Guidance

DfE statistical confidentiality policy and data management approach

Updated 30 July 2026

Applies to England

Overview

The Department for Education (DfE) is committed to publishing statistics that serve the public good. We do this by maintaining transparency on how DfE manages and maintains the confidentiality of the data it receives, stores, processes and disseminates.

DfE complies with the Code of Practice for Statistics, which outlines the responsibilities of statistical producers in relation to managing data and ensuring confidentiality, adhering specifically to Trustworthiness Standard 4: Manage Data Responsibly.

Further information on how we collect, hold and use personal information (which includes privacy notices for each work area), can be found in our personal information charter.

Data management

Official statistics published by DfE are based on 2 main sources:

• data extracted from the administrative and management systems of local authorities, schools and other organisations
• data collected from statistical surveys

We are required to have appropriate safeguards in place to ensure we collect, access, use and share this data lawfully and transparently. This is in accordance with the Data Protection Act (DPA) and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

Our data is stored securely in internal digital infrastructure and is accessible solely to authorised staff, who receive mandatory data management training, which they must routinely refresh. To ensure only the necessary staff have access, we periodically review existing access, keeping access to the minimum number of staff required.

Ensuring confidentiality

In addition to compliance with the principles and practices of the Code of Practice, we are committed to protecting confidentiality to:

• maintain the trust and co-operation of those who own and manage administrative data sources used by us and respondents to our surveys
• comply with the relevant legislation, including GDPR

Our arrangements for protecting confidentiality fall into 3 areas:

Personnel

All staff who work with data about individual persons (for example, pupils in schools) receive appropriate security checks and training in protecting information. Secure working areas are provided for staff who work with confidential data about individual persons.

Data

Our arrangements for protecting private information about individual persons include:

• providing detailed data security operational guidance for our staff
• using secure data transfer methods to transfer data to and from external bodies, such as local authorities
• contracting with external organisations, including the use of data security clauses where appropriate
• requiring external bodies that wish to access our data to complete a confidentiality agreement – where the agreement is approved by the Head of Profession for Statistics, only the minimum data needed for the specified purpose are released
• operate service level agreements when sharing data with internal users and other governmental groups
• ensuring that respondents to our data collection exercises receive privacy notices stating what the data will be used for and our undertakings with respect to confidentiality

Statistical disclosure control

Our approach to statistical disclosure control is based on UK Statistics Authority guidance on confidentiality in official statistics and Information Commissioner’s Office guidance on anonymisation.

We apply statistical disclosure control where there is a reasonable risk of sensitive personal information being identified by a motivated intruder who could use the information to cause damage, harm or distress to that individual.

For each of our statistical and data releases, we will assess the risk of disclosure of sensitive personal information based on the:

• level of aggregation of the data
• number of tables produced from each dataset
• size and characteristics of the population
• likelihood of an identification attempt
• consequences of disclosure

Where disclosure control is necessary to protect confidentiality, the most appropriate method of disclosure control will be applied, which minimises the risk of disclosure while maximising the utility of the statistics. To further reduce the risk of identification, details of the disclosure control methodology are not published.

Where data has the potential to disclose sensitive personal information about protected or vulnerable children, we apply more rigorous disclosure control methods and seek to eliminate the risk of identification.

Much of DfE’s published data is based on census collections and administrative data, which gives us confidence in the accuracy of small numbers. Where figures are produced based on survey data, with estimates based on a sample of the population, rounding or suppression may be applied based on the quality of the data to avoid misinterpretation of small numbers.