Empowering Parents, Improving Accountability

Report

  • Public services

Can data really tell us anything about the quality of teaching in our schools? In the first major report from the Open Public Services Network (OPSN), we focus on the value and accessibility of available information about the quality of teaching in secondary schools. 

Engage with OUR research

 

We have undertaken new analysis using information sourced from the Department of Education (DfE), to make it accessible to parents, carers, teachers and school governors. 

The challenges facing public services, notably schools, are stark, not just because there will be less money but also because of the pressure of rising demand. By 2030, an additional six per cent of GDP will have to be spent on public services simply to meet the social costs of an ageing society. However, online technologies and open data are key facilitators in allowing citizens to exert greater control over their lives. Schools, more than most public services, have been at the frontline of publicly accessible performance information, and are acutely aware of its benefits and pitfalls. 

We have undertaken new analysis using information sourced from the Department of Education (DfE), to make it accessible to parents, carers, teachers and school governors. The report sets out how we have gone about this task. Alongside the report, we are publishing a data set with the relevant figures for every secondary school in the country. 

This report recommends the following:

  • Firstly, more data is released in order to drive improvement and enable the public to be better informed about the quality of teaching in schools
  • Secondly, certain ways of presenting information should be employed to make statistics more meaningful to the public.
  • Thirdly, the DfE should make this information publicly available.
  • Finally, the DfE should fund a (sampled) survey for all teachers to understand their perception of the school in which they work.

2013/14 Data

The dataset is published under an Attribution CC BY licence. This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon our work, even commercially, as long as the OPSN is credited for the original creation.

Download data: GCSE enrolment data 2013-14

2013 Data

The following education dataset worksheets are published under an Attribution CC BY license. This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the work, even commercially, as long as OPSN is credited for the original creation:

Download KS4_Subject_Entries_Amended_2013 (Excel File, 10MB)

Download KS4_Subject_Attainment_Amended_2013
 (Excel File, 16.5MB)

Download KS4_Overall_Amended_2013 (Excel File, 2.7MB)

The following education dataset worksheet is published under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND license. This means you can download the data and share them with others as long as you credit OPSN, but you can’t change it in any way or use it commercially:

Download KS4_FFT_VA_Amended_2013 (Excel File, 1MB)

Find out what this data means by reading the analysis by our partners FFT.

2012 Data

We are keeping the 2012 dataset on our site to allow researchers to undertake multi year comparisons.

The following education dataset worksheets are published under an Attribution CC BY license. This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the work, even commercially, as long as OPSN is credited for the original creation:

Download KS4 Subject Entries (Excel file, 10MB)

Download KS4 Subject Attainment (Excel File, 16.2MB)

Download KS4 Overall (Excel file, 2.7MB)

The following education dataset worksheet is published under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND license.

Download KS4 FFT (Excel File, 1MB)

Methodology

To find out more about the methods used by OPSN please read the following technical papers:

Download Applying Statistical Process Control Methods to School Performance Data (PDF, 555KB)
Download OPSN Reference Group: Curriculum Breadth (PDF, 440KB)

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