Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what his policy is on how data collected from the Reception Baseline Assessment will be used by the Government; whether that data is planned to be sold to third party organisations; and whether he plans that parents will have the right to object to the collection and retention of their children’s data.

The data from the reception baseline assessment (RBA) will be used at the end of Key Stage 2 to create a baseline for a school level progress measure for the Year 6 cohorts. Data collected and produced from the assessment will be stored in the National Pupil Database (NPD). The NPD can be used to provide evidence on educational performance to inform independent research, as well as to support studies commissioned by the Department. The Department has no plans, however, to make the data from the RBA available externally or internally for research purposes. It is intended to be used solely for analysis concerned with the primary accountability progress measure. The data, including numerical scores, will not be shared with external bodies, including schools, teachers, pupils, or parents/carers. Teachers will receive a series of short, narrative statements on how each child did at that time, which can be used to inform teaching.

The Department and the National Foundation for Educational Research, who are contracted by the Department to deliver the RBA, will handle personal data in accordance with the rights given to individuals under data protection legislation, including parents/carers. The privacy notice related to the statutory RBA will be published in due course.