Beyond Tellus2

As we’ve mentioned before, the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda has placed responsibility on local authorities (not parents) for ensuring that children achieve the government’s ‘five outcomes’. LAs have been given a list of indicators and Public Service Agreement targets (PSAs) against which to measure their progress. These include things like the number of children consuming cigarettes, alcohol and/or 5 fruit and veg per day.

We’ve already had the Ofsted ‘Tellus2’ survey in June asking children a great many questions about their habits and home life, and now a new website lists the local authority health and wellbeing surveys going on in schools.

While Camden conducts their surveys anonymously, it has to be asked just how anonymous a questionnaire can be if it is administered in the classroom and obtains sufficient detail to break down results by ethnicity, gender etc. As for the other LAs, assuring children of confidentiality is hardly the same thing as gathering anonymous, aggregate data – that is, assuming one agrees that it’s any of their business in the first place.