This presentation was given by Iain Bradley of the Data Modernisation Unit, Department for Education of the United Kingdom at the GCES Conference on Education Governance: The role of Data in Tallinn on 12 February during the afternoon session workshop on Developing data systems.

1. Education data in England:
A brief overview
Iain Bradley
Data Modernisation Unit. Department for Education
Prepared for the OECD conference on the use of data.
12th & 13th February 2015
Contents
• Context: English Education System
• Current processes, strengths and weaknesses
• The future

2. Context : English Education at a glance
• 1 Department, 152 Local Authorities, 25,000 schools, 450,000 workforce, 8 million pupils.
• From 0 – 18, education is divided into ‘key stages’ covering several years of a child’s life.
These are:
• Early Years (0-5)
• Key Stage One (5-7)
• Key Stage Two (7-11)
• Key Stage Three (11-14)
• Key Stage Four (14-16)
• Key Stage Five (16-18)
• Locally, attainment assessed very regularly. Nationally, tests at the end of key stages are the
significant periods for children and schools

3. Context : Why does data matter?
• Comparison by schools and others to understand how they are doing
• Quality & choice– local people (parents, governors) and national regulation
(Ofsted)
• Allocate funding & audit local spend
• Develop and measure policy. What works best for whom?
Context : How is data held?
• Schools and Local Authorities free to buy whatever systems they need
to support their day job
• Most if not all have some form of system for maintaining pupil, staff
and finance records. With such a diverse set of schools, IT varies a lot
• Because schools use different systems, extra systems are needed for
moving data between schools and into the Department

4. Gathering data: Current Processes
Termly or annually, we collect:
- The characteristics of each child (location, age, ethnicity, ‘disadvantage’)
- The characteristics of the workforce – qualifications, what subjects they teach etc.
- Financial data about the school – how much they spent on what
- Key stage test results (these evolve from tests in 3 subjects Aged 7, through to
GCSEs and A levels in later life).
How do we do it?
- Common data standards
- A bespoke tool that moves data files from school, validates them, feeds issues back,
and then stores them.
- Publish a technical ‘specification’ of what a return must look like well in advance of
the return
- School system providers then use that specification to automate
things so far as they can for schools

5. Gathering data: Current Processes
What do we do with the data?
• Each child has a unique number. We combine characteristics and attainment data
to produce a National Pupil Database. This is a longitudinal database showing how
every child ‘grows’ through the system, with a 10-15 year time series.
• Publish a lot of ‘national statistics’ – e.g. school performance tables, workforce
information, attainment gaps between disadvantaged and other children. A strong
brand across government in terms of underlying processes, limiting access before
release, and fair and open access to all once published.
• Once published, all underlying data that does not compromise the privacy of the
individual is made available in open formats for local use, academic research, and
for third parties to develop further tools and products.

6. Current processes : Strengths and weaknesses
Strengths
• Common data standards right across the education sector for key collections
• A lot of pupil level data with a good time series supports longitudinal progress work
• Processes associated with ‘national statistics’ kite-mark are well established and
respected
• Coverage & quality. Links between data provision and funding often focus minds!
Weaknesses
• Timeliness
• Data burden associated with cleaning, providing and processing data locally and in
the centre
• Some processes require people to do things for which there is no incentive for them
(e.g. when a pupil moves school), which threatens quality
• Data standards are good, but not as sophisticated as we could be
• Presentation – much is still ‘paper on the internet’
• A lot of data moves that hasn’t changed since we last asked

7. Potential ways forward: Building on strength and
addressing our weaknesses
A data exchange: exploring moving data as it changes rather than big ‘censuses’
• A common data model for all systems to be able to use is developed. We now need to try it out and see how
it works.
• Local systems to identify what has changed that matters, and communicate that in an agreed manner
• Remove the unnecessary human effort without losing controls
• Data to move at the speed schools and The Department for Education need
Better presentation of data
• Increased input from genuine users. How easy is it for parents to use our websites?
• Increased focus on how pupils progress at each school
• Continue to use technology to support the secure opening up of data
Better use of data
• Should soon be able to combine education data with social security and tax data to
understand long term outcomes
• More timely data can be used for earlier identification of issues and to take action