UK “Children, Schools, and Families” Benchmarking July 23, 2007
Posted by rickbarth in Uncategorized.trackback
I thought that some of you would enjoy this information because it is the first I have seen from Prime Minister Brown’s new “Department of Children, Schools, and Families” which was very recently created to integrate the child welfare, juvenile justice, and education under one roof and secretary. There was a bit of harrumpffing from those who lamented the loss of status of education, from its own department, but I think the idea is quite intriguing.
Also, this piece shows the longstanding effort that they have made to find “statistical neighbor” communities in the UK. This is more sophisticated than what we typically do in the US and the methods are worth a look. http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/STA/t000712/index.shtml
This is the first I’ve heard the term, statistical neighbors but it “fits” as a way of benchmarking performance with communities that have similar characteristics. It looks like we can learn something from these approaches - especially if we examine trends in indicators over time.