14yo odd quiz at school- do I complain

I did ask him if there was. ‘Prefer not to say’ option and he said yes but the teacher said not to use that!

Absolutely unacceptable - kick up a huge fuss - if it's an 'official' survey demand that everyone repeats it because the results may have been compromised on account of the inappropriate instructions. Demand that the original results be destroyed on the grounds that people may have been forced to disclose things against their will. Kick up a huge fuss.

You're probably right, in which case the instructions for the teachers should tell them to advise pupils clearly that all the answers are acceptable. It shouldn't depend on the teacher's assumptions. Not telling teachers how to run the survey correctly makes it useless in gathering data.

But flagging up issues to who, on what basis, why without parental contact, and what support given by whom? Certainly not the teachers I hope who are not trained to provide psychological support.

What support do you think is appropriate in the event that a child discloses their sexuality but have not indicated any distress etc and what involvement do you think the parents should have?

Need a bit more context on what it was for and why. And who would have access to this information, including if it was anonymous.

I actually think schools understanding the situations their pupils are in is important, so they can learn how to support young people.

I'd also question if the teacher actually said don't use that box, or if they encouraged them to provide as much information as they could.

No it's not, teenagers sometimes need a bit of prompting to not just take the easy way and click "prefer not to say" just because they can't be arsed to read the rest. There's nothing wrong with telling them only to use that option if they are really uncomfortable with the question.

Especially where schools are engaging outside companies - eg "No Outsiders" which are attached to lobby groups or groups with particular agendas

What I don’t like about this is having to announce your sexuality at a young age. At that age, I had zero sexual experience! I fancied wholly inappropriate people because I didn’t know any real people (ie boys). Eg recall fancying princes from my history text books, seriously! I was also quite scared of boys, again since I didn’t actually know any. Sexuality changes too, including depending on availability (at a girls school like mine, for instance, only girls were available…).

A teenager’s ’had to’ usually means we were asked to. Teacher was wrong to tell them not to use the prefer not to say but my guess is they thought that most kids would use this to rush the questions so useless in gathering data.

To be honest I question that in some instances school safeguarding has overrached and teachers acted outside their professional boundaries - especially where it comes to a child's sexuality or gender identity- teachers are not trained psychologists/psychiatrists

Yes because everything that comes out of the mouth of a teenager is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth 🙄

I agree. Scientific research, consent and ethics is my line of work.

I would expect to be informed of this beforehand so that I could check these issues had been addressed, and I would use it to demonstrate to my son the importance of checking - just because the school says so, or a form looks official doesn't mean they have to do something like this. Not when it involves highly personal data.

I’m going to quote the original post as it’s the only post from the person who knows anything concrete on the thread! Everything else is supposition and assumptions.

OP can I suggest you email the teacher and just ask what the form was about as your DS was confused. If it’s a national thing and you are not happy with a young person being quizzed about their sexuality (to be fair I don’t think I’d be happy about that either) then ask if there was an opportunity to opt out in the future.

I wouldn’t go in guns blazing. The important thing is finding out where this form has come from, what the purpose of it is and whether there’s going to be more of it in the future.

Basic research ethics - subjects must give informed consent
This includes knowing who is carrying out the research, its purpose, and how data will be handled and used.

For children, parental consent is needed. And opt in, not opt out - so if a parent misses an email the child shouldn't take part.

What planning are they doing off the back of knowing how many kids are having sexual experiences and what those are? Deciding to bring back HS2 after all?

One common thread is that these are revenue generating exercises for the authors with them anticipating more profits from using (or abusing) personal data in the future.

Schools really need to start using more critical thinking about all this. Until they do, then parents are having to step up and challenge / refuse to allow their child to participate.

Telling them not to use "prefer not to say " basically skews the data. That's often going to be "yes but I'm embarrassed to say", and if it's removed as an option it will result in incorrect "no" answers rather than those votes just not being included.

We’ve had two different surveys now mentioned as well as reference to a ‘national survey’ that seems to be commonplace by teachers (?) on this thread.

Interesting that there are multiple surveys collecting personal and sensitive data about children. Yet just where is this magical support that will materialise once the data is collected? A friend has been waiting over a year for MH support for their DC. Another was directed to a couple of self help websites by their GP.

As an aside, surely everyone knows by now that nothing we do online is anonymous in the true sense. I would sincerely hope that every parent informs their child about this. It won’t stop them, but at least they’d know.

"Anonymity" is a can of worms. You can't have both anonymity and support for vulnerable individuals. Or, if you are only trying for anonymous aggregated data then you need complex safeguards in place to avoid de-anonymisation. Especially if you're going right down to a school level or - blimey! - a year group in a school.

You can analyse the survey data for each year that you have completed, or you can analyse a year/year group that you are particularly interested in and highlight pertinent issues or concerns,

You'd better not.

We would also encourage you to involve pupils/students as much as possible in the analysis

Really, you'd better not.

And no-one should be telling children to avoid ticking one of the boxes.

The bit that I would have an issue with is that the teacher said not to use the "Prefer not to say" option.

I'd be asking the teacher if they were faced with a form like this at aged 14 or any age, and they weren't sure of their sexuality or orientation or gender or any of the questions being asked in the form (even if it is anonymous), wouldn't they like to be able to use the 'Prefer Not To Say" option? Being instructed not to use it is going to skew the results.

If you know who the organisers are behind the survey, I'd be contacting them directly to advise them that the results from X school are going to be skewed as you have been made aware that at least one teacher advised pupils to not use the "Prefer not to say" option.

It's there for a reason.

Surely also a breach of GDPR? Excellent point.

That is shocking if they are making school level data available to the school that completed it. It can very quickly become identifiable when you start with maybe only 100 responses and the respondents all know each other. Incredibly unethical.

Also a very excellent question. Dodgy beyond belief. Who does this survey benefit? Not the children whose data is being harvested.

Given we know that mh support for the young is scarier than hens teeth I'm not sure this is a good use of resources. Why not put the money straight into CAMHS?

That doesn't make it ok for teachers to initiate discussion with their students about sex outside of the PHSE curriculum. Doing so is a red flag. As is this survey from the sound of it.

Good point about them asking about committing a criminal offense.

Think I'd ask to see it. Was permission to do the survey requested? Why did the teacher comment at all? If the staff can see it, it's not anonymous.
I'm long past this as is my DD but I wouldn't want this in schools at all, personally.