Getting to grips with the National Pupil Database; personal data in an open data world
Download as PPTX, PDF0 likes1,050 views
This document summarizes a presentation about the National Pupil Database (NPD) in the UK and issues around opening its personal student data. It notes that while the NPD was created to collect school-level data, it now contains increasing amounts of personal information on students without their consent. There are concerns that further opening this data could allow re-identification of individuals, especially when combined with other available data sources, compromising student privacy. The presentation argues that personal data and open data require different approaches to protect individuals.
Getting to grips with the National Pupil Database; personal data in an open data world
- 1. Getting to grips with the National Pupil Database; personal data in an Open Data world Phil Booth and Terri Dowty | Open Data Institute Friday Lunchtime Lectures |15 Feb 2013
- 2. personal data ≠ open data
- 3. NPD: legislative underpinning • Education Act ‘96 power to collect ‘school level’ data • Amended by Schedule 30 School Standards and Framework Act 1998 • Created statutory gateway to collect personal data about pupils • Empowered secretary of state to define data in regulations
- 4. NPD: 2 • No consent required - head teachers under duty to supply information • Data taken directly from school MIS • Initially parents/children unaware - FPNs
- 5. Function Creep • Original school census annual ('PLASC') • Now taken each term • Includes pre-school providers • Incremental increase in personal data • Exclusions and attendance data, poverty markers, mode of travel to school... The gift that keeps on giving?
- 7. NPD request and data flows TIER 1 DfE Data Individual pupil level: Management identifying and/or identifiable and highly sensitive Advisory Panel (DMAP) TIER 2 Individual pupil level: identifiable and sensitive, e.g. ‘recoded’ ethnicity, SEN, FSM REQUEST DfE Data TIER 3 and Statistics Aggregate school level: Division identifiable and sensitive, DATA could have single counts (DSD) TIER 4 Individual pupil level: identifiable, e.g. gender, attainment, absences Diagram based on NPD user guide and protocol, July 2012
- 8. DfE consultation: ‘widen access’ to NPD
- 9. educators the voluntary sector “Data would only be released to organisations which had been profit-driven through a robust approval process political parties enterprises and in accordance with strict terms and candidates and conditions on data security, handling and use.” education publishers professional bodies and developers “We will achieve this through making people with direct information from the National Pupil grudges marketers Database available to all (with appropriate safeguards in place so individual pupils cannot be researchers the media identified), and developing a new School Performance Data Portal.” bullies consultants
- 10. re-identification • relatively easy outside urban areas when combined with ward-level stats • e.g. ethnicity + sector postcode narrow down to handful of families (at most) • + school year group can id individual child
- 11. ‘anonymisation’ • de-identification • pseudonymisation • “effectively anonymised”? • aggregate data / statistics • ‘Differential Privacy’…
- 13. re-identifying people NAFIS IDENT1 NDNAD GCSE + A LEVEL
- 14. • personal data ≠ open data • obfuscation vs. consent • (notification ≠ knowledge) • ‘anonymisation’ vs. utility
- 15. thanks for listening Phil Booth phil@truth2power.org.uk Terri Dowty terri@truth2power.org.uk