Thank you for contacting the Department for Education, you will usually
receive a reply within 15 working days.

You can find out how the department processes your personal information by
reading our [1]Privacy Notice.

References

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Dear Jen Persson,

Thank you for your request for information, which was received on 12
December 2019. You requested:

‘Please provide the following information in accordance with the FOI Act
2000, and as of the date of receipt.

Pupil data as collected via the school census at any time between
September 2016 and June 2018. (Status as of December 1, 2019)

The number of characteristics for data at individual level:

A) Nationality

B) Country of birth

C) source year (and term if available)

(collectively "these data").

Use of these data:

D) the terms of reference and/or policy document on decisions of how use
is made /access granted (or link to this if published online) to these
data.

E) a copy of the data protection impact assessment for these data held,
including the name of the database

F) the recorded number of times of access to these data since collection,
broken down by user volume and frequency of access (eg. monthly a total
number of X users, accessed Y volume of records, Z aggregated times in
each month.

G) The purposes of each access.

H) The names / titles of any reports or queries set up to run against the
pupil data in the database, and the frequency of their run (eg. standard
report called 'X ' runs annually, ad hoc report called 'Y' on demand has
been run 24 times total’).

I am dealing with your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

In order to identify and locate the information that you have asked for I
require some further information from you in order to ensure we accurately
respond to what it is you require.

It would be useful to clarify what you are expecting via your request for
‘Number of characteristics for data at individual level’.  For instance,
are you interested in the count of pupils by nationality/country of birth,
or how many characteristics we collect for each pupil with a
nationality/country of birth (ie a count of fields)?.

Please be aware that depending on your response and what information you
require, we will need to evaluate whether your request exceeds the cost
threshold applicable to central Government. This is £600 and represents
the estimated cost of one person spending 3½ working days locating,
retrieving and extracting the information. Please see the following link
for further information on the FOI cost threshold:

[1]https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/gui...

If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me. Please
remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you should
make a complaint to the Department by writing to me within two calendar
months of the date of this letter.  Your complaint will be considered by
an independent review panel, which were not involved in the original
consideration of your request.   

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint to the
Department, you may then contact the Information Commissioner’s Office. 

Yours faithfully

References

Visible links
1. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/gui...

Thank you for contacting the Department for Education, you will usually
receive a reply within 15 working days.

You can find out how the department processes your personal information by
reading our [1]Privacy Notice.

References

Visible links
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisati...

Dear Jen Persson,

Thank you for your request for information, which was received on 12
December 2019. You requested:

‘Please provide the following information in accordance with the FOI Act
2000, and as of the date of receipt.

Pupil data as collected via the school census at any time between
September 2016 and June 2018. (Status as of December 1, 2019)

The number of characteristics for data at individual level:

A) Nationality

B) Country of birth

C) source year (and term if available)

(collectively "these data").

Use of these data:

D) the terms of reference and/or policy document on decisions of how use
is made /access granted (or link to this if published online) to these
data.

E) a copy of the data protection impact assessment for these data held,
including the name of the database

F) the recorded number of times of access to these data since collection,
broken down by user volume and frequency of access (eg. monthly a total
number of X users, accessed Y volume of records, Z aggregated times in
each month.

G) The purposes of each access.

H) The names / titles of any reports or queries set up to run against the
pupil data in the database, and the frequency of their run (eg. standard
report called 'X ' runs annually, ad hoc report called 'Y' on demand has
been run 24 times total’).

Following a request from the Department for some further information to
ensure we accurately responded to your question, on 7 January 2020 you
clarified your request as follows:

‘In response to your request for clarification of my request for
information that you received on 12 December 2019, yes, the count of
pupils by each of the requested data items ie. nationality/ country of
birth.

In summary: How many pupils' have you got each of the information on, and
how is it being used and what is its oversight’.

I am dealing with your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

A-C) The attached table provides information on the count of pupils for
which a valid nationality or country of birth was provided, covering each
term between autumn 2016 to summer 2018. This excludes records where
nationality or country was returned as ‘not yet collected’ or ‘refused’.

D) The Department does not maintain specific terms of reference or policy
documents relating to usage decisions for individual data items. Access to
the data is restricted to a set of internal analysts with permissions
controlled (via active directory groups) by the information asset owner
for the dataset.

E) The school census is a long-standing data collection with established
protocols and processes in place for the handling, collection and
disclosure of individual level information. As the school census already
collects a range of characteristic information about individuals, the
department determined prior to the first collection in 2016 that these
additional items of information (about the same individuals) did not
present any new privacy risks over and above those already present. As
such, a formal privacy impact assessment was not completed.

F) The Department does not hold any audit information relating to the
viewing of individual data items.

G) As outlined in response to part D above, access to the data is
restricted to a set of internal DfE analysts with permissions controlled
by the information asset owner for the dataset. The information asset
owner will only grant access for purposes associated with research
necessary to improve our understanding of the scale and impact of pupil
migration on the education sector and provide the Department with a better
evidence base for future policy decision making.

H) During each school census collection (conducted termly) two scripts
were run on a daily basis (during the collection window) to monitor the
return rate and quality of the nationality and country of birth data
(‘Nationality’ and ‘Country of Birth Prof English’).  Similar script was
run to produce the statistics which informed the publications about pupil
nationality and country of birth published on GOV.UK.

 If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me. Please
remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you should
make a complaint to the Department by writing to me within two calendar
months of the date of this letter.  Your complaint will be considered by
an independent review panel, which were not involved in the original
consideration of your request.   

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint to the
Department, you may then contact the Information Commissioner’s Office. 

Yours faithfully

Thank you for contacting the Department for Education, you will usually
receive a reply within 15 working days.

You can find out how the department processes your personal information by
reading our [1]Privacy Notice.

References

Visible links
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisati...

Thank you for your request for information, which was received on 4
February 2020. In response to a previous FOI reply from the Department
(issued 4 February 2020), you have requested further information as
follows:

“Please can you clarify your response in one part (this is not a new
question). The question was:

H) the names / titles of any reports or queries set to run against the
pupil data in the database and the frequency of the run (Eg standard
report called ‘X’ runs annually, as hoc report called ‘Y’ on demand has
been run 24 times in total.)

Your response was:

”H) During each school census collection (conducted termly) two scripts
were run on a daily basis (during the collection window) to monitor the
return rate and quality of the nationality and country of birth data
(‘Nationality’ and ‘Country of Birth Prof English’).  Similar script was
run to produce the statistics which informed the publications about pupil
nationality and country of birth published on GOV.UK.“

I was asking:

A) which reports or queries exist currently, their names, and their
frequency B)when and how many times such requests (any at all)  have been
run in total *after* the active census collections stopped collecting
nationality and country of birth, ie since July 2018.”

I am dealing with your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

A) which reports or queries exist currently, their names, and their
frequency

There are no current, or previous, pre-defined automated reports run
against the pupil nationality and country of birth data. However, as
confirmed in my response to your original request, during each school
census collection between autumn 2016 and summer 2018 two pre-prepared SQL
scripts were manually run on a daily basis (on each working day during the
8 week collection window) to monitor the return rate and quality of the
data returned. These scripts are called:

* Autumn Census 2016: ‘Nationality’ and ‘Country of Birth Prof English’

* Spring Census 2017: ‘SCSpring 17 Nationalities script’ and ‘SC_Spring
COB EngProf Stats’

* Summer Census 2017: ‘Nationalities script’ and ‘COB script’

* Autumn Census 2017: ‘Nationalities script’ and ‘COB script’

* Spring Census 2018: ‘Nationalities script’ and ‘COB script’

* Summer Census 2018: ‘Nationalities script’ and ‘COB script’

The above scripts were amended to produce additional scripts to
generate the underlying data for the publications about pupil
nationality and country of birth which were published on GOV.UK in
[1]December 2017 and [2]December 2018. These publication scripts were
run during October and November in both 2017 and 2018 to generate the
published data. These publication scripts are called:

* 2017 publication: ‘Nationalities Script’ and ‘COB Script’

* 2018 publication: ‘Nationalities Script’ and ‘COB Script’

B) when and how many times such requests (any at all) have been run in
total *after* the active census collections stopped collecting
nationality and country of birth, i.e. since July 2018

The Department do not hold, or retain, SQL auditing of queries run against
the secure, read-only internal database through which access to this data
is managed by the Information Asset Owner. Exact details of when, and how
many times, any queries have been run against the nationality and country
of birth data are therefore not held.

If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me. Please
remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you should
make a complaint to the Department by writing to me within two calendar
months of the date of this letter.  Your complaint will be considered by
an independent review panel, which were not involved in the original
consideration of your request.   

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint to the
Department, you may then contact the Information Commissioner’s Office. 

Yours faithfully

References

Visible links
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publicatio...
2. https://www.gov.uk/government/publicatio...