Children & Young People
In this theme, our researchers explore how administrative data can help us better understand children and young people’s lives and experiences, and how these can affect them as children and in later adult life.
Our work supports the generation of robust, evidence-based insights to tackle child poverty, improve educational outcomes and enhance wellbeing. It includes a strong focus on the “ABCs” of education — Attainment, Attendance, Behaviour and Curriculum — with particular interest in linking attendance, exclusion and school behaviour data to better understand risks and opportunities for early intervention.
Lead: Professor Morag Treanor, University of Glasgow
Improving outcomes for children and young people is central to Scottish Government policy, reflected in national frameworks such as Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC), Bringing Hope, Building Futures: Tackling child poverty delivery plan 2026-2031 and The Promise. One of the government’s ambitions is to eradicate child poverty, and improving the lives of children and young people is a clear focus of the 2025/26 Programme for Government (PfG).
Research into care-experienced children is a key priority, supporting delivery of The Promise and related legislation. By using linked administrative data from across health, education and social care, our researchers aim to foster and contribute to collaborative partnerships that maximise the use of existing data to understand children’s lives, and to undertake research regarding the rights and wellbeing of children, including in relation to their family life, their health, education and the economic conditions in which they grow up.
Key datasets such as the Looked After Children Longitudinal Dataset are a valuable resource to enable a wide range of research.
As with all of our research, we carry out public engagement to reassure both adults and children that all data is kept safe and secure by following the "Five Safes" framework, and that we respect individuals' rights to privacy and confidentiality.
By engaging with children, we also gain valuable feedback on what they think about researchers using their data. We discuss their expected outcomes of a project, compare these with actual outputs, and explore the reasons for any differences.
During these sessions, participants often share the best channels for communicating and engaging with children and young people, helping us to improve how we share outputs.
An example of developing additional communication methods to reach children and young people can be seen in the video below.
Overall, this theme supports research to better understand how Scotland is performing for its children and young people, and how their experiences can be improved to change their outcomes.
