CLA Data Sources & Methodology

A CLA pupil that has been imported by your SSDA903 file will only be included in Insight if they are matched to attainment or absence data.

The system will attempt a match on UPN, DOB and Sex.  If one of these fields is different to the attainment data held for the same pupil, they will not be matched and hence not included. For more information on unmatched pupils, see the article NCER CLA Analysis - Unmatched Pupils (Primary)

Importing CLA Pupils

Once the SSDA903 data collection  has been finalised for your authority, the return can be uploaded to Nexus by a user with CLA permissions. The article CLA (SSDA903) describes the import procedure.

Pupils who become looked after following completion of the SSDA903 may not be included in CLA analysis until the submission of the following year's SSDA903. However, Virtual Heads may want to include these children in current analysis or reports. A new import routine in Nexus allows upload of pupils in your current CLA cohort who may not be represented in your current SSDA903. This import can also be used to add missing data for CLA pupils such as ULN or ethnicity. See the article Current CLA Cohort for more information.

Children can also be excluded from your cohort via the Keypas grid Manage Current CLA Cohort.

CLA Terminology

Children Looked After reporting introduces new concepts and data-sets that may be unfamiliar to attainment analysts, but also brings that reporting to an audience previously unfamiliar with the reporting suite. This section is intended to clarify some of those unfamiliar elements.

Data Fields

The DfE have supplied us with the following CLA-specific fields from the SSDA903 collection that
Nova is utilising in its CLA analysis:

• AGE_POC_START: The age of the child at the start of their latest period of care
• PL_CLOUNT: The number of placements a child had in their latest period of care
• POC_DUR: The duration of a child's period of care in days
• POC_COUNT: The number of periods of care a child has had. This will be the number of times a child has entered care in their care history
• SDQ_YEAR: The year that the child's SDQ score corresponds with
• SDQ_SCORE: The Strengths & Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) score held for the child
• SDQ_REASON: The reason for not submitting an SDQ score where one was required
• CLA_12_MONTHS: A flag for whether the child was looked after continuously for 12 months.

SDQ Reason Codes

Where a Strengths & Difficulties Questionnaire cannot be completed for a child, a code can be used to describe the reason for this. The list below defines these codes:

• SDQ1: No form returned as child was aged under 4 or over 17 at date of latest assessment
• SDQ2: Carer refused to complete and return the questionnaire
• SDQ3: Not possible to complete the questionnaire due to severity of the child's disabilities
• SDQ4: Other
• SDQ5: Child or young person refuses to allow an SDQ to be completed

Domains

In many reports the cohort of all pupils is split into various domains. A domain is a subset of pupils within the whole and a single pupil can exist in several of those domains at the same time. The list below describes the definition of those domains:

• National (all schools): The entire reportable national cohort of children, including those from independent and state-funded schools
• National (state-funded schools): The national cohort of children educated in state-funded schools. Excludes pupils in independent schools
• National (CLA): The national cohort of children looked after, including those attending independent as well as state-funded schools
• LA (all schools): The entire cohort of children educated in all schools physically located within the local authority (independent or state-funded)
• LA (state-funded schools): The cohort of children educated in state-funded schools physically located within the local authority
• Virtual School: The cohort of Children Looked After included in the SSDA903 return submitted by the active user's local authority. This includes children educated in schools outside of the local authority but for whom the virtual school is responsible

State-Funded & Mainstream Schools

The definition of a state-funded school and a mainstream follows the DfE's NPD definitions and includes the following school types:

• Academy - Sponsor Led (Mainstream: Yes)
• Community School (Mainstream: Yes)
• Voluntary Aided School (Mainstream: Yes)
• Voluntary Controlled School (Mainstream: Yes)
• Foundation School (Mainstream: Yes)
• City Technology College (Mainstream: Yes)
• Community Special School
• Foundation Special School
• Academy - Special School
• Academy - Converter (Mainstream: Yes)
• Free School - Mainstream (Mainstream: Yes)
• Special Free School
• Converter Special Academy
• Free School - UTC (Mainstream: Yes)
• Free School - Studio School (Mainstream: Yes)
• Academy 16-19 Converter

Any schools outside of those in this list are considered 'Other School' types.

More information can be found at gov.uk.

Data Sources

Check the table below for information about the CLA dataset we are using in Nexus and what attainment dataset we match that to.

Nova works from live data whilst Insight works on cached data meaning that Insight pages will load quickly. As Insight's data is refreshed overnight, you may have to wait until the following morning before it includes any  data you may have imported via Keypas.

	Ac. Year 2016/17	Ac. Year 2017/18	Ac. Year 2018/19
Absence CLA Attainment	Keypas DfE	Keypas DfE	Keypas Keypas
EYFSP CLA Attainment	Keypas Keypas	Keypas Keypas	Keypas Keypas
Phonics CLA Attainment	Keypas Keypas	Keypas Keypas	Keypas Keypas
KS1 CLA Attainment	DfE DfE	DfE DfE	DfE DfE
KS2** CLA Attainment	DfE DfE	DfE DfE	** **
KS4 CLA Attainment	DfE DfE	DfE DfE	DfE DfE

 ** For key stage 2 you will be able to choose your own data source on the Insight settings page. If you choose the NPD data source, both CLA and attainment data will be NPD, similarly, choosing a Keypas data source will mean both CLA and attainment data are Keypas.  

Significance Testing Methodology

Significance testing is done to determine whether a virtual school's value for an indicator is a strength, a challenge or within normal bounds.

Significance testing for KS2 progress is done at pupil level, all other indicators are school level.

School-level 5-sigma Confidence Interval Significance Test

NatStdDev = The national standard deviation of school-level indicator values.

NatAvg = The national average of school-level indicator values.

Coh = The number of eligible pupils in the focus domain (e.g. school).

CI = The 5-sigma confidence interval for the indicator of the focus domain.

Val = The indicator value of the focus domain being tested.

CI = 5 * (NatStdDev / SQRT(Coh))

Sig+ if Val - CI > NatAvg

Sig- if Val + CI < NatAvg

...else, not significant

Pupil-level 95% Confidence Interval Significance Test

NatStdDev = The national standard deviation of pupil-level indicator values.

NatAvg = The national average of pupil-level indicator values.

Coh = The number of eligible pupils in the focus domain (e.g. school).

CI = The 95% confidence interval for the indicator of the focus domain.

Val = The indicator value of the focus domain being tested.

CI = 1.96 * (NatStdDev / SQRT(Coh))

Sig+ if Val - CI > NatAvg

Sig- if Val + CI < NatAvg

...else, not significant

Suppression and Rounding

Due to the sensitive nature of children looked after data, we've implemented protection measures into our analysis that both suppress and round values to prevent the identification of individuals which would otherwise potentially be possible by applying multiple filters.

Note that suppression and rounding only apply to National CLA cohorts and their sub-aggregates. The Virtual School cohort and state-funded cohorts are neither suppressed nor rounded. 

• All count values are rounded to the nearest 10
• Unrounded count values of 5 or less are replaced with an ‘x’
• Calculated values (such as percentages and averages) with a numerator of 5 or less or a denominator of 10 or less are replaced by an ‘x’
• Calculated values are not based on rounded numerators and denominators