Guidance

DfE official statistics: standards and policies

Documents describing the standards we follow to produce official statistics.

From:
Department for Education
Published
23 April 2013
Last updated
5 February 2019 — See all updates

Applies to England

Documents

Pre-release access to official statistics order 2008

PDF, 239 KB, 12 pages

Hive IT - DfE data dissemination discovery

PDF, 3.97 MB, 29 pages

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Developing DfE statistics in 2018

Ref: DFE-00048-2018

PDF, 256 KB, 20 pages

Statement of administrative sources

Ref: DFE-00156-2017

PDF, 453 KB, 7 pages

Statement of administrative sources: annex

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 427 KB

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Statistical policy statement on revisions

Ref: DFE-00035-2019

PDF, 877 KB, 4 pages

Quality assurance of education statistics

Ref: DFE-00158-2017

PDF, 480 KB, 11 pages

Policy statement on confidentiality

Ref: DFE-00025-2019

PDF, 190 KB, 5 pages

Statistical quality principles and procedures

PDF, 128 KB, 7 pages

Statistical policy statement on user engagement

PDF, 158 KB, 8 pages

Performance tables attainment data: statement of administrative sources

http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/aboutadmindata.html

Performance tables: user survey and feedback

http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/performance/userfeedback.html

School census: data quality and processing

Ref: DFE-00260-2017

PDF, 147 KB, 7 pages

Details

Topics covered include:

  • administrative sources (data from schools, local authorities, and other organisations, including awarding bodies)
  • revisions to statistical publications (due to methodology or data changes, or errors)
  • confidentiality (through personnel, data and statistical disclosure control)
  • quality principles and procedures (including relevance, accuracy, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility and clarity, comparability, and coherence)
  • compliance with the pre-release access to the Official Statistics Order 2008 (the operational arrangements for giving ministers and officials pre-release access to DfE official statistics before publication)
  • user engagement (how we identify and communicate with our users to provide the statistics they need)
  • the steps we take to collect and validate school census data

Updates to this page

Published 23 April 2013
Last updated 5 February 2019 + show all updates

  1. Updated 'Statistical policy statement on revisions'.

  2. Updated 'Policy statement on confidentiality'.

  3. Added 'Pre-release access to official statistics order 2008'.

  4. Added 'Hive IT - DfE data dissemination discovery' report.

  5. Added 'Developing DfE Statistics in 2018'.

  6. Added document 'School census: data quality and processing'.

  7. Updated policy documents on 'Statement of administrative sources' and its annex and 'Statistical policy statement on revisions'. Added 'Quality assurance of education statistics'.

  8. Added links to performance tables attainment data and a user survey.

  9. Added 'Statement of administrative sources' and 'Statement of administrative sources: annex'.

  10. Replaced 'Pre-release access to official statistics order 2008' with updated document.

  11. 'Statistical policy statement on user engagement' document added to page.

  12. First published.

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