Accuracy and reliability

Overall accuracy

There is good agreement between the educational information about the students from Unilogin and the student in the Student Register, which undergoes an extensive quality assurance in connection with the annual data collections. Therefore, the accuracy of information about the students is assessed to be good. Likewise, the precision of information about the groups and teachers is judged to be in reasonable agreement with independent registers to the extent that they can be compared.

The activities cannot be directly verified against other sources. There are 2 conditions in particular which mean that there is uncertainty linked to the activities. The activities are described in a free text field, which Statistics Denmark attempts to translate into one of the mandatory school subjects and, if this is not possible, into the category "other subject" and errors may occur in this translation. Mandatory school subjects can be mistakenly translated to "other subject" because the text cannot be recognized and they can also be translated into an incorrect mandatory subject. Furthermore, not all schools register all their activities in AULA. Some schools are missing most activities, in other schools only some groups lack activities or some special activities are missing.

Sampling error

Not relevant for this statistics.

Non-sampling error

The degree to which activity data in MED-Elementary covers the activities that the students actually had, depends to a large extent on the schools' registration practices. Via AULA, the most recently updated schedule data is collected on a weekly basis. The AULA system is used administratively at the schools and contains the activities that students, parents and teachers see in their timetable. It therefore gives the best possible picture of the actual school day, but the completeness depends on the individual recording practices of the school.

A lack of coverage of students can also be due to a lack of reports from a supplier.

All students in the Danish school system have a Unilogin, but it is primarily the public elementary schools that use the AULA system. Therefore, it is primarily public schools that are represented with information about lessons in MED-Elementary.

Quality management

Statistics Denmark follows the recommendations on organisation and management of quality given in the Code of Practice for European Statistics (CoP) and the implementation guidelines given in the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (QAF). A Working Group on Quality and a central quality assurance function have been established to continuously carry through control of products and processes.

Quality assurance

Statistics Denmark follows the principles in the Code of Practice for European Statistics (CoP) and uses the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (QAF) for the implementation of the principles. This involves continuous decentralized and central control of products and processes based on documentation following international standards. The central quality assurance function reports to the Working Group on Quality. Reports include suggestions for improvement that are assessed, decided and subsequently implemented.

Quality assessment

The quality of data has been assessed through a series of analyses and comparisons with independent data sets.

The student population is based on Statistics Denmark's Student Registry, to which relationships are formed with groups for the students found in Unilogin. When comparing the students in the two data sources, a match percentage of grade level and institution number of between 99.2 pct. and 97.4 pct. has been found for grades 0-9 in the school year 2020-2021.

The number of employees has been assessed by comparing Unilogin and AULA data with the register of Employment Statistic for Employees (BFL). The study shows that 98 pct. of the employees who are associated with activities are employed during their entire career at the institution. If you look at which work functions the employees in question are classified under in BFL, you can see a similar distribution of roles for employees in MED-Elementary. In addition, there is reasonable agreement between the number of teachers associated with activities in MED-Elementary and STIL's inventory of the number of teachers in public basic schools (Competence data).

The groups in MED-Elementary are assessed by comparing the students' main groups with the students' class designation in the Basic School Registry. The study shows that the vast majority of the groups have 100 pct. agreement among associated students in the two registries,, and the second largest part of the groups has 91-99 pct. agreement, corresponding to one or two students who deviate per group. Less than 2 pct. of the groups have less than 90 pct. agreement.

The three analyses are documented in internal reports, but an overall summary of the results can be found here: [Notat om kvalitet 2020/2021](https://www.dst.dk/ext/46793106127/0/uddannelse/Notat-om-kvalitet-- pdf)

Activity data cannot be verified by any independent data source. By translating the activity designations into a mandatory subject, the number of hours at each individual school is compared to the minimum requirement or the indicative number of hours in the primary school executive order. This comparison gives an impression of how good the registration practice is at each school. It is estimated that in 84 pct. of primary schools, students have on average between 85 pct. and 115 pct. of the recommended number of hours/minimum hours in the executive order in the schoolyear 2021-2022.

For a detailed description of the statements for the individual schools, see the documentation: Note on coverage

Data revision - policy

Statistics Denmark revises published figures in accordance with the Revision Policy for Statistics Denmark. The common procedures and principles of the Revision Policy are for some statistics supplemented by a specific revision practice.

Data revision practice

There are no ongoing revisions of the annual versions of MED-Elementary.