In the academic year 2024-25 (Year 8) tables, for analysis by demographic variables and large geography (region and Active Partnership), the calculation of confidence intervals takes account of strata (local authority) and clustering (school).
Where there is only one school in a strata overall or for the demographic sub-groups being presented, confidence intervals cannot be calculated.
The symbol ^ is used when confidence intervals cannot be calculated because only one school took part in each Active Partnership or local authority covered by the particular demographic or geographic category being shown.
Where Active Partnerships, county councils and local authorities have an unweighted base of less than 150, or only one to two responding schools overall (or for the school phase), results are suppressed as there are too few respondents and/or insufficient variance in the data to produce a reliable result.
Caution is also taken when analysing by these three types of geographical variables, as there may be missing terms (e.g. no summer term responses) or missing school phases (e.g. no school year 3-6 responses) for the academic year, making the response profile differ slightly to previous years.
The report tables use a highlight system and explanatory text, so it is clear for users to take caution. This is explained in more detail in the following section.