Pupil data: privacy notice for parents

Data we collect

From Local Authorities

The majority of the data about your child/children is initially received by the school or local authority from yourself when you register them for education in Scotland, and is regularly kept up-to-date on systems managed by the school, the local authority or the public body responsible.

We do not get all the data schools and local authorities have about you child/children

Although schools and local authorities require and collect a lot of additional information about your child/children, not all of this information is shared with the Scottish Government.  For example, we will not receive any contact details that schools have about you or your child/children (e.g. telephone numbers, email addresses, etc.).  We also do not collect the names of children.

From other sources

We also get information on any qualifications your child/children achieve by awarding bodies (e.g. the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA)).  This includes details on the level and result of qualifications taken by your child/children.  When your child/children leave school, information on the what they are doing three and nine months after leaving school are collected by Skills Development Scotland and then shared with the Scottish Government.

If your child has participated in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) we also get Information on their performance to allow us to analyse Scotland's PISA results. Further details on how PISA is conducted are available in the NFER Privacy Notice

Data Specification Documents

A complete list of the data specifications and guidance notes for the Scottish Government’s School Education data collections can be found here:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/ScotXed/SchoolEducation