A user consultation, commissioned by Communities and Local Government and carried out by Oxford Consultants for Social Exclusion (OCSI), identified how the CLG State of the Cities Database could be made more useful to users. This reports presents the recommendations made based on the user consultation.

The report is aimed at users of the State of the Cities Database and people with a general interest in statistics for cities.
It is accompanied by a scoping study by OCSI that looks at the technical feasibility of updating the geographic definitions and data content on the State of the Cities Database.

Click here to view the report...

The report is published as a .pdf document. If you can not view the report, you may need to install Acrobat Reader on your machine.

Tags: Regulation, Systems

Keeping up – Pupils who fall behind in Key Stage 2 reports the findings of a small scale study focusing on pupils who are at risk of not converting a level 2 in English and mathematics at Key Stage 1 into a level 4 at the end of Key Stage 2. The proportion of pupils achieving the national expectation of level 4 at the end of Key Stage 2 has increased significantly. In English, it has increased from 63% in 1997 to 79% in 2006; and in mathematics, it has increased from 58% in 1998 to 76% in 2006. Read More...

Tags: Schools, Attainment

This study increases our understanding of the parenting support market by exploring barriers to market development; developing services in Children’s Centres and Extended Schools; and options for charging for services. Interviews were undertaken with commissioning staff across four case study local authorities; providers at local and national level; and employers and employee benefits advisors. Research concerning charging involved desk research, telephone interviews and a workshop with DfES, GO and parent support organisations.

Tags: Children's Services, Parenting

This paper analyses whether Free School Meal (FSM) status is a valid proxy for socio-economic status when conducting schools related research. The authors compare data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) with FSM data. Significant differences are found between the two sets of data, but this cannot be seen as definitive reasoning for questioning FSM as a measure. ALSPAC is not a nationally representative sample and suffers from a lack of ethnic diversity.

Tags: Schools, Social Issues

This survey collected information from employers about the volume, type and pattern of training they provide; motivations for training; and use of, and satisfaction with, external training providers. The survey consisted of 4,000 telephone interviews with establishments of all sizes and sectors in England. Some comparisons of findings can be made with the larger scale National Employer Skills Survey (NESS05).

Tags: Training

This study investigated ways of improving the measurement of the output of Children’s Social Services in the National Accounts. It was commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills following an independent review in 2005 led by Sir Tony Atkinson, which recommended changes to the way that government output is measured. Measuring the output of Children’s Social Services requires a different approach from that used for private sector goods and services because there are no market prices to indicate the value of interventions. The Atkinson review recommended that what ideally should be measured is the incremental impact that interventions have on client outcomes and welfare. The study’s aim was therefore highly challenging: to recommend a methodology for producing a robust annual output measure that fully reflects the change in welfare to individuals and society from Children’s Social Services’ provision.

Tags: Children's Services, Perfomance Management

This research examined the work and family lives of residential social workers, foster carers, family support workers and community child minders who care for children placed with them by social services. It explored how over the life course, such workers come to, and either do, or do not, sustain a career in care work. The study comprised interviews with managers in local authorities, children’s services and children’s homes; a postal survey of 305 workers in several English local authorities; 24 biographical case study interviews; and a telephone survey one year later with the postal survey respondents exploring loss from and movement within the childcare workforce.

Tags: Vulnerable Children

This paper looks at the association between urban density and pupil attainment of 16 year olds in schooling in England in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Using data combined from the Pupil Level Annual School Census (PLASC) and the National Pupil Database, the authors examine pupils’ progress when switching between schools in different locations as they move from primary to secondary education, by using the change in urban density as a variable in a regression analysis.

Tags: Attainment, Schools