Data protection

This study is being carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The ONS is the government's largest independent producer of statistics. We collect information about the UK's society and economy, which provides evidence for policy- and decision-making, and for directing resources to where they are needed most. For more information see About us.

Your child's name and address were selected at random from the National Pupil Database (NPD), which is kept by the Department for Education (DfE), and the Personal Demographic Service (PDS), which is kept by NHS England. The ONS has been given permission to use these details for the purpose of this research only. 

Any information you and your child provide will be legally protected and treated as confidential in accordance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

The ONS has the statutory objective to promote and safeguard the production of official statistics that serve the public good. The responses we collect from your child will be combined with other responses to the survey and will only ever be used by us to produce statistics or undertake statistical research. 

In order for us to produce statistics and enable research, we may link the data that we collect with other data that we hold, to help us to draw better insights and enable more granular analysis to help explore and better understand the most complex issues facing society. Any data linkage will be done in a consistent, reliable and ethical way, while safeguarding privacy.

Further information on what we use data for is available.

The ONS takes the responsibility to keep your and your child's personal data secure very seriously. As such, we take every reasonable precaution to ensure the information is protected from loss, misuse and unauthorised access, disclosure, alteration and destruction.

These precautions include:

• appropriate physical security of our offices
• controlled access to computer systems
• use of secure, encrypted internet connections when collecting personal data

All personal data will only be kept for as long as it is needed for the purposes set out previously.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider:

• the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal data
• the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data
• the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means (such as using anonymous data)
• the applicable legal requirements

When the ONS processes personal data, we will do so under the lawful basis of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR):

• Article 6(1)(e); processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller

and for special category data:

• Article 9(2)(j); data processed for reasons of archiving, research and statistics in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 Schedule 1(4) research

The ONS may provide access to information from this survey to accredited or approved researchers for statistical purposes. When we do this, the information will not identify you or your child directly and we only do it when it is lawful and ethical to do so. In such cases, researchers will be given restricted access in a secure research environment to de-identified, unpublished data to work on accredited research projects for the public good. 

We sometimes share selected information with our service providers to help us run our surveys. We only share the personal details they need to know. To find out more about each service provider's commitment while they are handling your information, please visit their websites.

For this survey we work with Pluxee, a subsidiary of Sodexo, to provide your child's e-voucher. Find out more about your gift voucher.

For more information on the rights you hold and how to exercise them for personal data processed as part of this survey, please see the ONS data protection pages.

If you have any concerns about how the ONS use and protect you and your child's personal data or wish to exercise any of these rights, please contact the ONS Data Protection Officer by emailing DPO@Statistics.gov.uk.

The Information Commissioner's Office is the independent body tasked with regulating data protection within the UK. They can provide you with additional information regarding data protection and your rights and will deal with any complaints you may have regarding our use of your data. They can be contacted by calling +44 303 123 1113 or by writing to:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow SK9 5AF

Further information on what the ONS uses data for is available on the Data Strategy page of the ONS website.

Further information on the ethical framework and a full list of accredited processors are available on the UK Statistics Authority website.

Further information on how we provide access to data for research purposes is also available on the UK Statistics Authority website.

If you have a question about how the ONS processes your personal data or want to find out more about your rights under data protection legislation, please see the Data protection page on the ONS website.