Nursery World - Opinion: Editor's view - Barbecues may be out but the summer of statistics is here

A welter of statistics and reports has been released in the past week or so despite the fact that it is summer holiday season. Perhaps government and other bodies are hoping that no one will be looking too closely.

Well, Nursery World, as ever, has been paying close attention and reporting on all the important facts and figures, as you can see from this week's news pages. Unfortunately, not all the figures that we should have are available, with Ofsted's quarterly statistics on the number of childcare providers and places appearing minus the data on places (see News, page 3).

This follows May's hiatus, when the figures showed the number of childcare places zooming up despite the number of providers falling sharply - unlikely, as we pointed out at the time.

Now it appears that Ofsted is acknowledging that the data on places is unreliable and may include duplication across the different registers. Nearly a year after the new inspection system was introduced, these problems really ought to have been sorted out.

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