Dataset details: CRDA/13/DS/5/1996

This dataset comprises data gathered from all schools in England during the Schools' Census conducted by the Department for Education in 1996. The enumeration date was the third Thursday in January, 18th January 1996. Most of the data reflects the position in schools on that date, though some questions required schools to supply data for different periods. For example, primary and secondary schools were asked to give the numbers of teaching staff and the hours worked by non-teaching staff during the week beginning 15th January 1996.

The arrangement of the 1996 dataset continues the method introduced the previous year by the Department for analysing the Schools' Census data. Further information on this change, which reduced the number of datafiles and introduced new classification fields, is given in the Subseries catalogue.

The 1996 dataset contains the following types of data in six tables:

(1) All Schools 1996

This table contains data on the school, pupils, classes, and teaching staff.

• Data on the school: Its LEA and region; the type of school; Form 7 school type, school group and school type indicator; the status code of the school, which indicates the form of its governance; any denominational affiliation of the school; the sex of the school (boys, girls or mixed); and the status and organisation of special schools.
• Data on pupils: numbers of pupils on the registers of schools on the enumeration date by sex, by whether pupils were full-time or part-time, and by age at 31st August 1995.
• Number of special classes in the schools.
• Numbers of pupils in designated nursery classes in primary schools.
• Numbers of boarding pupils, by sex.
• Numbers of pupils aged 4 years old on the register, by term.
• Numbers of sixth form pupils, by sex and year (first or second).
• School meals: numbers of pupils who received free school meals, bought a school meal, brought their own food or had other arrangements; and the numbers of day pupils who were eligible for a free school meal.
• Pupils with statements of special educational needs (SEN), according to their age. This data applies to special and hospital schools, and registered independent schools only. The table also includes dually registered pupils with or without statements, by age. (Data on Time spent by pupils with SENs in special classes for all other school types was no longer required by 1996.)
• Data on teachers: Numbers of qualified teachers, by sex, whether full-time or part-time; totals of full-time and full-time equivalents; and numbers of full-time and part-time teachers with qualifications for SEN. The field PTR expresses the FTE pupil-teacher ratio. More information on Teachers is in the table Teaching staff 1996.
• Data on classes: Hours of lesson time per week Key Stages 1-4.

Numbers of minority ethnic pupils: this new section was added to the Census in 1996, following changes made after 19th September 1995. The separate ethnic monitoring survey was discontinued in favour of a combination of three monitoring approaches; accordingly the Census sought classification of minority ethnic groups as well as numbers identifying the largest of these groups, and pupils for whom English was a second language. (See pp 6-7 of the Form 7 instructions, reference CRDA/13/DD/1/1996/2 in the Dataset Documentation Catalogue). This minority ethnic monitoring aspect of the survey is also reflected in new sections of the data tables for Teaching staff and Non-teaching staff (see below).

Further Education Students: whether any FE Students were enrolled on courses week beginning 15th January 1995. A note on how such students were defined was included in the Instructions (see, for example, reference CRDA/13/DD/1/1996/2 in the Dataset Documentation Catalogue). The field records a Yes/No answer, although the Department sent a detailed questionnaire to schools which answered 'yes', as a separate exercise. (The results of this exercise are not part of this dataset).

Exclusions: schools indicated (by a yes or no answer) whether any pupils were permanently excluded from the school during the 1994-95 academic year. Schools who answered 'YES' were sent a separate questionnaire (not part of this dataset).

Information on new admissions to primary, middle and secondary schools was sought on the questionnaires but does not appear to be included in this dataset.

Completion time (new to 1996): here, the headteacher, and other persons in the school who assisted in the completion of the form, entered the time it took them to complete the form (rounded to the nearest whole hour).

(2) Pupils 1996

This table contains totals of full-time and part-time boy and girl pupils; totals of full-time and part-time boy and girl pupils in nursery classes in primary schools; and data on dually and solely registered pupils. The field AGE_C, which contains 24 values which correspond to the age ranges as usually set out on the Form 7 forms, allows greater flexibility in the analysis of the data.

(3) Courses of study 1996

The table contains information on courses of study followed by older pupils for secondary schools (including Independent schools and City Technology Colleges. This table shows numbers of pupils aged between 16-19 and over on 31st August 1995, analysed by course of study. Types of course (including Post Advanced level, 'AS' courses, GCSE, National Vocational Qualification, BTEC Certificates and Diplomas) are listed in the field COURSE.

(4) Teaching staff 1996

Total numbers of male and female teaching staff, by type of teacher, and whether full-time or part-time; and data on the full-time equivalents of part-time staff. The three fields TCHRTYP_1, TCHRTYP_2 and TCHRTYP_3, containing between them the names of 19 teacher types, allow for flexibility in the analysis of the data. Among the new teacher types included in the Census for 1996 (there were only 12 types in 1995), are teachers of minority ethnic pupils who were employed to 'meet the particular needs' of such pupils, or as 'teachers of English as a second language'.

Information about teachers on long-term paid absence, and relief teachers providing cover for short-term absence, was sought on the questionnaires but does not appear to be included in this dataset. The same applies to information concerning advertised teacher vacancies in schools on the census date.

(5) Non-teaching staff 1996

This table does not give total numbers of support staff, but it does provide information on their categories and working hours. The categories of non-teaching staff include Education Support Staff (E.S.S.) (eg nursery assistants, special needs support staff, bilingual assistants); Other Education Support Staff (O.E.S.S.) (matrons and nurses, medical staff, librarians etc); and administrative/clerical staff (eg secretaries, bursars). Education Support Staff includes staff employed to meet the needs of minority ethnic pupils (eg bilingual assistants). These are coded in the field ASCODE2_C. For each category of non-teaching staff, the table records the full-time equivalents based on the number of hours worked by staff in the census week.

(6) Classes as taught 1996

Schools were asked to provide information on classes as taught during a selected period on the day of enumeration. The data in this table is analysed by class type, class number, numbers of pupils, numbers of teachers, class size breakdown, and numbers of teachers and non-teaching staff in class. For 1996, fields on Key Stage and Activity of the class have been added.

The dataset contains a number of derived fields, ie fields whose values were calculated by the Department using information supplied by the school. For example, primary and secondary schools were required to record on their forms the total "directed" hours per week of part-time teaching staff and the hours worked per week by full-time and part-time non-teaching staff; from this the full-time equivalents of staff were calculated by the Department.

For further information on the Schools' Census, see the Series Catalogue.

The data received on 29th June 2007 was in Qstat format. It was exported into csv format using the export function in Qstat (version 2.11 for Windows). The files then had their line endings changed from the DOS to the Unix standards.

A QStat data dictionary was also transferred for each of the tables within this dataset, providing descriptions of the fields. These existed in non-encoded, plain text format.

NDAD holds 28 examples of documentation used in the 1996 Schools' Census. These include blank copies of Form 7 for LEA and grant-maintained primary, middle and secondary schools, and City Technology Colleges; Form 7M for special schools; Form 7H for general hospital schools; Form 11 for nursery schools; and Form 101A for registered independent schools. NDAD also holds copies of Instructions for completing the forms. See the Dataset Documentation Catalogue, references CRDA/13/DD/1/1996/1-28.

Additional documentation which may be of interest includes a blank copy of Form 7R (Pupil Referral Units) 1996, and instructions for completion. However, it is not known if any data gathered using this form is included in the 1996 dataset. See the Dataset Documentation Catalogue, references CRDA/13/DD/1/1996/20-21.

The dataset comprises the following table(s):

The datasets were transferred with a data dictionary which included original field descriptions. Unlike some tables in this series, the field descriptions for tables in this dataset showed no signs of truncation. Some fields contained abbreviations: explanatory notes have been added by NDAD, using information from other Schools' Census datasets and documentation.

In the All schools table (SCSC96VD) the field LEA96 contains 24,679 records which are not a valid choice, and field LEA97 contains 21,857 records which are not a valid choice. These fields only contain codes for those LEAs that changed following a local government reorganisation and they do not include codes for the vast number of LEAs that remained the same, hence the large number of invalid choices. It is likely that the fields MEGPA, MEGPB, MEGPC and MEGPD should have been coded, although no codes or values were defined in the data dictionary provided. There are seven records which contain the value '99' in one or more of the fields BURDEN1, BURDEN2, BURDEN3, BURDEN4, BURDEN5 and BURDEN6. Although this may indicate the time spent, it is more likely that '99' was used as a 'not applicable' code. Users should also bear this in mind if analysing the field BURDTOT, which is the total of these fields.

In the table Teaching staff (SCTC96VD) a number of fields contain records which are not valid choices. Field TCHRTYPE_1 has 15,780 such records, TCHRTYPE_2 has 69,512, and field TCHRTYPE_3 has 73,228. The explanation for this is that the codes and values for teacher types have been split (somewhat arbitrarily) between these three fields. When queried, it becomes clear that all three fields in fact contain the same data, whether expressed in code or in text. This small anomaly accounts for the large number of invalid choices.

In the Classes as taught table (SCCL96VD), there are 130,464 records where the field CLASIZE2 is not a valid choice. This field holds the actual class size which is also held in the field PUPILS. The codes and values in the data dictionary only coded for classes from size 26 to 40, which explains the large number of invalid choices.

Some simple statistical functions (mean, counts) were performed on the original data files using QStat, and the results were compared with the newly created CSV files. No differences were found.