report on.

Children have the same rights as adults over their personal data. We found that a greater understanding is needed of children and young people’s views on how their data are used in official statistics. The official statistics system could learn from health research studies in how to effectively engage children and young people in statistics that use their data. For example, the Admin Data Research UK/ Diabetes UK report on Public Views on the use of personal identifiers for linking diabetes and education data for research offers useful insights on young people’s views around the use of their data.

We found that the lack of children and young people’s voice in and about official statistics is a significant weakness.

Wider improvement areas

We heard from users that the approach to children and young people’s data does not seem to be joined up. It is not perceived as being systematic. A more joined up approach to official statistics on children and young people would help the system to respond to the findings set out in this report.

In addition, this would help with sharing of good practice. We found clear evidence of good practice within the official statistics system and some significant opportunities for the official statistics system to learn from each other and others. These include:

• Drawing on the experiences and learning of official statistics collections that do include children.
• Exploring how local authorities and civic society collect data from children and young people to ensure that their voice is heard.
• Learning from health research studies in how to engage young people in studies or statistics using their data.

At present user groups are set up on single topic lines and the voice of users of children and young people statistics are fragmented. The users of data on children and young people have a key role to play in helping producers see these data holistically. This perspective and knowledge needs to play a bigger part in driving priorities and improvements in statistics on children and young people.

Improvements are also needed in the secure sharing and linkage of data on children and young people to enable a holistic picture of children and young people’s lives to be understood, access to data for researchers and the collection and collation of longitudinal data. From the evidence that we collated, there are some specific areas where we consider more research is needed. These include:

• Research into how vulnerable children and young people can be better included in surveys and official statistics data collections.
• Exploration of how to maximise the value of data on vulnerable children whilst protecting those children.
• Research into children and young people’s needs for statistics and data.

We welcome the commitments made in the National Statistician’s response to the UKSA Inclusive Data Taskforce. These include research to understand the lived experiences of groups, including disadvantaged and under-represented children, and longitudinal data linkage projects of educational trajectories of vulnerable children and social mobility of children in care. These initiatives will go a long way to improving the visibility of some groups of children and enabling additional analyses of vulnerable children.