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1 month ago | 
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk | Natasha Plaister |Pupil demographics
Here at Datalab, we’re nothing if not innovative.[1] And so when we heard about some recent work from researchers at the University of Glasgow that uses the new (to us) method of latent class analysis to explore links between attainment, exclusions and attendance in Scotland, we thought we’d see what insights it could offer us into low attaining Key Stage 4 pupils in England. Latent class analysis is a way of identifying groups of people with similar characteristics or behaviour.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk | Dave Thomson |Pupil demographics
In the first part of this article, we examined how national gaps in Progress 8 scores between disadvantaged pupils and their peers could be split into two parts, one based on within-school gaps and the other based on between-school gaps. In this second part, we look at how these gaps vary by region. Once again, we use published school-level Key Stage 4 data for 2024. Part one gives details about how we split the Progress 8 gap between and within schools at a national level.
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Jan 16, 2025 | 
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk | Dave Thomson |Pupil demographics
In this article I’m going to examine the extent to which national attainment gaps between disadvantaged pupils and their peers varies within and between schools. In part two I will examine how these vary by region. The “within school” part of the gap refers to the fact that even in the same school disadvantaged pupils tend to achieve lower outcomes than their peers.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk | John Jerrim |Pupil demographics
Being a teenage parent brings several challenges. For those in education, it will bring a disruption to learning and educational progression. Yet it may also lead to young people leaving the education system at a relatively young age, to deal with the financial, social and health burdens of becoming a parent.
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Nov 11, 2024 | 
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk | Dave Thomson |Pupil demographics
Regular readers will know that we’ve been trying to monitor the rate of exclusions and suspensions in schools in advance of official statistics from the Department of Education. We last looked at this at the end of the Spring Term in 2024. We now look at the full academic year 2023/24. By contrast, the most recent (at the time of writing) official statistics for exclusions and suspensions, published in July 2023, relate to the 2022/23 academic year.
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Oct 7, 2024 | 
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk | Katie Beynon |Pupil demographics
Recently, we were commissioned by CASE (campaign for state education) to investigate the rate at which pupils moved on and off school rolls. In particular, they were interested to see whether there were differences between local authority (LA) schools and academies. You can read our full report here. Or, for a summary of the highlights, read on…We used data from the National Pupil Database (NPD) on around 2.5 million pupils.
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk | John Jerrim |Pupil demographics
Mental health has become a major challenge in schools, with some studies indicating that low levels of wellbeing may be a bigger challenge in England than other countries. Previous research has suggested that children from disadvantaged social backgrounds are two to three times more likely to develop such problems. Yet there are certain issues – such as eating disorders – which have also been linked to higher levels of academic achievement.
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Sep 5, 2024 | 
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk | Dave Thomson |Pupil demographics
The latest Department for Education statistics on schools and pupils show that there were 333 state-funded alternative provision (AP) schools[1] in January 2024. This is less than 10% of the total number of state-funded mainstream secondary schools, of which there were 3,452[2].
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Jul 9, 2024 | 
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk | Dave Thomson |Pupil demographics
The latest statistics on special educational needs (SEN) and disabilities in England showed that there were 575,963 young people with Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans. EHC plans first began to be introduced in 2014/15 following the introduction of a new code of practice. At the time, some pupils already on roll in schools had been identified as having SEN under the previous code of practice.
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Jun 24, 2024 | 
ffteducationdatalab.org.uk | John Jerrim |Pupil demographics
Back in 2011 I wrote a paper about academic progress made by “bright” children from poor backgrounds. It caused rather a stir at the time. This is because it was previously believed that – in the words of Michael Gove – “rich, thick kids do better than poor, clever children before they go to school”. My paper showed this was unlikely to be the case, and was probably being driven by a statistical artifact known as regression to the mean.
