pupil information form - what is mandatory?

[brownelephant]

and what not?
dc starting new school soon and got the form in the post...

From reading the privacy guidelines for pupils on the DfE website, a school can ask for nationality but Passport number is not requested. Some children will not have a passport. There is also detail on who the information is shared with.

Do not forget that Police investigations will be different and they can access more information when making enquiries. There are also new regulations coming info force in May for Data Protection.

Department for education does share the info illegally with the home office

There used to be an agreement that allowed the DfE to share details of up to 1500 pupils per month with the Home Office where it was believed an immigration offence was being or had been committed. This information sharing was not illegal as it was related to law enforcement. According to public statements that sharing stopped early last year.

The DfE (NOT the Home Office) wanted information on pupils so that they could see how the progress of immigrant children compared to their peers. This would have been a useful piece of research which may have led to targeted help. However, many parents have refused to co-operate over privacy concerns and also over concerns that this data was being used to target illegal immigrants, which the DfE denied.

The school have to ask ethnicity, nationality, and country of birth- they're part of the census they are legally obliged to return to DfE as a condition of their funding. However, you may choose to refuse to supply the information, and you need to put 'refused' or tick the 'refused' box so they don't need to chase you.
Passport number is not one of the required fields, nor is NI number (what would a school do with that? If you claim FSM, you have to provide proof of receipt of benefits, that's the evidence, not your NI number).
School will also ask the first language spoken/home language- as far as I'm aware these can't be refused (and they're factual not subjective like ethnicity). Funding is given to schools by DfE based on numbers that have English as not their first language.

We got asked employment status, company and job title for state secondary I was a bit

thanks again.
all very interesting but still confusing.

there is no 'refused' box on this form and no explanation about what is mandatory and what is nice to have. I'm not comfortable about giving passport details like that.

Brownelephant, then don't. Language spoken has educational benefit but passport number doesn't. Put N/A.