Five to Twelve: Privacy notice
Privacy notice
Who collects data as part of the Five to Twelve study?
The Department for Education (DfE) has commissioned the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), in collaboration with the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) and National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), to collect data for Five to Twelve from 2023 for several years (at least until 2029).
Five to Twelve aims to better understand how children’s environment and experiences in early and primary years impact on their educational attainment, wellbeing and development.
What data are collected for Five to Twelve?
The information used to select and make contact with people for the study is from the National Pupil Database (NPD), which is maintained by DfE and includes information about pupils in state schools. Pupils from independent schools will also be included in the study, with information coming directly from those schools.
Data collection with parents, carers, young people and teachers will take place through a range of methods including in-home interviews, online surveys, paper questionnaires and surveys over the telephone from March 2023 to mid-2024. The study aims to re-contact participants in subsequent years to gather further information as the young person progresses through their primary education.
The study will collect personal data, which means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. This is used to stay in touch with you as the study progresses. Access to personal data is strictly controlled. We also collect a range of information about individual members of the household, including the child selected for the study and parents and guardians living with the child or elsewhere. We collect demographic information (e.g. family characteristics and circumstances), information about health, support needs, relationships, school experiences and life at home.
Linking to administrative data
Information from surveys will also be linked to administrative records for your child and you, their parent/carer. We will continue to link National Pupil Database (NPD) records to the survey data that we collect so that researchers can see things like educational attainment later in their school life. You can ask us not to do this if you prefer, using the contact information here and in the survey information we provide when we contact you.
With your permission (which we will ask for in the survey interview) we will also link your survey answers to administrative information held by other government departments.
Children’s health is important for understanding what affects their wellbeing and how they get on in school. So, we will ask your permission to add information about your child’s health from their NHS records. Similarly, it is very helpful for us to know about parental health. We will also ask for parents’ permission to add information about your health from your NHS records. These records include information about admissions or attendances at hospital, visits to a GP or other health professional (e.g. midwife), specific conditions and prescriptions given.
We may ask your permission to link to other administrative data as the study progresses.
Your decision about whether or not to allow us to add information from your and your child’s records will not affect your or your child’s services, rights, treatment or any health insurance. It will not affect your benefits or tax.
Your address and postcode are also used to match data on your location/neighbourhood to your study data. This includes a broad range of data including Ordnance Survey, housing, environment, weather data or economic characteristics of your area such as deprivation levels. We also add other data to your record, for example, about the characteristics of the school attended.
What is the legal basis of processing this data?
For the purposes of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Department for Education is the Data Controller for this study. This means that it is responsible for deciding the purpose and legal basis for processing data from this study. NatCen is the Data Processor. The NCB and NFER are acting as sub-processors.
The legal basis for processing data from this study is ‘public task’.
How your data will be used
Personal and other data collected as part of this study will only be used for research and statistical purposes and will be processed in accordance with UK Data Protection law.
Personal data collected through the study will be processed by the National Centre for Social Research and companies working on their behalf, such as companies who print documents to support the survey process and to keep study members up to date.
Analysis of the data the study collects will be conducted by the research teams at the National Centre for Social Research, NCB, NFER and DfE to understand the relationship between primary education experiences and the home environment on educational attainment and child wellbeing at the end of primary school.
In addition, to ensure that your information makes the biggest impact, once we have removed any directly identifiable information (such as your name, address and any other information which could easily identify you) your data are combined with data from thousands of other Five to Twelve participants and deposited in secure repositories to enable other bona fide researchers to use your data for public good research purposes. The data are deposited in a form that makes it not reasonably likely that anyone could identify you. “Not reasonably likely” is a phrase used in Part 5, Chapter 5 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 which allows information to be disclosed for research purposes in a form that protects the person’s identity. Where more detailed information is deposited, strict safeguards are in place to reduce the risk of you being identified. Your information will only ever be shared in line with UK Data Protection law. The repositories we currently intend to use are:
- The UK Data Service based at the University of Essex
- The Secure Research Service based at the Office for National Statistics
How long will we keep your data for?
As we would like to look at long term trends and we are holding your data for research purposes, we have not set a limit on how long we would like to keep the information you give. This is in line with UK GDPR which allows data to be kept indefinitely when it is used solely for research. However, if at some point in the future, we stop collecting data and we no longer need your contact details we will remove identifying information from your survey answers and use your data in this de-identified format. Your data will never be used for another purpose.
Data sent to third party processors and organisations that carry out data linkage will be deleted as soon as they are no longer needed.
Withdrawing from the survey
You may withdraw from taking part in the study at any time, in which case no further information will be collected from you. Where possible, we will also remove from our records any identifying information which has not yet been anonymised.
If you wish to withdraw from the study, please contact the National Centre for Social Research by telephone on 0800 652 4568 or via FiveToTwelve@natcen.ac.uk.
Your data protection rights
Under GDPR, you have the right:
- to ask DfE for access to information about you that they hold
- to have your personal data rectified, if it is inaccurate or incomplete
- to request the deletion or removal of personal data where there is no compelling reason for its continued processing
- to restrict processing of your personal data (i.e. permitting its storage but no further processing) by DfE
- to object to direct marketing (including profiling) and processing for the purposes of scientific/historical research and statistics
- not to be subject to decisions based purely on automated processing where it produces a legal or similarly significant effect on you
Who to contact with a query or a complaint
If you would like to know more about the study please contact the National Centre for Social Research team via FiveToTwelve@natcen.ac.uk or the Department for Education (quoting EOPS-B) via Team.LONGITUDINAL@education.gov.uk
If you have any questions about data protection, please contact the Department for Education’s Data Protection Officer:
Emma Wharram
Department for Education
2 Rivergate
Temple Quay
Bristol, BS1 6EH
You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at www.ico.org.uk. If you would like to complain to the Data Protection Regulator, you can contact:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow, SK9 5AF
Website: www.ico.org.uk/
Contact the ICO: https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/