Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information her Department holds on the number of classifications that children's services use to record child sexual abuse.

The number of episodes of children in need with the ‘sexual abuse’ and ‘child sexual exploitation’ factors identified in an assessment in the year ending 31 March 2024 can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/12ce1c63-e357-4177-3d87-08ddae36ea5c. Factors identified at the end of assessment are additional factors that social workers record as being relevant in a case.

These figures are based on assessment factors recorded against individual episodes of need, which begin when a child is referred to children’s social care services and is assessed as being in need of children’s social care services. Each unique factor is counted once against a given episode, irrespective of the number of times the same factor was recorded in that episode. However, as a child can have more than one episode of need during the year ending 31 March, the same child can be recorded more than once for a given factor.

The majority of children have more than one unique factor recorded for each episode of need. It should be noted that not all episodes have factors recorded, but this has improved over time. Nonetheless, there can be differences in the recording practices between local authorities. Therefore this data should be treated with caution and should not be taken to represent the national, regional or local authority prevalence of particular issues.

The number of child protection plans as at 31 March 2024 where sexual abuse was the initial or latest category of abuse is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/a9a79795-cdd0-42fc-8333-08ddaf142d69.