Source · Select Committees · Education Committee
Recommendation 3
3
Paragraph: 18
The Department’s data on the educational outcomes of children in care does not distinguish between...
Conclusion
The Department’s data on the educational outcomes of children in care does not distinguish between placement type. Existing data is not good enough, it does not provide the visibility into the education of children in care that we would expect to see. The poor-quality data is a barrier to scrutiny and accountability, and hinders the development of targeted, evidence-based interventions that could raise the attainment of looked-after children.
Paragraph Reference:
18
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
Data is of critical importance to having a clear picture and understanding of the experiences and outcomes of looked-after children. We will publish the recommended breakdowns in the 2023 releases. Improving data was one of the government’s commitments made in May 2022, upon publication of the care review. We are setting up a new National Implementation Board of sector experts and people with experience of leading transformational change and the care system. Its role is to advise, support and challenge us on the delivery of our reform programme, which will include how to improve the way data is collected, used, and shared, including what data is needed to support change in the system. Currently, statistics on looked-after children and their outcomes are published annually in two National Statistical releases. Whilst not all of the breakdowns recommended above are included in these publications, they are derivable from the data, and we make this available to external users on request. The looked-after children collection is a large child-level dataset from which many breakdowns can be produced and so when publishing data releases we need to make decisions on which provide the most insight. This is continuously changing as we respond to user needs. Publication of the recommended breakdowns, in the 2023 releases, will be done in conjunction with the department’s policy on confidentiality which may result in us needing to suppress low numbers at the proposed level of granularity. We have committed to publishing additional stability analysis, previously carried out by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, that will help shine a light on the placement experience of children in care. The department’s first release of this data will be published in November 2022.