Linking your data

Adding other information to the study

Why is adding information from administrative records important?
We keep your information safe
What information do we want to add from administrative records 
Who will use the linked study data and how 
How do we add information from administrative records to study data?
How long will we add information for?
What if I change my mind? 
Contact details

Adding information from administrative records: An overview

The Five to Twelve study intends to link the study responses to information from administrative records. Administrative records contain information which is routinely collected about us and the services we use, such as schools and hospitals, to help improve those services. Administrative records are held by your local authority or other public bodies and government agencies. 

Adding information from administrative records will add a lot of value to the study data and enhance our understanding of the factors that impact on children’s experiences and outcomes, without taking up more of your time. 

During the survey we will ask for your agreement to let us securely and confidentially link your study responses to your education, health and financial records, where it is lawful to do so. We will ask for separate permission to do this in the interview/web survey and give you more information about it then. 

Your linked study data will contain your study responses and any administrative records that you’ve given us permission to link to. We will remove any information that directly identifies you (such as your name and address).

Your decision about whether to allow us to add information from records will not affect your services, rights, treatment, or any health insurance. It will not affect your benefits or tax. Your information will not be used for any commercial or profit-based purpose and you will not receive any marketing information. 

Information from administrative records will be added to your study responses, not the other way around – your study responses will not be added to the administrative records held by government departments or public bodies. Therefore, your study responses are not accessible to those providing services or care.

Note that if you were invited to participate in the study in spring 2023, you were included in the pilot study and your study responses may not be linked to administrative records even if you gave us permission to do so. This is because the purpose of the pilot study was to test how well these (and other) questions and procedures work ahead of the main survey starting in autumn 2023.

Why is adding information from administrative records important?

  • It helps the Department for Education and other approved researchers build a more detailed picture of children’s lives to better understand the most important factors that affect education and wellbeing.
  • It helps us follow up on children’s future attainment and education status without having to ask any more survey questions.
  • It helps us understand about other aspects of children’s lives that we know affect their development and experiences, including mental health of children and those closest to them.
  • It helps us understand the most important factors which affect children’s development as they move through primary school and beyond. This will help decision makers to develop better policies.
  • Information from administrative records can help us understand the circumstances of children whom we may not be able to interview in future years. This could include children who are in the care system or who have particular needs that mean they are not able to take part in an interview. This will help make sure the findings from the study represent all children in England.
  • It also adds value to the data collected during the personal interviews and online surveys, without taking up any more of your time.

We keep your information safe

Your linked study data will be treated as confidential and will only be used for research and statistics purposes by approved researchers. Information which directly identifies you, such as names and addresses, will have been removed before researchers access the datasets, which consist of data from thousands of other participants taking part in the study.

Government departments and agencies outside of DfE will only receive your directly identifiable information (e.g. name, address, sex, date of birth) to make an accurate match to your administrative records. 

After your records have been identified, the identifiable information used to identify your records will be deleted by the government department or agency before making the linked dataset available to researchers.  

During the linking process, your information is encrypted and transmitted via secure transfer systems, in line with the latest security rules and procedures. All information is treated in the strictest confidence in accordance with the Data Protection Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The privacy notice explains how we keep your information safe.

What information do we want to add from administrative records?

The processes for adding information form administrative records are different for records already held by Department for Education, and records held by other government department or public agencies. You can read about this in more detail below.

You can agree to us adding information from all the records we ask about (for parents/carers and/or for the child), from just some of the records, or to add nothing at all – it’s your choice. 

You can still take part in the Five to Twelve study even if you do not give permission for a copy of your administrative record(s) to be added.

Education records

  • The Department for Education (DfE) holds information about participation and achievement in school and further education, as well as details about the school, college or training centre attended. Where applicable, DfE also hold information about any higher education applications and offers.
  • Five to Twelve is commissioned by the DfE, and education records for the study child and their parents or carers will be added to study responses as a standard part of the study.

Why do we do this? 

  • Adding this information will mean researchers will be able to look at things like how children’s experiences early on in primary school relate to their later attainment outcomes. It helps us build a much rounder picture.

  • If you do not want this to happen, you can let us know using the contact details provided on the Contact us page.

Health records

  • We will ask permission to add a copy of the administrative health records (NHS) of parents/carers and childrn to study responses. 
  • These records include information about your physical health and any mental health care you have received.
  • The records include information about things like admissions or attendances at hospital, visits to a GP or other health professionals (including community mental health care), national registers (births and deaths), and information about symptoms, diagnoses and specific conditions and prescriptions given.
  • As these records are held outside DfE by NHS England, we will ask your permission to add information from these records to your study data.
  • You do not have to agree to this, and if you choose not to, you can still stay in the study

Why do we do this? 

  • Health is an important factor in children’s education, wellbeing and development. The physical and mental health of the people closest to children can also affect them. Adding information from children’s and parents’/carers’ administrative health records to the study data will help researchers understand the relationships between health and other aspects of children’s lives more fully.

Parents'/carers' employment and tax records

  • We will ask permission to link your records held by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to the study. HMRC records include information on employment, Income Tax, Tax Credits, and Child Benefits. The records also hold information on pensions and National Insurance contributions.
  • As these records are held outside DfE by HMRC we need to ask your permission to add information from these records to your study responses.
  • You do not have to agree to this, and if you choose not to, you can still stay in the study. 

Why do we do this? 

  • Understanding how families get on financially is an important part of understanding children’s experiences, and can help researchers understand more about how children from different backgrounds get on.

Parents'/carers' participation in employment programmes, benefits and pension schemes records

  • Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) records hold information about participation in employment programmes, benefit receipts, and pension schemes.
  • Linking these records to study responses would help researchers understand and account for the various situations that our participating families are in.
  • As these records are held outside DfE by DWP, we need to ask your permission to add information from these records to the study data.
  • During the survey, we will ask permission to link your DWP records but, again, you do not have to agree to this. If you choose not to, you can still stay in the study.

Why do we do this? 

  • As with information about employment and tax records, adding information from these records to the study data will help researchers understand more fully how children’s and their families’ financial circumstances affect their experiences.

Geographic and sociodemographic information

  • We will supplement study responses by adding area and neighbourhood-level information. This includes a broad range of data including Ordnance Survey, housing, environment, weather data or economic characteristics of your area such as deprivation levels. We will also add other information to your study data, for example, about the characteristics of the school attended by the child.
  • Researchers using these data will not have access to details that directly identify you such as your address. Furthermore, the location of the area where you live will be encrypted to not reveal the identity of your school or neighbourhood or home.

Why do we do this? 

  • Sociodemographic and geographical factors are important in understanding the influences on children’s educational attainment. For example, data provided by the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England has highlighted the cumulative negative effect of multiple disadvantages on pupils’ academic attainment.

Who will use the linked study data and how?

Like your study responses, the linked study data is owned by DfE, who will provide external researchers with access to de-identified data for public benefit research following rigorous assessment of their project and subject to legal contracts protecting your confidentiality. The information will only be shared with approved researchers for research and statistics purposes only. 

Identifiable information will never be part of these linked datasets made available to researchers.

The findings and statistics reported will describe the study participants as a group, and never an individual person. 

The datasets may be made available securely by DfE to external qualified researchers via the UK Data Service (UKDS), Office for National Statistics Secure Research Service (ONS SRS) or a similar trusted government research repository. Access to the data will only be granted to approved researchers after a successful application to the DfE. This is to make sure the information is used responsibly and safely. All researchers will need to comply with data protection legislation and assure us they have organisational and technical controls in place.

How do we add information from administrative records to study data?

  1. Each person taking part in the study (parents/carers and children) will be assigned a unique identifier code (unique ID). This code is developed for study purposes only.
  2. NatCen securely sends the unique ID, name, address, date of birth and possibly sex to authorised individuals at the relevant government department or statistical agency, such as the Office for National Statistics (ONS), that hold a copy of your administrative records (e.g. NHS England, HMRC, or DWP). 
  3. The government department or agency uses your personal information to find your records.
  4. The government department or agency sends a copy of selected information from your administrative records, together with your unique ID, to DfE or to a statistical agency acting on DfE’s behalf, such as the ONS. This will be done securely on departmental research computers or within a Trusted Research Environment. 
  5. Your unique study ID is used by DfE or a statistical agency to match the information from your administrative records to your study responses. 
  6. The personally identifiable information used to identify your records (e.g. your name, address, sex, date of birth) will be deleted by the government department or agency doing the linkage. As the data controllers for the study, DfE will retain some identifiable information so that they can keep in touch with study participants, but this will always be stored separately to your study responses and any linked datasets.
  7. The linked data containing study responses and administrative records is made available to approved researchers for research and statistical purposes. Your personal data (e.g. name, address, sex, date of birth) will never be included with this data. 

The process outlined above applies to DfE education records for parents/carers, NHS records for the child and parent/carers, and HMRC and DWP records for the parent/carer. The process differs for DfE education records for the child in that DfE already hold a unique ID number for each pupil and do not require any other personal data for linkage purposes. These unique ID numbers are part of the National Pupil Database (NPD) and Alternative Provision database which hold education records about pupils in state funded education. Pupil education records will be combined with the study responses for research and statistical purposes. The unique NPD/AP ID numbers will not be included in the linked dataset. 

How long will we add information for?

If you agree to any of these linkages, then we will extract copies of both your historical records and will also collect updates of these into the future (unless you ask us to stop). 

The information we would like to add relates to parents, carers and children’s past, present and future circumstances. We would like to add this information from administrative records on an ongoing basis. 

What if I change my mind?

You can tell us to stop adding information from administrative records to yours and other family members’ study responses at any point without giving us a reason. No linkage to administrative records will be conducted from that point on. 

Any information already linked will continue to be used unless you explicitly request that we delete it. Please note that it is not possible for us to delete your linked study data if it has already been shared with researchers. Therefore, please make this request within 6 months of taking part in the study. After that date it will not be possible to remove linked administrative records from your study data.    

Contact details

For questions about adding information from administrative records or to withdraw your permissions, please contact the team at fivetotwelve@natcen.ac.uk.