The education system

Social mobility

The Sutton Trust is an educational charity which regularly carries out research on social mobility and educational disadvantage.  The charity’s reports on social mobility range from early years educationthrough primary and secondary school, and access to higher education and the professions.

The OECD has also measured inter-generational mobility in its member countries.

How the education system works: overviews

Even people who’ve been through the education system don’t necessarily understand how it all fits together. The Department for Education (DfE) provides a short briefing note explaining how it works. The DfE also lists definitions for different types of school.

An overview of the number of schools in the UK is provided in the education and training statistics for the UK series. This data is broken down into categories of school, such as nursery, primary, middle, secondary and special schools.

The schools, pupils and their characteristics series (published annually) provides more detailed figures for the number of schools, academies, free schools and faith schools. You can find information on specific schools via the gov.uk website.

How the education system works: details

The House of Commons Library has published a series of briefing notes on various aspects of the UK’s education system. These offer overviews of how different parts of the system work and how they’ve responded to government policies. There are also summary statistics on their performance.

Briefing notes on particular types of school are available for free schools and grammar schools. In addition, the Library publishes a note on historical figures and trends in education for the entire 20th century.

Ofsted publishes statistics covering inspections and outcomes across a range of remits, including early years and childcare, schools (including academies and free schools), teacher training, children and families services and further education and skills.