Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 19 December 2018 to Question 201097 on Pupils: Personal Records, what methods schools have as available to them as joint data controllers to withdraw (a) nationality and (b) country-of-birth data that they collected in the school census since 2016 and which parents now wish to retract as a result of the ongoing use of pupil data for immigration enforcement purposes.

Data collected on pupil nationality and country of birth is not used for immigration enforcement purposes and has not been shared externally with third parties, including other government departments. The Department collected data on the nationality, country of birth and proficiency in English of pupils via the school census between autumn 2016 and summer 2018. The data are collected for research purposes to help us understand the impact of migration on the school system. Understanding trends in migration, and the associated needs in the school system, helps us ensure that all children, wherever they are from, have the best possible education.

The right to erasure or right to retraction are classed as individual rights requests under general data protection regulation (GDPR) and the 2018 Data Protection Act (DPA). Whilst individual rights are not absolute under GDPR/DPA, any individual rights requests from data subjects for data held or processed by the Department, or from individuals with unambiguous consent to act on behalf of a data subject, should be made via the contact us form on the DfE website and selecting ‘something else’ under the ‘question’ option. The form is available here: https://form.education.gov.uk/fillform.php?self=1&form_id=cCCNJ1xSfBE&type=form&ShowMsg=1&form_name=Contact+the+Department+for+Education&noRegister=false&ret=%2Fmodule%2Fservices&noLoginPrompt=1.