Department for Education – COVID-19 and the production of statistics
Department for Education – Statistics at DfE
The Department for Education publishes official statistics on education and children.
We use data we collect on schools, further and higher education, children and young people to produce official statistics in line with the Code of Practice for official statistics. Read about the standards for official statistics we work to.
Forthcoming publications
Our latest releases of official statistics are available in the statistics release calendar.
Announcements
26 March 2020: COVID-19 and the production of statistics
Due to coronavirus (COVID-19) we anticipate that there might be some changes to our regular statistical production. The current disruption to the UK could affect some of our statistics and could result in some delays or reductions in the level of breakdowns we are able to publish.
In some cases, the production of data series may need to be suspended. In particular, the decision that schools, colleges and early years settings will be closed to everyone except children of critical workers and vulnerable children from 23 March 2020 will compromise established data collections from these institutions. Where this is the case, we may explore options around using alternative data sources.
Decisions will be made on a case by case basis, taking into account relevant information, with the three pillars of the Code of Practice for Statistics (Trustworthiness, Quality and Value) guiding our decisions. These decisions will be underpinned by the Office for Statistics Regulation’s guidance on changes to statistical outputs during the coronavirus outbreak. Throughout, where disruption is unavoidable, our priority will be to minimise the impact of any discontinuity on the longer term evidence base.
Giving everyone access to statistics at the same time remains a fundamental principle of the Code, but where this cannot be maintained we will be open and transparent about this and any other potential effects on our statistics. We appreciate that clear communication is vital during this period of uncertainty and will advise of any updates to this position at this page.
We expect to cancel the follow publications for 2020 as a result of the assessments not taking place:
- National curriculum assessments: key stage 2, 2020 (interim). Release date: July 2020
- National curriculum assessments at key stage 2: 2020 (provisional). Release date: August to September 2020
- National curriculum assessments at key stage 2: 2020 (revised). Release date: December 2020
- Multi-academy trust performance at key stage 2, 2020 revised. Release date: December 2020
- Early years foundation stage profile results in England:2019 to 2020. Release date: October 2020
- Phonics screening check and key stage 1 assessments: England 2020. Release date: September to October 2020
- Multiplications tables check: 2020. Release date: September to October 2020
This list is not exhaustive and we are currently working through impacts on other statistics. We will not publish School Performance Tables in 2020. See updates on our upcoming statistics.
In more positive news we have today launched our new official statistics dissemination platform, Explore Education Statistics (EES). Over the next year, EES will operate in parallel with existing statistics pages on GOV.UK as publications are moved to the new platform. A huge amount of development and user research has gone into this service to date, and we’re excited to hear your feedback to help inform any improvements and refinements to improve functionality further.
This is genuinely world-leading work which will change the look and feel of our statistics, making it significantly easier for all users to find, access, navigate, and understand our evidence base. Alongside streamlined high level summaries of key messages, there is new functionality to explore the underlying data and create your own bespoke tables.
Neil McIvor, DfE Chief Statistician
17 January 2020: Key stage 4 performance tables and statistics delayed by 2 weeks
There will be a delay of 2 weeks in the publication of revised 2019 school performance tables data for key stage 4, and the associated national statistics and multi-academy trust statistics, that were due to be published on 23 January.
The department’s rigorous quality assurance processes have identified a processing issue that has led to a significant number of late results being omitted from the data used to produce the revised key stage 4 outputs. The missing results relate to re-marks in key GCSEs such as English and maths, so would have a material impact on some reported school data if omitted. To preserve the quality of our national statistics, and prevent schools being disadvantaged by incorrect data being made public, we have decided to delay the full suite of key stage 4 publications by 2 weeks to allow us to resolve the issue.
The issue only affects processing for the key stage 4 publications, the data provided to schools via the checking exercise website is correct. The provisional statistics published in October 2019 are still available to parents and the public wishing to understand trends in attainment in particular schools.
The key stage 4 publications will now be published on Thursday 6 February.
The publications affected are:
- Key stage 4 performance 2019 (revised)
- Secondary school performance tables in England: 2018 to 2019 (revised)
- Multi-academy trust performance at key stage 4, 2019 revised
Neil McIvor, DfE Chief Statistician
31 October 2019: School funding statistics
We will be publishing new summary statistics on school funding in January 2020. While the department already publishes a great deal of information on school funding, we recognise that it can be hard to understand and navigate, and we hope this new official statistics report will help users’ understanding of this issue. In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, a publication date will be announced on the department’s statistics release calendar in due course.
Neil McIvor, DfE Chief Statistician
4 October 2019: Explore Education Statistics – user testers needed
We have released the new official statistics dissemination platform Explore Education Statistics (EES) into private beta testing. We’re collecting feedback from users to inform any improvements that are needed ahead of us making the service public next year.
If you would like to take part in user testing please sign up using our screener survey.
Neil McIvor, DfE Chief Statistician
25 July 2019: Explore Education Statistics
Over the last 6 months we have continued to develop DfE’s new official statistics dissemination platform Explore Education Statistics (EES). We will shortly be inviting members of the public to test it and will provide an update here when we are ready to do that.
EES will mean that the look and feel of DfE statistics will be changing. There will still be a summary of time series and key messages, but the summary content will be shorter.
There will be:
- functionality to create your own bespoke charts and tables within the platform
- much more underlying data available to download and analyse
A huge amount of user research has gone into the service and throughout this process we have been working closely with ONS to ensure alignment with their Connected Open Government Statistics, which is looking to bring more consistency to how statistics are published across government.
For the first 12 months EES will operate in parallel with our existing statistics pages to allow us to develop and improve the service as publications are moved to the new platform.
Statistical policy
We have updated a number of our statistics policies including on pre-release access, on confidentiality and on revisions. You can find our latest statistics policies at Standards for official statistics published by DfE.
New statistics and upcoming development
Over the last year we have published new official statistics:
- Graduate Outcomes (LEO): Regional outcomes, 2016 to 2017, giving information on:
- how students move around the country for university
- where they move to after university
- their earnings
- Academy transfers and funding giving information on the numbers and costs of re-brokerage of academies.
We are also looking at how we can bring together the wide range of information we currently publish on school funding in England.
Data sharing
We have been working closely with the ONS, Admin Data Research UK, and the Children’s Commissioner to increase the evidence available to policy makers for making decisions about how best to support young people.
The initiative will see 2011 Census records linked to educational attainment data over several years within the ONSSecure Research Service. This will allow researchers to better understand how the structure and characteristics of households influence child outcomes over time.
Neil McIvor, DfE Chief Statistician
Statistical collections
Early years
Participation and characteristics
Institutions
Attainment
Children’s social care
Participation and characteristics
Institutions
Workforce
School statistics (all age)
Participation and characteristics
- Special educational needs (SEN)
- Pupil absence
- Pupil projections
- Exclusions
- School and pupil numbers
- Responsibility measures
Institutions
Workforce
Finance
Attainment
International
Primary
Participation and characteristics
- Pupil absence
- Pupil projections
- Special educational needs (SEN)
- Exclusions
- School and pupil numbers
- Responsibility measures
Institutions
Attainment
Secondary
Participation and characteristics
- Pupil absence
- Pupil projections
- Special educational needs (SEN)
- School and pupil numbers
- Responsibility measures
Institutions
Attainment
- GCSEs (key stage 4)
- Education and training
- Performance tables
- Destinations of key stage 4 and key stage 5 pupils
16 to 18 (KS5)
Participation and characteristics
Attainment
- Education and training
- Performance tables
- Destinations of key stage 4 and key stage 5 pupils
- 16 to 19 attainment
Adult further education
- Education and training
- Further education and skills
- Further education for benefits claimants
- FE Choices
- Advanced learner loans
- Outcome based success measures
- National achievement rates tables
Higher education
Finance
Outcomes
- Higher education graduate employment and earnings
- Graduate labour market: statistics
- Higher education statistics
Participation and characteristics
- Participation rates in higher education
- Widening participation in higher education
- Higher education statistics
Workforce
Workforce
Schools
Early years
Children’s social care
Higher education
Funding and finance
Higher education
Schools
Ad hoc statistics and data releases
Our ad hoc statistics and other data releases which are not part of our regular official statistics publications can be found in the DfE transparency data section of GOV.UK.
Forthcoming releases
| Publication date | Release title |
|---|---|
| 27 February 2020 | English proficiency of pupils with English as an additional language |
| 11 June 2020 | National pupil database third-party requests |
| 11 June 2020 | DfE external data shares |
| 10 September 2020 | National pupil database third-party requests |
| 10 September 2020 | DfE external data shares |
| 10 December 2020 | National pupil database third-party requests |
| 10 December 2020 | DfE external data shares |
Archived statistics
You can find statistics published since May 2010 on GOV.UK. Our archived statistics are available from the UK Government Web Archive.
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