school collecting data

[NabiHunter]

What data can a secondary school reasonably ask for? New questions are being added to a survey on ethnicity, gender, faith and sexuality.

I intend to ask if they mean sex or gender identity. What else would you ask or be concerned about? They will be voluntary questions apparently, but I think previously all survey answers have been linked to a students account.

My child wouldn’t be answering on any of this stuff. What relevance does it have?

But do ask them.

Why do they need it, how do they use it, where do they store it and how do they secure it?

The Information Commissioner's Office has a good helpline (number at the bottom of the page), plus info on the website.

ico.org.uk/

Is it anonymised? Or is this data being held alongside pupil's names?

And what's the point? A few of those can change anyway.

Unlike sex and date of birth.

They sound like standard SIMS fields. Even Gender, as SIMS terms Sex (yes, this irritates me greatly).

They get used for ensuring that data on the whole cohort and of different demographics is available - it's how they can see if girls are at a disadvantage in certain lessons, that boys from particular ethnicities are falling behind in terms of progress compared to others, that white boys from poorer families aren't attaining as much as poorer girls or the schools isn't doing much for poorer children, that there is a significant number of children with x as a home/first language compared to previous years, so there is a case for allocating more of the budget to ESOL provision, there's a drop in attendance from a particular group, so the reasons for this need to be looked into, that there are now an increased number of children of a different faith group attending so that RS and the legally required act of worship is more inclusive...

Apart from needing to use data to inform accessibility/staffing decisions/picking up issues in a cohort/etc, schools have to complete a Census every term. If the data isn't complete, they have to obtain the information, as it's a DfE requirement.

There is no nefarious intent behind it.