Primary and lower secondary education

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Education and Population, Social Statistics
Martin Herskind
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Primary and lower secondary education 2023

The purpose of the statistics on the Danish primary and lower secondary education is to present the number of pupils and the scale of pupils per class in the Danish school system. The statistics describe the intake and graduation from the basic school system, which in Denmark are the primary and lower secondary schools. In the present form, the statistics are comparable from 2007, from 2009 for number of pupils per class and from 2012 for special needs education.

Statistical presentation

The primary and lower secondary educational statistics are a yearly analysis of the populations' enrollment and completion in the basic school system from grade 0 to 10/11th grade. The statistics also cover the participation in special needs classes and number of pupils per class. The statistics are broken down by grades and types of schools, age, gender, heritage and geography. The school statistics are part of The Student Register, which is a longitudinal register allowing one to follow the educational career of each student throughout all the educational programs constituting the student's educational career.

Statistical processing

The dataset of the Danish primary and lower secondary education statistics is based on annual reports from administrative systems of the schools that is collected annually for The Student Register. The majority of data is collected by system to system reporting. However, there are a few educational institutions that report through web-based questionnaires. Following the data collection phase, Statistics Denmark carries out an extensive validation of the collected data.

Further information about special needs education is collected once a year. Data from public schools is collected via the administrative systems, where as the private school data is collected via the Ministry of Education.

Relevance

The statistics are relevant for public administrators, scientists and other analysts, journalists and citizens etc. as basis for prognoses, analyses and planning purposes. The basic data of the statistics is used as background data for most of the personal statistics of Statistics Denmark and it is the basis for the Statbank tables concerning education.

The statistics document the intake and departure from the primary and lower secondary educational system, as well as how the students move from one class or education to another within the Danish educational system and the statistics form the basis for many of the education tables in Statistics Denmark's databank.

Accuracy and reliability

The reliability of the educational information is considered to be high. The information in the statistics is obtained from the institutions' administrative registers and goes through comprehensive error check procedures in connection with the annual data collections.

Timeliness and punctuality

The statistics are published 3 to 4 months after the end of the reference time. The statistics are usually published without delay in accordance with the scheduled date.

Comparability

Statistics Denmark has produced statistics about the number of pupils in the Danish primary and lower secondary education school system since the 19th century. In its present form, the statistics are comparable since 2007. Before 2007, grades 0 to 7 were not compiled. From 2007, all grades from grade 0 to 10/11 are compiled. The number of pupils per class has been calculated since 2009. Information regarding special needs education has been gathered since 2011.

The statistics are produced according to the common European guidelines and are comparable to statistics from other countries published by OECD.

Accessibility and clarity

These statistics are published in the StatBank under Primary and lower secondary education and in a Danish press release. For further information go to the subject page for these statistics.