This evening we launch Education Datalab with a report ‘Seven things you might not know about our schools’. Rich data on our schools has been available for over a decade now but, as we hope this report shows, there is still much we can learn. Every piece of analysis we show in this report is the sort of thing that can be done in an afternoon, provided you have access to longitudinal databases with indicators that have been created in a consistent way to monitor changes as the way we measure attainment changes.

The report has been put together by the entire Education Datalab team, but with Mike Treadaway and Rebecca Allen contributing most of the initial ideas for the pieces.

We have asked respondents to comment on each piece of analysis. We did this because no piece of research produces a definitive answer and usually it throws up more questions worth exploring. We aim to turn our curiosity about education in quantitative analysis. We hope you enjoy the report.

Seven things you might not know