Our next steps

This review has shared our findings on how statistics on children and young people should be improved to ensure the statistical system is alive to the needs of children and young people. We recognise that there are currently significant barriers to statistics producers achieving all that we have set out.

We want to explore these barriers further and get feedback on the 3Vs framework. We welcome working with official statistics producers and other bodies with an interest in children and young people statistics to identify and address any barriers to the improvements we have set out. We will do this through workshops and events. We will also continue to engage with users of children and young people’s data to further explore some of the data gaps and themes in this report. Our aim is to be able to move towards a position where we are able to make specific recommendations to statistics producers that are able to be actioned.

There are several areas where improvements to official statistics on children and young people are already planned. These include activities in response to the Inclusive Data Task Force recommendations and a joint Economic and Social Research Council and OSR project to bring users and producers in the devolved administrations together to explore the data infrastructure around children and young people. We are also working closely with Administrative Data Research UK to improve access to and linkage of administrative data, including that on children and young people. We will continue to support these activities to drive improvements in statistics and data on children and young people.

We have highlighted the importance of children and young people having a voice around official statistics and data. Whilst we have engaged with representatives of children and young people during this review, we have not engaged with them directly. We are 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 will also explore how they can have a stronger voice in the development of statistics relevant to them and how their data are used. This research will also feed into our research programme to understand the public good of statistics.

If you would like to provide feedback on the 3Vs framework, any of the issues raised in this report or to express an interest in being involved in our future work around children and young people statistics please contact us at regulation@statistics.gov.uk.