PA MediaThe Scottish govt “wish to do higher” in how delicate data is accumulated from schoolchildren after get admission to to a debatable census on sexual reviews was once halted.
Training secretary Jenny Gilruth informed MSPs she could be elevating considerations with officers after BBC Scotland Information discovered information from the 2021 well being and wellbeing survey was once being marketed to be used by way of exterior researchers.
The federal government stated pupils would no longer be identifiable from any information accumulated, however Ms Gilruth stated get admission to to the knowledge was once being placed on hang.
Oldsters claimed they have been unaware the solutions may well be used on this approach.
Ms Gilruth stated: “I do wish to mirror that I feel we wish to do higher sooner or later with regards to how that is carried out”, with regards to how the ideas was once accumulated.
Greater than 130,000 college youngsters took section within the census, performed in 2021.
Decide out fear
Conservative MSP Meghan Gallacher had raised the problem as an pressing query at Holyrood on Wednesday.
She stated the census had concerned youngsters as younger as 14 being requested “extremely intrusive and beside the point questions” about sexual reviews.
Gallacher claimed folks weren’t knowledgeable of the main points of the survey as a result of an “opt-out” fashion were used.
Part of Scotland’s 32 councils pulled out of the survey following considerations a couple of loss of knowledgeable consent and worries over the anonymity for pupils.
On the time of the survey, campaigners warned that it should offer protection to youngsters’s proper to privateness and provides knowledgeable consent.
The United Kingdom’s Knowledge Commissioner’s Place of work has pointers on consent which say it should be “opt-in”, relatively than depending on folks or pupils in particular refusing to participate.
The training secretary stated she recognised the energy of feeling at the subject and the knowledge had simplest been accrued on one instance.
She added that parental consent must were communicated by way of faculties.
Information from the census will likely be got rid of from {the catalogue} and get admission to to it’ll be paused to permit time for the problem to be regarded as.
PA MediaMs Gilruth stated: “I, as Cupboard Secretary, have additionally taken a choice to pause how we accumulate this information.
“I’ve at once mentioned those considerations with the manager statistician.”
She added that “suitable steps” have been being taken by way of the statistician to mirror the “energy of feeling” at the survey.
College pupils in S4 to S6 have been requested to present their perspectives on a variety of topics from bodily and psychological well being to bullying and the pressures of college paintings.
Then again, a piece on sexual relationships led to controversy, asking pupils a couple of selection questions on their reviews, together with whether or not they’d had “vaginal or anal intercourse”.
The 16 councils that went forward with the survey have been Angus, Clackmannanshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Dundee, East Renfrewshire, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Glasgow, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Renfrewshire, Scottish Borders, Shetland, South Ayrshire and Stirling.
