Description
This document describes the data included in the ‘Outcomes for children in need, including children looked after by local authorities in England: 2023 to 2024' Accredited Official Statistics underlying data files. This data is released under the terms of the Open Government License and is intended to meet at least three stars for Open Data.
The methodology should be referenced alongside this release. It provides information on the data sources, their coverage and quality and how the data is produced.
Coverage
This statistical release provides data on outcomes measures for children in need (CIN), including children looked after (CLA) by local authorities in England. Data is provided at national, regional, and local authority level.
Children in need data is not available for Hackney local authority for both the 2020 to 2021 and 2021 to 2022 collection years and Hampshire local authority for the 2023 to 2024 collection year. Hackney was unable to provide a return for both the 2021 and 2022 children in need census collections, due to a cyberattack which had a significant impact on their management information systems. Hampshire provided a CIN return for the 2024 collection, however, due to a transition to a new case management and reporting system, there were significant data quality issues affecting the coverage of Hampshire's 2024 this return.
The outcome measures cover:
- special education needs
- early years development (Early Years Foundation Stage Profile)
- educational attainment (at Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4)
- educational progress (between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4)
- destinations from school
- absence from school
- permanent exclusions and suspensions from school
- free school meal eligibility
- type of school attended.
Detailed information on the social care groups and all pupils comparisons is provided in the methodology.
This publication previously included the results of end of KS1 assessments. These became non-statutory from the 2023/24 academic year onwards. Optional assessments were still offered but the results of these are not collected and statistics will not be published.
This publication previously included Key Stage 2 progress measures. These measures will not be published for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years as KS2 pupils in these years did not have KS1 assessments due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Abbreviations of social care group names used throughout this release:
- CIN - children in need, including children on a child protection plan and children looked after. Children in need includes children on child in need plans as well as other types of plan or arrangements. Children in need also includes children awaiting a referral to be considered, an assessment to start or, for an assessment which has started, for the assessment to be completed.
- CINO - children in need, excluding children on a child protection plan and children looked after.
- CPPO - children on a child protection plan, excluding children looked after.
- CLA - children looked after (excludes children who are in respite care in their most recent episode during the reporting year).
Social care groups
Social care groups included within this release are:
- CIN at 31 March
- CINO at 31 March
- CPPO at 31 March
- CLA 12 months at 31 March - CLA continuously for at least twelve months at 31 March.
- CLA less than 12 months at 31 March - CLA continuously for less than twelve months at 31 March.
- CIN at any point - ‘any point’ means at any point during the reporting year (including at 31 March).
- CINO at any point
- CPPO at any point
- CLA at any point
- Ever CIN - last 6 years - children in need, at any point in the last 6 reporting years (including at 31 March).
Note that local authority level data only includes CINO at 31 March, CPPO at 31 March, CLA 12 months at 31 March and FSM data does not include CLA.
At Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4 there are additional groups in the national level data on previously looked after arrangements (PLAA). These are Official Statistics on arrangements for previously looked after children.
- ‘PLAA - Adoption’ - previously looked after children who left care through an adoption.
- 'PLAA - SGO' - previously looked after children who left care through a special guardianship order (SGO).
- ‘PLAA - CAO’ - previously looked after children who left care through a child arrangements order (CAO).
- ‘PLAA - Total’ - previously looked after children who left care through an adoption, SGO or CAO.
Confidentiality (rounding and suppression):
Rounding and suppression is applied to the data. The Code of Practice for Statistics requires that reasonable steps should be taken to ensure that all published or disseminated statistics produced by the DfE protect confidentiality. The publications follow the DfE policy statement on confidentiality (opens in new tab).
National and regional numbers have been rounded to the nearest 10. Local authority numbers are unrounded.
Where a denominator is shown as zero, the original figure submitted was zero.
Percentages are rounded to one decimal place (except for permanent exclusions and suspensions, where they are rounded to two decimal places).
Average Attainment 8 scores are rounded to one decimal place. EBacc average point scores, Key Stage 2 progress measures and Progress 8 measures are rounded to two decimal places.
As a result of rounding components may not sum to totals and percentages may not sum to 100.
For all attainment measures, values of 0 (zero) are suppressed to protect confidentiality. For all other measures, values of 0 (zero) are not primary suppressed. Prior to 2021, values of 0 (zero) were suppressed for all measures.
The following symbols have been used:
‘c’ to protect confidentiality - secondary suppression may also be applied to figures to protect confidentiality
‘z’ for not applicable
‘x’ for not available (updated in 2021 from a colon in 2020)
‘k’ used when a result that is not 0 (zero) would appear as 0 (zero) due to rounding
Data files
All data files associated with this release are listed below with guidance on their content. To download any of these files, please visit our data catalogue.
