Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government why the Department for Education's research brief, <i>Factors associated with achievement: key stage 4</i>, does not make any reference to the family structure in which the child is growing up, and in particular makes no distinction between a child being brought up by both parents living together and a child living in a single-parent family.

The aims of the research reported in Factors associated with achievement: key stage 4, were to assess the quality of the current measure of socio-economic deprivation used by the Department for Education and to identify potential alternative proxy indicators for deprivation.

The attached research brief and full report examines the relationship between attainment and household employment characteristics, including whether it is a single-parent household, and whether at least one parent was in full-time employment. This model was not included in the research brief because it was not considered a feasible alternative.

The background characteristics used in the research were collected as part of the first wave of the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England (LSYPE), which did not ask questions directly addressing the other factors mentioned. The research was exploratory, but also pragmatic, examining a broad range of measures but also mindful that not all measures would be available to the Department in the future. Measures such as domestic violence, alcohol addiction, drugs or parental mental health problems are not collected by the Department and were therefore not included in this analysis.