1. Education and Training Statistics Working Group, May 2011
Item 5.3 – Quality reporting in the UOE
Working Group - Education and Training Statistics, May 2011, Luxembourg

2. Legal context
Commission Regulation (EU) No 88/2011 of 2 February 2011 as regards statistics on education and training systems says the following in its annex II:
Data quality requirements:
Quality reporting dimensions (relevance, accuracy, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility and clarity, comparability, and coherence),
Compliance with the definitions and concepts as stated by guidelines for the UOE data collection on education systems.
Data quality report:
Yearly;
Member States receive draft quality report partially pre-filled 3 months in advance of the transmission deadline referred to in Article 4(2);
Member States shall supply the Commission (Eurostat) with the completed quality report referred to in Article 4(2).

3. Developments until now
UOE meeting (April 2010): 6 principles;
Current proposal of content: compliance with the legal framework and the 6 principles:
7 chapters with 4 main headings: only partially compliant to follow UOE manuals structure and ESQRS;
General chapter regarding main concepts: compliant;
Comparability of data and national publication of data: compliant except for information on data provided at national level;
Quality reporting for both obligatory and optional tables: compliant;
Countries should not report on what is already in the ISCED mappings: compliant;
Quality report framework should contain information which could also be published as meta-data information: partially compliant (70% overlap between ESQRS and ESMS*).
* In principle, the remaining part to be filled in by Eurostat.

4. Content of UOE quality report: Proposal (1)
Chapters
Main content
Pre-filling by Eurostat
National education system
Links to Eurydice, other links known to Eurostat and relevant for explaining the national education system + Additional information
Yes partly
Definitions and concepts
Deviations referring to section 3 (UOE manual volume 1, chap 1),
(e.g. special education, adult education programs, domestic educational activities, etc.)
Yes partly (e.g. mobile students)
Statistical units
Deviations referring to section 3 (UOE manual volume 1, chap1),
(e.g. entrants, new entrants by fields of education, ‘class’ concept, etc.) No
Classification criteria
Deviations referring to section 4 (UOE manual volume 1, chap 1).
(e.g. Government –dependent versus independent private institutions, full time versus part-time students, etc.)
Expenditure
Deviations referring to section 5 (UOE manual volume 1, chap 1).
(e.g. ancillary services expenditures, evening child care, etc.)
ISCED
One question for each level of ISCED 1997 about programs not covered by the national UOE data (and where they should be covered following the manual).

5. Content of UOE quality report: Proposal (2)
Chapters
Main content
Pre-filling by Eurostat
Estimation
Where estimations are used for deriving the numbers inserted in the UOE tables.
Yes partly (from the information collected in 2009)
Documentation
Focus on section 9 of volume 2 of the UOE manuals and relate to issues as reference dates, weighting and reporting methods
Yes
Changes and other notes
Information from the 'changes' sheet available for each UOE questionnaire/workbook
Revisions
Reporting on possible revisions done for the data collection, their cause and the consequence. No
Sources
Focus on the characteristics of the administrative registers and surveys used to compile UOE data
Yes very partially
Timeliness
When data are available at national level including when they are collected.
Yes partially (i.e. punctuality)

6. Format and tools of quality reporting
The current proposal for content of the quality report (eg. only for demonstration purposes):
Format: Structured according to the UOE logic,
Tool: Excel format.
The final Quality report will be:
Format: Structured according to the ESQRS → Need to map the agreed content of the UOE quality report with the ESQRS structure,
Tool: NRME (National Reference Metadata Editor).

7. Timetable Step 1 Agreement of the content of the UOE quality report.
May until October 2011
Step 2
Final UOE quality report available and transformation into NRME
October-December 2011
Step 3
Testing of UOE quality report including tool (3-4 countries for UOE data collection)
January-March 2012
Step 4
Results of testing phase
ETS WG, spring 2012
Step 5
Send out the first pre-filled UOE quality reports
Summer 2012
Step 6
Consequences of revised UOE collection to be implemented for annex II and in the UOE quality reporting structure (for 2014 exercise)
Winter
Step 7
Return of first completed UOE quality reports (according to regulation 88/2011)
March 2013
Step 8
Publication of first meta-data (ESMS) based on the UOE quality reports
Summer 2013
Step 9
Return of second updated UOE quality reports (according to regulation 88/2011)
January 2014
Step 10
Publication of updated meta data
Spring-Summer 2014
Step 11
Third (possibly modified) pre-filled UOE quality report to be sent to countries
Spring 2014

8. The ETS delegates are invited to:
1) Discuss and agree on the proposed content of the UOE quality report.
which level of detail is requested?
To agree to the timing proposed for implementing the quality report.
3) To do a small pilot for 3 to 4 countries for testing the content, format and the tool in early 2012 with reference to the data collected in the UOE 2011 collection. Any volunteers?