Methodology

School placements for children from outside of the UK

• Published: 9 June 2022

Background

This release provides data collected via the ‘School placements for children from outside of the UK’ survey from local authorities.

It provides data on the number of children from outside of the UK who have applied for a school place split by the following countries of origin: 

• Afghanistan (arrivals via Afghanistan Relocation and Assistance Policy or Afghanistan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, and British Nationals) 
• Ukraine (arrivals via the Family Scheme or Homes for Ukraine)
• Hong Kong (arrivals via the Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas) welcome programme)

Data was also asked on applications from ‘All other countries outside of the the UK’, however, because many local authorities have reported not currently holding this information, it is not including in this publication. 

Data is also included on the number of offers made within 15 days of application. There are many reasons why some children have not been offered a place and why some applications may take longer than 15 days to process, including where the Fair Access Protocol is used.

Data quality

This data has been collected and analysed quickly to inform the Department for Education's response to the resettlement of families from Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Ukraine. The DfE recognises the operational importance of publishing this data in a timely manner and so is publishing this it as management information.

The data is collected from local authorities on a voluntary basis with the latest return covering the period 1 September 2021 to 27 May 2022. In the latest return the response rate was 77%. Imputations to adjust for non-response have been made to produce national and regional estimates. See ‘Adjustments for non-response’ section for more detail.

All local authority figures are as reported, with nil returns presented as an ‘x’. In recognition of the uncertainty of the adjustments made for non-response, all national and regional figures have been rounded to the nearest 100. Any figure less than 50 has been presented as ‘low’. 

Some local authorities provided partial data, therefore, the sum of breakdowns (for example, primary plus secondary) may not equal totals within the local authority level data.

Upon receiving the data, quality checks were carried out. This included removing duplicates (in most cases the second return was a correction of the first), adding in late returns that had been provided via email and making adjustments following clarifications from local authorities.

The following local authorities provided the additional notes that should be considered when using their data:

• Knowsley - Figures relating to primary applications and offers relate to the period since 25 April 2022 only; secondary figures cover the full reporting period.
• Bath and North East Somerset - Figures relate to only 59% of schools.
• Camden - Figures provided relate to the number of pupils who have started on roll in schools since September 2021. These have been recorded against ‘offers’.

Adjustments for non-response

The data is collected from local authorities on a voluntary basis with the latest return covering the period 1 September 2021 to 27 May 2022. In the latest return the response rate was 77%. 

Imputations to adjust for non-response have been made to produce national and regional estimates. All local authority figures are as reported, with nil returns presented as an ‘x’. In recognition of the uncertainty of these adjustments, all national and regional figures have been rounded to the nearest 100. Any figure less than 50 has been presented as ‘low’.

The imputation methodology follows:

1. If a local authority provided data in the latest survey, that data is used.
2. If no return was provided - for Ukraine data - data is used from a previous shorter survey. An uplift is applied to these figures based on changes seen between the two surveys for local authorities who supplied returns for both.
3. If no return was provided - for Afghanistan and Hong Kong data - estimates are produced based on each local authorities' population size (pupil numbers from the Spring 2022 school census) and rates seen amongst returning local authorities.
4. If data was provided data for some country of origin but not others, the missing data is assumed zero.

We will review this methodology as the series progresses.