Why do some Local Education Authorities use an extended list of ethnic background categories?
The DCSF only collects data for national reporting purposes on the basis of the national categories. However in addition to the main list of national categories there is also an extended Key list (URL to Key list). This list contains 70 additional categories which can be used by Local Education Authorities to meet their local data collection needs. These categories have to be agreed or cleared with the DCSF to ensure that there is a consistency in how the extended categories map on to the national categories. Where extended categories are in use, parents and pupils should be made aware of how their ethnicity is recorded on both the local and national categories.
