Longitudinal Educational Outcomes: privacy notice

Who carries out the data linkage

The Department for Work and Pensions carry out the data linkage on behalf of all the organisations (The Department for Education, The Education and Skills Department for Wales, The Department for Work and Pensions, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and The Scottish Government) which contribute data as part of the LEO project.

Once the information is linked, it is only accessible to government employees at the above named departments or organisations working on their behalf. This access is provided under strict contractual conditions and is only for the purposes of research and analysis.

Access to the names, dates of birth and addresses of students is restricted to a small number of relevant government employees (and contractors working on their behalf) who need access to it in order to link their information. Before making the linked information available to others (for research purposes only), we take great care to anonymise it by removing all names, dates of birth and addresses before it is shared.

Any attempts to identify individuals from the linked information by third parties being given access to it (for research purposes) is strictly against the terms and conditions to which they must agree before being provided with it. We carefully monitor the use of linked information and if users fail to follow these terms and conditions, access will be removed and we will consider further action. Under the Education and Skills Act 2008, a person who is found guilty of wrongful use of the data (e.g. using the data for purposes outside of the legislation) also commits a criminal offence and would be liable to either a fine or imprisonment. We only allow data from the linked information to be published in summary form, such as the proportion of students in employment. We take care to ensure that this summary information is anonymised so that individuals cannot be identified from any published information.

Personal information is not used for marketing purposes, or to make decisions that will affect individuals, but we may contact individuals to ask them if they would like to take part in further relevant research we undertake (such as surveys).