What is the object of the Pupil Survey?
The Pupil Survey gives pupils a chance to have their say about what they think about learning and well-being at their school. Schools, school owners and the national education authorities store and use the results of the survey in order to analyse and develop the school and the learning environment. Data from the survey may also be used for research, and researchers can request raw data from the survey. Some of the results from the Pupil Survey are published on www.udir.no/statistikk.

How does the survey work?
Pupils can complete the Pupil Survey either in the spring term or autumn term. Municipal authorities, county authorities and schools must complete the Pupil Survey during the autumn term. Schools that wish to conduct the survey during the spring term may do so on a voluntary basis. The Pupil Survey is completely voluntary for pupils in both the spring and autumn terms. Pupils may start the survey and then skip any questions they don’t want to answer.

Protection of personal data and responsibility for data processing
Personal data is stored about pupils when they answer questions on the Pupil Survey. The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training is responsible for ensuring that the personal data from the Pupil Survey is processed correctly and in accordance with applicable data protection regulations. Conexus is responsible for the technical implementation of the survey on behalf of the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, and they must follow the same rules regarding personal data. Conexus operates a portal for ordering, collecting and displaying results from the Pupil Survey, including raw data. The portal requires a login. The results of the Pupil Survey cannot be directly linked to respondents. Pupils do not give their names, and their national identity numbers are not linked to their answers. Once they have completed the survey, the link between the pupil’s login code and their responses is broken, which makes it extremely difficult to find out who answered what on the survey.

However, in exceptional cases, there may be a theoretical possibility for someone to recognise pupils’ answers (indirect identification), for example at small schools where people may have background knowledge of those who responded to the survey. Consequently, we have very strict rules for showing the results of the surveys – this applies to schools, school owners and national education authorities. We have implemented special rules (anonymisation rules) to hide certain results and thus reduce the risk that someone could indirectly recognise pupils’ answers. Data from the survey will never be made public in a way that could make it possible to recognise the answers provided by individual pupils.

In cases where we provide data to researchers, they must follow the rules set out by the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training for data processing and confidentiality, and they must sign a non-disclosure statement.

Legal basis for processing personal data

The legal basis for processing personal data related to the Pupil Survey follows from the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Article 6(1)(e) and Article 9(2)(g), with supplementary national legal basis set out in section 2-3 of the Regulations for the Education Act [forskrift til opplæringsloven] and section 2-3 of the Regulations for the Independent School Act [forskrift til friskoleloven].

Do you have any questions?
For more information, please contact the school. You can also find more information (only in Norwegian) at www.udir.no/undersokelser. If you have any questions concerning data protection related to the survey, please contact the Data Protection Officer at the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training by e-mail at: personvernombud@udir.no.
If you would like to make a complaint about the Norwegian Directorate of Education andTraining’s processing of personal data in connection with the Pupil Survey, please contact the Norwegian Data Protection Authority.

You can find more information (only in Norwegian) on the Norwegian Data Protection Authority’s website: https://www.datatilsynet.no/omdatatilsynet/kontakt-oss/hvordan-kan-jeg-klage-til-datatilsynet/ 

Contact details for the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training:
Postal address: PO Box 9359 Grønland, NO-0135 OSLO, NORWAY
Phone: +47 23 30 12 00
E-mail: post@udir.no 
Website: www.udir.no