Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of the under reporting of young carer numbers in the school census 2025.

The impact of caring on education has been hidden for too long. The school census data is already shining a light on this issue despite the underreporting. It has given the department hard evidence on young carer’s attendance, suspensions and exclusions, and we are aiming to publish data on their educational progress and attainment at both key stage 2 and key stage 4 this autumn.

The department expects this data to continue to improve over time as the collection becomes better established, but we are looking at the ways the data is entered to see if there are technical changes that can be made to support more accurate reporting without overly burdening schools.