Catherine West – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Catherine West on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on the frequency with which children move (a) house and (b) school.

Edward Timpson

The Department does not hold any information specifically on the frequency with which a child moves house or school. Via the termly school census we collect pupil level data, which includes pupil home address and school entry and leaving dates. The National Pupil Database (NPD) is populated with data from the school census and other pupil level collections. To the extent that data are collected termly, it is possible to use NPD data to provide data on home and school moves. However, such analysis has not been carried out to date and developing a sufficiently robust approach and quality assuring the results could only be completed at disproportionate cost.