Transparency data

Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO): privacy notice

Updated 26 September 2024

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

This privacy notice explains how the Department for Education (DfE) uses any personal data you give to us, or any that we may collect about you as part of the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) data. This privacy notice should be read alongside the DfE personal information charter.

The Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) study is produced by the following government departments working together:

• The Department for Education
• The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP)
• The Scottish Government
• The Welsh Government

LEO also uses data from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) which is held by DWP.

For the purpose of data protection legislation, each department acts as an independent data controller for LEO.

How we use your information

LEO data is used to compare students’ levels of education to their levels of employment and earnings in later life. To do this, we link personal information obtained from the relevant government departments relating to an individual’s education, employment and benefit claims in order to:

• enable comparisons of the performances of schools, colleges and universities
• provide statistical information to support education and career decisions
• evaluate and monitor the impact of education or training on outcomes
• support government decision making in order to improve services

Personal information we will use

The personal information we use to link this data together are:

• name
• date of birth
• gender
• postcode
• National Insurance number where available

Personal identifiers from education source data are sent to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) who match the records against their Customer Information System. The matched records are then linked to employment, earnings and benefit data held at DWP. Once the link is made, all personal identifiers are then removed to create LEO which provides de-identified information about individuals, which we can then link to other information, such as:

• personal characteristics including gender and ethnic group
• if the young person had special educational needs during their education
• if the young person qualified for free school meals
• schools attended, courses taken and qualifications achieved
• any benefits claimed
• employment and earned income

The linked information relates to students who attended school from 2001 to 2002, further education from 2002 to 2003 or higher education from 1994 to 1995, which is the earliest available education information.

Lawful use of personal data

When we collect and use this information, we need to follow the law. The main laws are the Data Protection Act (DPA) and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The DfE is the data controller for your personal data. We must have a reason to collect your personal data. This is called a ‘lawful basis’.

To enable our use of your personal data to be lawful, we need to meet one (or more) conditions in the data protection legislation. For the purpose of this project, the relevant condition is:

• article 6(1)(e) GDPR, to perform a public task as part of our function as a department
• article 9(2)(j) GDPR, to process special category data for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes

Legislation that allows linking of data

The Small Business, Employment and Enterprise Act 2015 and sections 87 to 91 of the Education and Skills Act 2008 allow us to link education and employment and benefits data to chart the transition of learners from education into the workplace. These legal powers only allow this information to be used to make decisions about education and training policy from summary information – for example, the average income students have achieved after taking a course.

For more information about the legislation that allows this sharing, read section 78 of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 and sections 87 - 91 of the Education and Skills Act 2008.

Section 122 Apprenticeships, Skills, Children And Learning Act 2009 and S 10 Education Act 1996 allows the Secretary of State to provide information, which includes information about individuals who are former teachers, to another Secretary of State to enable or facilitate the exercise of one of the Secretary of State’s functions relating to education or training.

Through ONS’s Secure Research Service (SRS), LEO incorporates Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) data, which relies on the legislation Higher Education and Research Act 2017. This permits the sharing of UCAS data to approved persons doing:

• research into the choices available to individuals who are:
  • applying for admission on to higher education courses provided by English higher education providers
  • considering whether to accept an offer for admission on such a course from such a provider
• research into equality of opportunity
• research areas approved by the Secretary of State

Who we will make your personal data available to

Where we need to share your personal data with others, we ensure that this data sharing complies with data protection legislation. For the purpose of this project, we will:

• share your data with DWP who carry out the data linkage on behalf of all the government departments listed above
• provide access to de-identified linked information to third parties for specific research purposes and when we do so, we will make sure there are secure arrangements in place for handling the linked information

Access to personal information is restricted to relevant government employees who need it in order to link information. Before making this information available to others (for research purposes only), we take great care to remove all personal identifiers.

We will also make de-identified linked education, earnings, employment and benefits data available to researchers accredited by the UK Statistics Authority for specific projects within the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Secure Research Service (SRS) and Integrated Data Service (IDS), in order to perform longitudinal education outcomes research for the benefit of the public.

For more information, read apply to access the Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO) dataset.

All data shares by DfE are subject to a robust approvals process where senior data experts (known as the DfE Data Sharing Approval Panel (DSAP)) assess the data share for:

• public benefit
• proportionality
• legal underpinning
• strict information security standards

The DSAP also includes external members who scrutinise the ongoing decision-making in order to increase public trust. As part of DfE’s commitment to transparency, we publish details of all organisations we have shared personal data with alongside a short description of the project.

Further information on data sharing within DfE is available from:

• How DfE shares personal data
• Apply for Department for Education (DfE) personal data

How long we will keep your personal data

As part of LEO, we will only keep your personal data for as long as we need it and for the research and statistical purposes that it was originally collected.

We will retain your data until you are aged 80. This means we can match learning data with employment and earnings data for all individuals. This includes individuals who do not retire at the current retirement age and work into later life.

Under data protection legislation, and in compliance with the relevant data processing conditions, personal data can be kept for longer periods when processed just for research and statistical purposes.

While we retain individual identifiers for matching purposes, we will always minimise the processing of, and access to, information that directly identifies any individual. By default, where possible we will replace direct identifiers with meaningless reference numbers before data is accessed or shared. These will have no meaning beyond the dataset’s boundaries.

We review this retention policy, and the need to retain the data held for LEO analysis, once a year. As part of these ongoing reviews, we will consider whether we need to retain the data and, if so, whether we can fully anonymise or de-identify it.

Storing personal data outside the UK

When DfE stores personal data outside the UK, we will make sure we comply with the data protection law and take additional steps to keep your personal data safe. This can include additional technical and security arrangements, contractual agreements and data sharing agreements.

Your data protection rights

Under the Data Protection Act 2018, you are entitled to ask us for:

• the right to access – you can ask if we hold information about you and ask for a copy by making a ‘subject access request’
• the right to rectification – you can request to correct any information you believe is inaccurate
• the right to erasure – you can request for your information to be erased, under certain circumstances
• the right to restrict processing – you can request that we restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain circumstances
• the right to object to processing – you can object to DfE’s processing, under certain circumstances

This means that you have the right to request information relating to you. However, it is important to be aware that LEO is produced by combining data sources collected for administrative purposes but in itself, is not an administrative or operational dataset.

Any subject level data held in LEO should be requested from the original source at the owning government department.

Further information about your data protection rights is available on the Information Commissioner’s website.

Requesting a copy of your data held in LEO

LEO is an analytical dataset currently used for research analysis at an aggregate level. It is made up from data sources collected for administrative purposes but in itself, is not an administrative or operational dataset. LEO is created through fuzzy matching techniques, and it is accepted there will be false positive matches. This is when we believe we have found a correct match from one administrative system (DfE) to another (DWP) when, in fact, it is not always a correct match – for example, the same person. We try to minimise the chances of this happening, but we accept the small amount of false positives because we’re creating an analytical dataset, not an administrative one.

As such, the use of LEO for subject access requests could result in sharing information for the wrong person in the case of a false positive match. Information relating to an individual held in LEO should be requested from the original source at the owning government department.

LEO data for individuals from across the UK

Whilst there is one process for matching and linking LEO data, DfE only receives linked outcomes data for individuals included in English education data collections and for all individuals who attended Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

The Scottish Government only receives linked outcomes data for individuals included in its Scottish education data collections, all learners who attend a Scottish HEI, or higher education students with a record in the Scottish education system.

The Welsh Government only receives outcomes data for individuals included in its Welsh education data collections, all learners who attend a Welsh HEI, or higher education students with a record in the Welsh education system.

How the Welsh Government use LEO data

Further details of how the Welsh Government uses and shares its LEO data can be found in its Lifelong Learning Wales Record (LLWR) privacy notice.

How the Scottish Government use LEO data

Further details of how the Scottish Government shares its LEO data can be found in its longitudinal educational outcomes: privacy notice.

Contact us

Use the secure DfE contact form if you want:

• to make a complaint or feel your data has been mishandled
• more information about how we process your personal data or your data protection rights
• to make a request about your information, for example to request a copy of your information or to ask for your information to be changed
• to contact our Data Protection Officer with any other query

You can also contact us by writing to:

Emma Wharram
Data Protection Officer
Department for Education (B2.28)
7 and 8 Wellington Place
Wellington Street
Leeds
LS1 4AW

You can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) by using the ICO contact form or writing to:

Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

Last updated

We may need to update this privacy notice periodically so we recommend that you revisit this information from time to time. This privacy notice was last reviewed in September 2024.