Dataset details: CRDA/13/DS/5/1998

This dataset comprises data gathered from all schools in England during the Schools' Census conducted by the Department for Education in 1998.The enumeration date was the third Thursday in January, 15th January 1998. 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 12th January 1998.

The 1998 dataset contains the following types of data in seven tables:

(1) All Schools 1998

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 1997.
• Numbers of pupils in designated nursery classes in primary schools.
• Numbers of boarding pupils, by sex.
• School meals: numbers of pupils who received a free school meal on the enumeration date, and the numbers of day pupils who were eligible for a free school meal.
• Pupils with or without statements of special educational needs (SEN). The table also includes dually registered pupils with or without statements.
• Data on teachers: Numbers of qualified teachers, by sex, whether full-time or part-time; totals of full-time and full-time equivalents; totals of full-time and part-time graduates; and numbers of full-time and part-time teachers with qualifications for SEN. More information on Teachers is in the table Teaching staff 1998.

Ethnicity of pupils: this section had been added to the Census in 1996, following changes made after 19th September 1995. The ethnic categories used in the earlier ethnic monitoring survey remained the same as those used in 1997. For definitions of the terms 'White UK Heritage', 'White European' and 'White other', see for example p 3 of the Form 7PS Completion Notes, reference CRDA/13/DD/1/1998/2 in the Dataset Documentation Catalogue. This part of the survey also sought numbers of pupils for whom English is a second language. The minority ethnic monitoring aspect of the survey is also reflected in sections of the data tables for Teaching staff and Non-teaching staff (see below).

Permanent Exclusions: data previously recorded in this table was recorded in its own table for the 1998 Schools' Census. See Permanent Exclusions 1998, below.

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: 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 1998

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 1998

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 1997, analysed by course of study. Types of course are listed in the field COURSE_C.

(4) Teaching staff 1998

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 four fields TCHRTYP_1, TCHRTYP_2, TCHRTYP_3 and TCHRTYP_4, containing between them the names of 15 teacher types, allow for flexibility in the analysis of the data. Among the teacher types 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 1998

This table gives total numbers of support staff, and also provides information on their categories and working hours, and whether full-time or part-time. 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 categories 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 1998

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. Data on Key Stage and Activity of the class is also available.

(7) Permanent Exclusions 1998

This table recorded the numbers of permanent exclusions for the academic year 1996-97. Schools entered detail on the gender, age (as at 31st August 1996), ethnicity and statement of special educational needs of the excluded pupils. If an excluded pupil had been reinstated following an appeal, they were not counted in the survey.

The 1998 forms sought additional information about exclusions appeals from voluntary aided and special agreement schools: the total number of appeals lodged by parents, number of appeals heard by an independent appeals committee, and number of successful appeals. Similar totals were also sought for admission appeals. None of the results have been recorded in this dataset, however.

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.

Statistics of Education: Schools in England 1998. London, The Stationery Office 1998. Published with the permission of the DfEE.

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 1998 table (SCSC98VC), there are two records which have 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 it 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 (SCTC98VB) a number of fields contain records which are not valid choices. Field TCHRTYPE_1 has 17,602 such records, TCHRTYPE_2 has 70,668, TCHRTYPE_3 has 67,147, and field TCHRTYPE_4 has 68,671 records. The explanation for this is that the codes and values for teacher types have been split (somewhat arbitrarily) between these four fields. When queried, it becomes clear that all four 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 (SCCL98VB), there are 127,249 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 sizes 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.

In addition, a small number of basic statistics (for example the total number of schools and pupils) were compared with the figures published in Statistics of Education: Schools in England 1998. London, The Stationery Office 1998.