Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department plans to carry out further consultation on analysing family circumstances and education.

Since launching the technical consultation on Analysing family circumstances and education on 12th April the close date has been extended to 31st July 2017 to allow more opportunity for responses. We will be discussing the method further with users and considering views on the methods set out here to consider the way forward for our analytical publications.

We set out in the consultation document that we would welcome views on: expanding the number of years for analysis; including more sources of income; adjusting for housing costs; and on the methodology outlined for looking at ordinary working families, and how to refer to the group in DfE publications.

Ahead of the original consultation being published, officials met with a range of academics working in the sector to discuss the proposed methodology and once we have collated responses received since the publication, will continue to seek further input from other interested groups. We will also continue to work closely with analysts at Department for Work and Pensions as we develop the data sources and methodology.