Transparency data

Pupil Parent Matched Data (PPMD): privacy notice

Updated 20 February 2024

Applies to England

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-parent-matched-data-ppmd-how-we-use-and-share-data/pupil-parent-matched-data-ppmd-privacy-notice

This privacy notice explains how the Department for Education (DfE) uses (processes) any personal data that is part of the Pupil Parent Matched Data (PPMD) study:

  • that you give to us
  • that we may collect about you as part of the study

This privacy notice should be read alongside the DfE Personal information charter.

The PPMD study is being carried out by DfE and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) working together. PPMD also uses data from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) which is held by DWP.

For the purpose of data protection legislation, the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions each act as independent data controllers for PPMD.

You can contact us if you would like:

  • more information about how we process your personal data or your data protection rights
  • to make a request about your information, for example to request a copy of your information or to ask for your information to be changed
  • to contact our Data Protection Officer

DfE Data Protection Officer

Department for Education (B2.28)
7 and 8 Wellington Place
Wellington Street
Leeds
LS1 4AW

How we use your information

PPMD is used for the purpose of research to understand how educational attainment varies with household income, and the challenges faced by cohorts of pupils in families which are not currently identified as disadvantaged.

A feasibility study was undertaken in 2016 to understand if it was possible to link data relating to children currently in education with employment, income and benefit claims information on their parents or guardians in a safe and secure manner.

The resulting analysis, published in the ‘Analysing Family Circumstances and Education’ technical consultation, highlighted the value this cross government work could add to research and policy making in the education sector.

DfE has built upon the methodology used in the feasibility study to develop PPMD. This includes establishment of an ongoing data sharing process with DWP. The data now consists of a tax year-level summary for one or more adults linked to a learner record. This is used to provide an evidence base of how the education sectors are working in order to better target, and evaluate, policy interventions to help ensure all children receive the best possible education. For example, PPMD will provide data to:

  • inform policymaking by identifying pupils in the education system from low-or-modest income households to understand whether the pupils, or the settings they attend, face greater disadvantage than their peers
  • provide assessment of options for identifying deprivation to improve targeting of resources to where it is needed most or can have the greatest impact
  • understand any variation in attainment across the income distribution
  • enable analysis of the effects of COVID-19 on household income and impact of this on attainment of children

Personal information we will use

The personal information we use to link this data together is:

  • name
  • date of birth
  • gender
  • postcode
  • national insurance number – only for pupils attending FE colleges

Personal identifiers from education source data are sent to DWP who match the records against their Customer Information System. We identify parents or guardians of matched individuals via HMRC and DWP benefits records. The records of parents or guardians are then linked to employment, earnings and benefit data held at DWP to produce a measure of household income.

Once the link is made, all personal identifiers are then removed to create PPMD which provides de-identified information about pupils and their household, including:

  • measures of household income during periods in education
  • characteristics including gender and ethnic group
  • if the young person had special educational needs during their education
  • if the young person qualified for free school meals
  • schools attended, courses taken and qualifications achieved
  • information on absence and exclusions

We are linking information relating to students who were in the state funded education system between early years and 16 to 18 study from the 2008 to 2009 academic year onwards. This information will be updated annually to include the most recent available data.

Lawful use of personal data

When we collect and use this information, we need to follow the law. The main laws are:

  • the Data Protection Act (DPA)
  • the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

DfE is the data controller for your personal data. We must have a reason to collect your personal data. This is called a ‘lawful basis’.

For the purpose of this project, we can use these lawful bases to process your personal data:

  • article 6(1)(e) GDPR, to perform a public task as part of our function as a department
  • article 9(2)(j) GDPR, to process special category data for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes

Legislation that allows linking of data

The Small Business, Employment and Enterprise Act 2015 and sections 87 - 91 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 allow us to link education and employment and benefits data for the purpose of assessing policy or evaluating the effectiveness of education or training.

For more information about the legislation that allows this sharing, read:

Who we will make your personal data available to

Access to personal information is restricted to relevant government employees who need access to it in order to link information. Before making this information available to others (for research purposes only), we take great care to remove all personal identifiers before it is shared.

We will only share your personal data with others where it is lawful, secure and ethical to do so. For the purpose of this project:

  • we will share your data with DWP who carry out the data linkage on behalf of all the government departments listed on this notice
  • we may provide access to de-identified linked information to third parties for specific research purposes and when we do so, we will make sure there are secure arrangements in place for handling the linked information

All data shares by DfE are subject to a robust approvals process where senior data experts (known as the DfE Data Sharing Approval Panel (DSAP)) assess the data share for:

  • public benefit
  • proportionality
  • legal underpinning
  • strict information security standards

The DSAP also includes external members who scrutinise the ongoing decision making in order to increase public trust. As part of DfE’s commitment to transparency we publish details of all organisations we have shared personal data with alongside a short description of the project.

Further information on data sharing within DfE is available from:

How long we will keep your personal data

We will only keep your personal data in PPMD for as long as we need it for the research and statistical purposes it was originally collected for as part of this study. Under data protection legislation, and in compliance with the relevant data processing conditions, personal data can be kept for longer periods when processed purely for research and statistical purposes.

DfE undertakes long-term research to show the impact of education or training policies over time as well as longitudinal research assessing the impact of education or training on outcomes later in life. The PPMD is kept until 3 years after the state retirement age (currently data is retained until age 70, which is the state retirement age of 67 plus 3 years). This enables the department to link PPMD, and other education data, to earnings and employment data as part of the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) dataset.

While we retain individual identifiers for matching purposes, we will always minimise the processing of, and access to, information that directly identifies any individual. By default, where possible we will replace direct identifiers with meaningless reference numbers before data is accessed or shared. These will have no meaning beyond the dataset’s boundaries. This is the process followed for PPMD where following completion of annual matching, all direct identifiers are removed before the data is made available for research or statistics.

We review this retention policy, and the need to retain the PPMD, on an annual basis. As part of these ongoing reviews, we consider whether the data needs to be retained and, if so, whether it is possible to fully anonymise or de-identify the data.

Storing personal data outside the UK

When DfE stores personal data outside the UK, we will make sure we comply with the data protection law and take additional steps to keep your personal data safe, which can include:

  • additional technical or security arrangements
  • contractual agreements
  • data sharing agreements

Your data protection rights

Under the Data Protection Act 2018, you are entitled to ask us for:

  • the right to access - you can ask if we hold information about you and ask for a copy by making a ‘subject access request’
  • the right to rectification - you can request to correct any information you believe is inaccurate
  • the right to restrict processing - you can request that we restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain circumstances
  • the right to object to processing - you can object to DfE’s processing, under certain circumstances

This means that you have the right to request information relating to you, however it is important to be aware that PPMD is produced by combining data sources collected for administrative purposes but is not, in itself, an administrative or operational dataset.

Any subject level data held in PPMD should be requested from the original source at the owning government department.

Further information about your data protection rights is available on the Information Commissioner’s website.

Requesting a copy of your data held in PPMD

PPMD is an analytical dataset currently used for research analysis at an aggregate level. It is made up of data sources collected for administrative purposes but is not an administrative or operational dataset. 

PPMD is created through fuzzy matching techniques, and it is accepted there will be false positive matches. This is when we believe we have found a correct match from one admin system (DfE) to another (DWP), when in fact it is not always a correct match - for example, the same person. We try to minimise the chances of this happening, but we accept the small risk of false positives because we’re creating an analytical dataset, not an administrative one.

As such, the use of PPMD for subject access requests could result in sharing information for the wrong person in the case of a false positive match. Information relating to an individual held in PPMD should be requested from the original source at the owning government department.

How to complain

If you have a question, or feel your data has been mishandled, you can contact Emma Wharram, DfE Data Protection Officer using the details on this page:

DfE Data Protection Officer

Department for Education (B2.28)
7 and 8 Wellington Place
Wellington Street
Leeds
LS1 4AW

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Contact form https://ico.org.uk/glo...

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

Changes to this privacy notice

We may need to update this privacy notice periodically, so we recommend that you revisit this information from time to time. This privacy notice was last reviewed in February 2024.

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