14yo odd quiz at school- do I complain

[Cornecopia]

My ds came home yesterday and said that he had to fill in an online form ( not just him the whole of his year) and the questions were- what is your sexual orientation, are you comfortable in your gender, have you had sexual experiences, have you ever sent or received inappropriate pictures.
I understand some questions are safeguarding views. But bloody hell the sexual orientation etc why on earth is that relevant to my sons schooling?? I just feel his privacy has been really invaded and he doesn’t know himself whether he’s is straight/gay or whatever- I did ask him if there was. ‘Prefer not to say’ option and he said yes but the teacher said not to use that!
I just don’t really know what to think about it all

School's not 'school's'

Yes exactly, explicit Consent should be the lawful basis, the OP's child not having a clue, suggests they haven't secured this at all!

Actually the school as a Data Controller should have carried the due diligence and understood the implications of no explicit consent, no privacy to complete the survey etc.

True. I had not thought about it from the perspective of the school’s GDPR responsibilities.

Year 9?
We've been told they are going to do an NHS one, but that we can withdraw our child if desired. We haven't been told the contents of the questions tho.
If is a national one, I think you should have the opportunity to withdraw. If you really want to object, I'd start with asked for the reasoning behind the questions, and what is going to be done with the data, and take it from there.

Maybe have a look at this Mumsnet thread @ExtraOnions about the BeeWell survey (which is imposed on children in many schools) and the numerous issues, including the creators intention to link children's responses with their future adult NHS health data. It's a money making project for the creators that piggybacks on "good intentions" to share data. Arguably children can't give informed consent to the use of their data in this way.

Ensuring a school is "inclusive" is not about boasting about the range of sexualities in a school. It's about schools being places of educational excellence, places of safety with rigorous safeguarding and other child focused policies where children learn and develop positive relationships. Oh and where governors take a critical view of any outside organisation that wants to access children, ensuring that the the children & school are not being used to promote adult theories of queer theory under the guise of inclusivity.

In a way it is the teachers’ fault in that they should have passed on all that info and allowed him to opt out, BUT teachers have their own job to do and this isn’t it!

This too. The teachers job is not to spend class time carrying out surveys for researchers.

Opps - forgot to link the thread:

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5209872-the-beewell-survey

They are pointless, all my DC and their friends just filled them out randomly as they all decided the questions were actually nobody else's business

pp's have made a good point about GDPR especially as a school governor @ExtraOnions The survey collects "sensitive personal information about children" under GDPR (one of the most demanding categories of data!) and if it's done badly the school carries the can.

You can't just assume "kids talk about sexuality etc in the playground so it's all OK" and you can't assume everything about the survey protocol and data management is OK either.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/childrens-information/children-and-the-uk-gdpr/

The teacher had no right to say not to use the prefer not to say option. I might complain to the teacher who said that.

In terms of consent, to be free consent and not coerced the pupils would have to have been given another option of activity of equal interest to them, ie not to have been discouraged by being told to just sit or do something they didn’t like or singled them out. Of course if the other option is school work then why aren’t all the pupils doing that instead?

If the survey is of no interest to them, then being told to just sit there is probably of equal interest and a suitable alternative

It's not new or part of a trans agenda, I filled out something very similar every year at secondary school in the early-mid nineties.

Why is spending class time just sitting doing nothing a suitable use of time?

Schools already hold a lot of sensitive data about the students they have …I doubt they have made a massive faux pas with this.

I’ve never heard so much consternation about something so minor

Why don’t you think that? In Scotland several councils have opted out of the survey because they don’t think it appropriate.

Concerns about children giving informed consent about the use of their personal data - including data about the sexual orientation of those below the age of consent isn't minor.

The use of this type of personal data, knowing who's behind the data capture and their plans / resource opportunities is important. Checking that the questionnaires aren't being used to promote acceptance of certain contested political ideologies is a legitimate concern.

You'd hope that those responsible for schools (SLT & governors) are open to using their critical thinking skills to investigate and reassure parents - rather than dismissing legitimate issues as "so much consternation about something so minor".

I'm assuming this is anonymised data?

I remember doing something very similar in psre class about 32 years ago. Although gender orientation wasn't a question, smoking, sex, secual orientation were definitely on there.

And I am sure your own school are very careful what they do with that data. But not all schools are so careful. And sometimes people assume things are being done acceptably when they are not. People can be funny about surveys - "It's anonymous so it must be fine" is a common naive assumption. So is "everyone else is doing it so it must be fine". I'm surprised you're so dismissive because a "minor" parental concern can be like a "canary in the coalmine".

As a school governor do you get any GDPR training? If you don't I'd arrange for some. 30 years ago it might not have mattered, it very much does now.

30 years ago GDPR didn’t exist. Neither did the computing power to link up desperate data sources each containing huge amounts of data on individuals.

GDPR is very much about if the data filled in makes someone personally identifiable. If the data contains no personally identifiable information then they can do whatever they want with it. In a school environment someone stating their sexual orientation won't make them identifiable and thus control over the data is much less and they can reuse the data however they wish.

If name, address, email address etc is used GDPR comes into play and the data is much more strictly controlled.

Personally I always dreaded that something like this may have happened when I was at school. I wouldn't have wanted any different treatment due to my sexual orientation.

Yes, the hold alot of sensitive data but this isn't holding it, this is processing it for a survey which is going to be optional i.e. explicit, informed Consent not some, 'opt out' permission slip via your parents.

Data can be identifiable not just from name, address and email. School, year group, sex, sibling profile, race, faith, etc can together make children identifiable. Plus the survey mentioned by PP was proposing linking with adult medical records which mean they were not anonymous.