Academic year 2022/23

Children missing education

Data guidance

Published 18 May 2023

Description

This document describes the data included in the Children missing education ad-hoc statistics release underlying data files. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License (opens in a new tab) and is intended to meet at least 3 stars for Open Data (opens in a new tab). The methodology document should be referenced alongside this data. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality as well as explaining methodology used in producing the data.

Coverage

The release provides information on the number of children missing education at census date in each term, plus the number of children missing education at any time in the previous academic year.

File formats and conventions

LA and regional data has been rounded to the nearest 10, national figures are rounded to the nearest 100. 

The following convention is used throughout the underlying data. 

x - unavailable

low - denotes figures based on count that rounds to 0, but is not 0. Figures may not sum to breakdowns due to rounding.

Data files

All data files associated with this releases are listed below with guidance on their content. To download any of these files, please visit our data catalogue.

Children missing education at census date

• Filename: cme_census.csv
• Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
• Time period: 2022/23 Autumn term to 2022/23 Summer term
• Content:

  The number of children missing education at the census date in each term. Includes Autumn 2022 to Summer 2023.

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
cme_census_date	CME at census date

Footnotes

1. Local authorities have a duty under section 436A of the Education Act 1996 to make arrangements to establish the identities of children in their area who are not registered pupils at a school and are not receiving suitable education otherwise. Discussions with local authorities suggest that the data is an accurate reflection of the number children they have identified but there is some variation in practice, including around when a child should be recorded as CME. This means that whilst the data is an accurate reflection of the number of CME on record within local authorities, it may not represent a consistently defined estimate of all CME across the country.
2. Data was received from 91% of local authorities in the Autumn term, 93% in the Spring term and 96% in the Summer term. To account for non-response, national and regional figures have been uprated based on local authority pupil populations.

Children missing education at any point in the academic year

• Filename: cme_academic_year.csv
• Geographic levels: Local authority; National; Regional
• Time period: 2021/22
• Content:

  The number of children missing education at any point in the academic year. Includes 2021/22 academic year only.

Variable names and descriptions

Variable names and descriptions for this file are provided below:

Variable name	Variable description
cme_full_year	CME at any time in academic year

Footnotes

1. Local authorities have a duty under section 436A of the Education Act 1996 to make arrangements to establish the identities of children in their area who are not registered pupils at a school and are not receiving suitable education otherwise. Discussions with local authorities suggest that the data is an accurate reflection of the number children they have identified but there is some variation in practice, including around when a child should be recorded as CME. This means that whilst the data is an accurate reflection of the number of CME on record within local authorities, it may not represent a consistently defined estimate of all CME across the country.
2. Data was received from 91% of local authorities in the Autumn term, 93% in the Spring term and 96% in the Summer term. To account for non-response, national and regional figures have been uprated based on local authority pupil populations.