Case study: Analysis in Government (AiG) Rising Star Award 2025

Case study details

Team name and Department

Rebecca Vincent, Senior Analytical Officer, Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted)

Project title

Understanding barriers for working parents: where are childcare deserts and oases?

Situation and Action:

With the government’s £14 billion childcare reform rolling out by September 2025, there was a pressing need to understand local access to childcare. Anecdotal evidence suggested that many parents struggled to find nearby childcare, but no systematic, neighbourhood-level data existed.

Rebecca Vincent, a Senior Analytical Officer at Ofsted, led a pioneering project to fill this gap. She:

• Researched geospatial accessibility methods and collaborated with academics from Victoria University, University of South Wales, and University of Liverpool
• Designed a model to calculate childcare accessibility scores at the output area level (40–250 households), factoring in travel modes and distances
• Developed an optimisation model to identify areas most in need of childcare provision
• Upskilled herself and her team in geospatial modelling and data visualisation using ONS Svelte code
• Collaborated with the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to publish a joint report linking childcare access to local earnings and education data.

Outcome / Impact / Results

Rebecca’s work has had national impact:

• The joint Ofsted – ONS publication in June 2023 received widespread media coverage and was praised for its clarity and accessibility
• No.10 Downing Street analysts incorporated the metrics into their childcare delivery dashboard, with monthly updates
• Rebecca’s visualisations were used by Ofsted’s Chief Inspector to highlight strategic priorities
• The project won a Civil Service Award 2024 for Evaluation and Analysis.

Without this work, policymakers would lack the granular, evidence-based insight needed to target childcare investment effectively and equitably.

Feedback and endorsement

• “Your rapid assistance with the new nursery provision in schools policy has been invaluable… a critical element of our assessment of whether the childcare expansion is deliverable.” — Chris Buckley, DfE
• “The intuitive metrics on the accessibility of childcare are being used to inform delivery of the government’s opportunity mission.” — Stephanie Calhoun, No.10 Data Science
• “This has everything that I think is so important in this type of work… accessible to different audiences without compromising the depth of the research.” — Prof. Peter Hurley, Victoria University
• “It gives me a clearer idea of how this sort of analysis and information needs to be presented… something I’m sure we’ve failed at spectacularly in the past.” — Prof. Mitchel Langford, University of South Wales
• Not only was Rebecca part of the team from Ofsted who won the 2025 Analysis in Government (AiG) Award for Collaboration, Rebecca’s personal impact was recognised by her winning the 2025 AiG Rising Star Award, with judges commenting that Rebecca demonstrated “Good passion and drive, and impactful work.” and they were “Impressed with [Rebecca’s] interface with academia and with concentration on impact.”

Further reading

• Winners of the 5th Analysis in Government awards – Rising Star Award
• Winners of the 5th AiG Awards – Collaboration Award
• Case study: Uncovering childcare deserts and oases in England, Ofsted
• ONS report Childcare accessibility by neighbourhood

How this work supports the Analysis Function strategy

Rebecca’s work demonstrated behaviours which support the Analysis Function strategy by leading impactful childcare access modelling, developing optimisation and visualisation tools, and collaborating with colleagues ONS and academia.

Find out more: a strategy for analysis in government 2025 to 2028

 

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