The report, Social Focus in Brief: Children 2002, published last week, looks at recent trends in the four key areas of social circumstances, education, health and lifestyle. It found that there were 12.1 million children aged under 16 in the UK in 2000 - 6.2 million boys and 5.9 million girls. About one in five (20 per cent) children in Britain lived in lone parent families in 2001, compared with 12 per cent 20 years earlier.
The data for education show that the number of three-and four-year-olds attending schools in the UK has tripled in the 30 years to 2001-02. In England in 2001 the proportion of children reaching the required standard in each core subject of the National Curriculum was generally lower in older age groups. At Key Stage 1, 87 per cent of boys and 90 per cent of girls reached the expected standard in mathematics, compared with 67 and 70 per cent respectively at Key Stage 3.
The figures also show Britain's roads are becoming safer in a long-term decline in child road deaths since the early 1980s, when the annual average was around 560 deaths. In 2000, 191 children were killed on the roads, 30 fewer than the previous year.
The proportion of children walking to school has fallen over the past 15 years but it remains children's main form of travel to school. In the period 1998-2000, 56 per cent of children aged five to ten and 43 per cent of 11-to 16-year-olds walked to school.
Girls were found to spend more than boys each week during 2000-01 - 13.20 compared with 11.20. Girls were more likely to spend their pocket money on clothing, footwear and personal goods, while boys spent theirs on food, non-alcoholic drinks and leisure goods.
Four out of five children in England, Wales and Northern Ireland had access to a computer at home and more than half had access to the Internet.
This number is lower than in 1971 when there were 14.3m children.