To ask Her Majesty's Government what specific information schools are legally required to collect regarding pupils.
Answered on
14 November 2017
Schools collect a range of information on pupils for their own purposes. Full details of the specific information which schools are required to collect by law is accessible via the links in the attached annex.
Some of this information is required to be submitted by schools to the Department via various data collections which are undertaken throughout the school year. The main types of pupil information collected by the Department are:
Pupil identifiers (name, date of birth, etc).
Pupil characteristics (gender, ethnicity, language, etc).
Pupil attendance and exclusions.
Pupil special educational needs.
Pupil attainment and teacher assessments.
Data collected is stored securely by the Department under a combination of software and hardware controls which meet ISO27001 standards and the government security policy framework. The Department takes privacy extremely seriously and any third-party access to sensitive data is strictly controlled and governed by legal experts and senior civil servants.