At a conference organised by the Sex Education Forum in Manchester in February I was mesmorised, as I'm sure many other delegates were, by the statistics - for example "overall the trend is down" and "on average the downward trend is not on target", but when closely examined for example Tameside's stats show an 11% increase, whereas Hackney is well ahead of target with a 20+% decrease.
What is the use of averaging out statistics over the whole country when clearly the issues are very different even in wards? Is there anything to be gained by seeing an overall downward trend, rather than maintaining a clear focus on both the Tamesides and the Hackneys, so that good practice can be shared and the real issues appreciated?
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