Standard

Statement on user engagement

Updated 25 October 2023

Applies to England

Introduction

Ofsted is committed to publishing timely, relevant, high-quality statistics in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

We want our statistics to support delivery of the Ofsted Strategy, helping to: 

• underpin decision-making at all levels within and beyond government 
• inform our broad user community 
• enhance the public’s understanding of services we inspect and regulate 
• deliver insight to support the development and evaluation of policy and operations

User engagement focuses on continuing and improving the relationship we have with our users. Good user engagement helps us to better understand our users and their needs. It ensures that we are responsive to emerging needs and helps us to better identify gaps in knowledge and evidence. It also enables us to shape new and existing statistical products ensuring they are relevant and fit for user purpose, delivering products with maximum impact and value.

We have produced this statement in line with the ‘User engagement strategy for statistics’ and the UK Statistics Authority’s strategy “Statistics for the public good.” These strategies set out plans for a sustained dialogue between producers, users and potential users of statistics. The intent is that user engagement is embedded into an organisation’s wider engagement activities and actively implemented throughout the statistical development, production and review cycle.

In response to this, we have developed our existing user engagement statement to focus on the goals of the Government Statistical Service (GSS) user engagement strategy:

• Collaboration – collaborating across boundaries to offer a more coherent user experience
• Capability – building capability and equipping producers of statistics with the practical skills and tools to deliver effective user engagement activities
• Culture – strengthening our culture and ensuring user engagement is always an ongoing and essential part of a statistics producer’s role

Our commitment to users

We will be clear about the production and release of our statistics by:

• pre-announcing the time and date for the publication of our statistics
• publishing our statistics on the time and date pre-announced
• publishing methodology and quality reports for our statistics
• publishing our Pre-release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008: statement of compliance
• publishing our statement on revisions for official statistics

We will meet the needs of our users by:

• continuing to develop knowledge of our users, potential users and their needs
• continuing to design accessible statistical products for all
• using a variety of methods to share and publicise our statistics
• providing a variety of opportunities for users to give us their views
• consulting with users on developments and changes to our statistical methodologies, publications and publication processes
• responding quickly and accurately to questions and enquiries from our users

This policy statement sets out how we intend to meet these commitments.

Embedding user engagement

We want to achieve the GSS’s ambition to embed user engagement within the statistical development, production and review cycle. To achieve this, we have set ourselves goals.

Collaboration

We will maintain collaboration within Ofsted, both across our statistical production teams and with other divisions within the department, for example the communications team. We will also work more collaboratively across the GSS, particularly with statistical producers in other departments.

We will share details of how each team currently engages with users to share good practice and ideas. We will identify cross-cutting themes in publications and consider how we could co-ordinate user engagement more effectively across teams.

We will share the user engagement strategy across Ofsted. We will work with teams across Ofsted, not just those who produce statistics, to identify users of Ofsted research, statistics and publications.

We will collaborate with other government departments so that users don’t have to understand the structures of government before they can engage. To this end, we will be an active part of the across government Children and Education theme group facilitating collaboration with other statistical producers, including: the Department for Education, Office for Students, Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation, the Office for National Statistics and the devolved administrations.

Capability

We have a dedicated user engagement group, led by a user engagement champion, with representatives from statistical production teams to discuss user engagement and share ideas, best practice and resources across teams.

Our user engagement champion will attend cross government networking events and share ideas and good practice from and with other government departments.

We will continue to develop analysts’ skills in improving publication accessibility and user engagement.

Culture

There will be a designated statistician to promote user engagement across Ofsted’s statistical teams.

We will set expectations for how every team should carry out user engagement and include these targets in individual, team and division objectives. We will monitor how effective the activities are for improving user engagement.

We strive to ensure that all statistical colleagues, including those not working on official statistics and management information, are aware of the importance of user engagement.

We will review and report on this statement annually.

Understanding our users

It is important to understand who our users are, how they use our statistics and what questions they are trying to answer, so that our statistics best fit their intended uses.

Who are our users?

We know our users are drawn from a diverse range of backgrounds and have varying needs, from requiring access to raw data to drawing insights from statistical reports.

We know that those accessing and using our products include:

Central and local government	Providers within the education/care sector	Wider users
His Majesty’s Chief Inspector, directors and inspectors within Ofsted	Early years providers, such as individual childminders or chains of nurseries	The media who use and report Ofsted statistics
Ministers from Department for Education (DfE) and other government departments	Schools and multi-academy trusts	The public, including parents and carers
Policy makers from Ofsted, DfE and other government departments	Further education and skills providers, such as colleges or those offering apprenticeships	Think tanks/special interest groups, such as those concerned with the impact of education policy changes or government reform
Analysts from Ofsted, DfE and other government departments	Social care providers, including chains of children’s homes	Private organisations that use Ofsted data, such as online property websites or education consultants
Parliament, including MPs and House of Lords		Education sector advocacy groups, such as those who provide information and support to teachers, parents and carers
Local government, including local authorities		Voluntary sector, such as charities, who focus on social mobility within education
Regional schools commissioners		International users, including Eurostat
		Academics, researchers and students

Understanding user needs

As well as knowing who our users are, we need to understand their needs. Understanding how our statistics are used is essential to maximising their public value and ensuring that users can make sound and informed judgements.

We conducted a review of Ofsted’s statistical publications in 2022 which included engagement with a variety users of our statistical publications. This resulted in some recommendations that have been implemented. This review was commended by the Office for Statistics Regulation.

We plan to run a survey alongside our November 2023 statistical releases to further inform us about the evolving needs of our users, including whether they think releases are the correct length and frequency and to advise what content is most useful to them. We also intend to invite users to volunteer for optional focus group sessions about our publications. 

We regularly monitor the usage of our statistics through reviewing GOV.UK and Twitter analytics. This will help us understand the relative popularity of our various outputs and formats, as well as allowing us to assess the impact of trialling new methods to engage with users.

In addition to monitoring usage, we will attempt to measure how our statistics are quoted within other publications, such as press articles and research. We hope to engage with some of the organisations that have quoted our statistics to understand how we can better meet their needs.

We will continue to provide a named contact on all of our statistical releases and will request feedback on the landing page of each publication, rather than solely within each publication. In addition, we will conduct an annual review of each of our releases to ensure users who have subscribed to topics receive relevant content. We will also use community discussion groups, such as StatsUserNet.

We will regularly review themes in the queries we receive. This includes parliamentary questions (PQs), press queries, freedom of information (FOI) requests and mailbox queries. Where we receive regular requests, we will consider whether this information should be shared more widely within our publications or products.

Access to our statistics

Our statistics are typically accessed through the Ofsted statistical pages of the GOV.UK website. Each publication provides contact details for the responsible statistician and we encourage all users to provide feedback.

Our statistical first releases include a commentary that is impartial, insightful and informative. Statistical publications are accompanied by a methodology and quality report to help users understand the data sources, data quality and definitions. In line with the ‘value’ pillars of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics, we aim to make our statistics accessible to a range of different audiences in line with our accessible documents policy and release them in formats that encourage analysis and re-use. Ofsted statisticians work proactively with the communications experts to ensure our data is reusable, providing users with supporting charts and tables.

We aim to use a range of digital tools and social media channels to disseminate and improve access to our statistics. This includes blogs to explain some of the more technical aspects of our work. Our official statistics releases are currently announced via the main @Ofstednews Twitter account.

It is important that the data used to produce our reports is freely available, transparent and accessible. This is in line with the government’s Open Data policy and our statistics are disaggregated to a level that is reliable and robust whilst adhering to disclosure rules.

All media enquiries about the contents of a specific release should be directed to Ofsted press officers.

All other users should use the email address provided in the statistical first release. If users need statistics not in existing Ofsted statistical publications, requests will normally be treated under the Freedom of Information Act.

Consulting and communicating

We will consult users when we develop new products and when we plan to make significant changes to our statistical methodologies, publications or publication processes.

Consultations will be communicated via the GOV.UK website. We will publicise any consultations through our social media. Ofsted will respond to every formal consultation providing a summary of all responses, the outcomes of the consultation and the rationale for the decisions made. Outcomes of consultations will be published on GOV.UK.

Where we plan to make more minor changes, we will inform users in advance via GOV.UK and invite feedback on our plans.

We will treat all feedback received with respect and consider it together with data, resource and legal constraints.

Jason Bradbury
Head of Profession for Statistics
Ofsted
October 2023