"The (named) Children and Young People's Partnership has benefitted from the results of the SHEU survey locally for many years now, and we should like to continue to do so in future."
Reasonably matched
Reasonably matched
SHEU have been publishing from our accumulated databanks in our 'Young People in...' series since 1986, and more recently in our 'Trends' series. We have been offering a little 'health warning' with these reports, as follows:
Each year we produce a report in the Young People series, and however careful we are to describe the populations involved in the surveys, the total picture is often referred to by the media as ‘national data’.
The surveys that give rise to the data are large, numerous, and from many parts of the United Kingdom, but they do not form a deliberately-selected sample. The origin and structure of these surveys is described very carefully and fully on subsequent pages.
Despite this difference, the picture produced by our annual data set typically matches survey outcomes from other data-collection agencies using orthodox strategies such as stratified random sampling. On pages xx–xxvii we draw attention to evidence supporting this claim.
We have recently had an opportunity to assess if there is in fact a bias in the SHEU databanks, and if so, how large or important is it.
OFSTED hold a variety of pieces of contextual information about schools.
In order to test how representative the SHEU samples of schools might be of the country as a whole, OFSTED were asked to compare the SHEU schools with the national sample on some convenient measures. The results are below:
| 2000 | 2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
|||||||
| SHEU schools |
National | SHEU schools |
National | SHEU schools |
National | SHEU schools |
National | SHEU schools |
National | SHEU schools |
National | |
| Pupils eligible for free school meals |
18% | 16% | 18% | 16% | 18% | 15% | 17% | 14% | 17% | 14% | 17% (1) | 14% (2) |
| Pupils with SEN statements |
3% | 3% | 3% | 3% | 3% | 2% | 3% | 2% | 3% | 2% | 3% | 2% |
| Pupils with SEN but without statements |
18% | 17% | 18% | 18% | 17% | 16% | 14% | 13% | 14% | 14% | 15% | 14% |
| First language is known or believed to be other than English |
9% | 7% | 9% | 7% | 9% | 8% | 9% | 9% | 10% | 9% | 10% | 9% |
| White (UK/other) | 83.6% | 86.5% | 83.4% | 86.0% | 82.5% | 87.9% | 80.3% | 82.7% | 81.2% | 83.7% | 81.6% | 83.6% |
(2) 2005 National figures : Upper quartile = 22% Lower Quartile = 6%
2005
SHEU would like to thank David Howarth of OFSTED for his time and diligence in producing this analysis.
Post date:
22 August 2006 12:47