Who we are and what we plan to do

We are His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education (HMIE). We support improvements in Scottish education for the benefit of all learners. We do this by working with stakeholders. Through this work we gather evidence of the quality of Scotland’s education system. Our work includes settings from early learning and childcare, through to adult learning.

We are planning a thematic inspection of how local authorities support school improvement. The thematic inspection will gather the views of local authority staff and headteachers. This will help us to understand the priorities of local authorities and schools. It will also identify the strengths and challenges of improving school performance and the quality of education.

How we will collect this information

Questionnaires

We are inviting responses to a questionnaire we have created using Microsoft Forms. There is a questionnaire for local authority staff and a questionnaire for headteachers. The information we gather will provide valuable insights into stakeholder views. These views will help us to identify what is working well and the challenges that exist.

We will collate responses anonymously. We will only use the data for analysis and reporting purposes. We may use aggregated and summarised data in our internal and external publications. We will capture demographic information in the ‘school context’ section of the questionnaire. This includes:

• the school roll
• Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) characteristics
• the proportion of pupils recorded as having an additional support needs
• the proportion of pupils with English as an additional language

All questionnaires are anonymous. However, school context information may make a small number of settings identifiable. For this reason, the data captured in this section is treated as personal data. This means that we will not share school context data with any third party external to HMIE.

We request that respondents do not disclose personal data in the free text box at the end of a questionnaire. If this does occur, we will remove the comment in its entirety before aggregating or analysing the remaining data.

To further protect participants’ identity, we will apply thresholds when reporting questionnaire data. Data points that could potentially identify a participant will only be reported if a minimum threshold of responses is met. This ensures that individual responses cannot be traced back to any one participant.

Focus groups

We are dedicated to protecting the privacy of focus group participants. Analysis, reports, and publications will not contain names or personal information. We will present data from focus groups in a way that protects participant anonymity. We will not use direct quotes from focus group discussions.

We will not use names or directly identifiable information in any reports or publications. However, we cannot guarantee complete anonymity. Smaller focus groups may make individuals easier to identify. Participants’ roles or insights may also make them more identifiable.

Who can see your information

HM Inspectors who are involved in this thematic inspection will have access to the data. A designated team of analysts and researchers within the Inspectorate will also help with data analysis.

Sharing data with local authorities

We will only share aggregated questionnaire data with senior leaders from local authorities. This approach helps to protect individual anonymity and allows local authorities to review the data.

How we will store information

We will store all data securely in a restricted access file on Education Scotland’s internal document management system.

What are my rights?

We will use what you tell us for thematic inspection purposes only. It is up to you if you want to take part in this questionnaire. You can:

• end the questionnaire at any time
• ask to see any information about you that we have kept
• request to update or delete the information you provided

Please note that updates and deletions may not always be possible. This is because we have anonymised the data which makes it difficult to identify specific submissions.

Why we can use and share what you tell us

The lawful basis we use to use and share what you tell us is Public Task (6(1)(e)) from the UK GDPR (2018).

If you have concerns

Contact the Education Scotland Information Governance if you have concerns about how we have collected or used your data.

If you still have concerns about data protection, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office:

The Information Commissioner’s Office Scotland
Queen Elizabeth House
Sibbald Walk
Edinburgh
EH8 8FT

Email: casework@ico.org.uk

Telephone: 0303 123 1113

How to contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions or feedback related to this privacy notice, or if you want us to delete or update what you have told us.