Data Protection

What information will be collected and why?

Pearson UK and their partner, OUCEA at Oxford University have been commissioned to carry out the PISA 2022 study in England, Wales and Northern Ireland on behalf of their Governments. We take data protection very seriously and follow the Data Protection Act 2018 and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Any personal information we collect will be held securely and no individual pupil or school will be identifiable in any report or publication. The National Centre (Pearson and OUCEA) will only hold the PISA data long enough to allow the analysis and reporting of the study after which they will delete the data from their systems.

The purpose of the study is to produce statistics on pupils’ learning and development, in order to learn more about how best to support pupils in mastering key subjects. We will collect information on what pupils have learnt from their answers to the PISA assessment questions. We will also ask pupils about their attitudes and motivations to help understand how they contribute to pupil performance. All data from the study will be pseudonymised (i.e., any details which could be used to identify pupils or their school will be removed and replaced with a code) and combined with responses from other pupils and schools taking part nationally and compared with results of pupils around the world. If there are any questions pupils do not wish to answer they may leave them blank.

If you would like to see examples of the type of questions which are included in the PISA study and questionnaires, they can be found here and here.

How we use personal data

For the purposes of this research, the Department for Education/ Welsh Government/ Department of Education and their approved contractors will link the information to other information the Department for Education/ Welsh Government/ Department of Education already holds (such as on the National Pupil Database) or that it is lawfully permitted to access from other sources. This is to avoid repeatedly asking participants to give us information that we already hold and to enable analyses of the longer-term benefits of early learning. Full privacy notices are available using the links below.

We would like to thank all participating schools and pupils for their participation in this important project. If you have any queries on any aspect of the study, please do not hesitate to contact the PISA Support Team.

Full privacy notices:

Department for Education (England)

Welsh Government

Welsh Government (Welsh)

Department of Education (Northern Ireland)