Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of collecting data on the (a) length and (b) frequency of gaps in education for children in care that are the result of placement moves.

The department recognises the need to improve the data available about children’s social care, including making it more relevant to the experience of children and young people during periods of change.

A core part of this work includes understanding the data needs of the children’s social care sector as a whole and scoping ways in which data gaps may be addressed over time. This year the department has published new statistics on stability measures for children looked after, providing further insight on school, placement and social worker stability for these children, here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/stability-measures-for-children-looked-after-in-england/2024.

Existing statutory data is collected for children missing education, school attendance, and children in care. However, it is not yet possible to accurately link these datasets to obtain the information requested, as the children missing education data is collected at a local authority level, while data for children looked after, and school attendance is collected at a child level. Addressing data gaps in children’s social care will be a long-term endeavour due to the need to agree data standards and definitions, as well as redesign local authority and departmental systems before rolling out nationally.