Championing children and education through statistics
The UN’s International Day of Education (24 January) is a great time to showcase how crucial statistics are to the education sector. Many organisations across the UK contribute to the production of statistics which are trustworthy, high quality, and provide value to users on this topic.
Bringing statistics producers together
Producers in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland regularly come together in our children and education GSS theme group, which is a privilege for us to co-chair. The group reaches across all stages of education, from early years, to university and beyond, to collaboratively consider and improve how educational statistics meet user needs and inform decision making.
We have published our workplan in autumn 2025, which sets out our priorities for collaboration in 2026. With education being devolved, it is particularly important to explain clearly where our statistics are comparable across the UK nations. That is why we are focussing on coherence this year, working together across the statistical system to improve the insight we publish on the comparability of education statistics across the UK.
Statistics have impact
There is plenty to show how impactful the education statistics we all produce are. Here are just a few examples of recent successes across the GSS:
Easy access to education statistics
The Department for Education publishes a wide range of statistics from early years to higher and further education on their Explore Education Statistics platform. Receiving more than 6 million page views a year, this is a service providing high value insight to the public in an accessible and innovative way. In 2025 they successfully launched an API, which provides easier, quicker access to data for technical users – further increasing the reach and impact of their data.
Highlighting educational provision
As part of Ofsted’s renewed education inspection framework, inspections of schools, early years and further education and skills providers in England will now receive evaluation grades for a range of areas published in their new individualised report cards. These report cards will include evaluations of achievement, as well as attendance and behaviour with statistics made available as more providers are inspected.
Ofsted has also launched its new Explore an Area platform, which brings together inspection outcome data and local information to describe the quality and quantity of provision in local areas to support parental choice and inspection context.
Measuring support for learners with additional needs
Welsh Government carried out a consultation last autumn about changes to data that schools and local authorities record and share about the system for supporting learners with additional learning needs (ALN).
Responses are currently being analysed and will lead to changes in recording data to support delivery, evaluation and monitoring of the ALN system in Wales. Support from GSS Children and Education Theme Group contacts was very helpful in considering the approach.
Tracking the direction of interests and innovation
The Higher Education Statistics Agency publishes high-stakes statistics related to the Higher Education sector in the UK. This includes data on characteristics of students and staff in the sector, graduate outcomes, as well as data on finances, estates, and energy consumption of qualification providers in the sector. In 2025, they launched a first-of-its-kind spin-out register to provide information about spin-out firms created by UK universities. In December 2025, they also published an innovative interactive tool that gives subject trends over time in higher education.
Both as heads of statistics in our organisations, and as co-chairs of the GSS theme group, we are proud of the impact our statistics are making in the education sector and are looking forward to collaborating in 2026 to increase it further.
Delphine Robineau (DfE) and Mike Howe (Ofsted), Heads of Profession for Statistics, GSS Children and Education theme group co-chairs