Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what information schools are required by law to collect regarding their pupils.

Schools collect a range of information on pupils for their own purposes. Full details of all the data collected by law is accessible via the links in the attached list.

Some of this information is required to be submitted to the Department via various collections which are undertaken throughout the school year. The main types of information collected by the Department are:

• pupil identifiers (name, date of birth, etc)
• pupil characteristics (gender, ethnicity, language, etc.)
• pupil attendance and exclusions
• pupil special educational needs
• pupil attainment and teacher assessments

The school census has collected such data at pupil level from the introduction of the Pupil Level Annual School Census in 2002.