Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans his Department has to reform school performance measures to include destination data and include the number of school students who enter employment or work-based training.

The Department for Education aims is to publish both the key stage 4 (KS4) and key stage 5 (KS5) destination measures in performance tables once we are content that the data are robust enough. KS4 education destinations are already included in performance tables, and have been since 2013, but before we publish full destinations data we have to test and evaluate it fully to ensure reliability.

We published the KS5 destination measure as experimental statistics in the 2014 destinations statistical first release[1] because of the inclusion of new institutions, such as independent schools and special schools, for the first time. The employment, training and characteristics data need to be fully tested and evaluated before they can be published on the performance tables website. Tables, including employment data and breakdowns of the data based on student characteristics for former KS4 students, have also been published in the destination measures' statistical first release (experimental statistics) alongside the KS5 data.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-destinations