This policy sets out the principles and procedures that we use to manage confidentiality in our statistical publications.

We produce official statistics in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics 3.0 (‘Code 3.0’ or ‘the Code’).

Standard 4, Practice 5 of the Code states: ‘Protect the confidentiality of individual and business information when producing statistics. Be transparent about the choices made in line with the producer’s published confidentiality policy and apply appropriate disclosure control methods before release’.

Keeping your personal information safe

We use statistical disclosure control - a standard technique when working with data - to keep the risk of revealing confidential information to an acceptable, low level.

This means that no one using our statistics should be able to:

  • identify confidential information about an individual, such as a learner

  • combine different statistics from the same source, or statistics from other sources, to reveal information about an individual or group

We take a standard approach of suppression and rounding of data in most of our statistical publications. This means that we mark suppressed figures with the shorthand [c] and, unless stated otherwise:

  • we hide details on groups of fewer than five, to avoid disclosing personal information

  • we round figures to the nearest five, making it harder to identify data for specific individuals

  • we calculate percentages using figures before we round them, and we suppress all percentages calculated on figures that are later suppressed

Compliance

The head of profession (our head of data and analytics) has the final decision on any action necessary to comply with these procedures.

Questions or comments?

We want this information to be as helpful as possible. Please email us at data.analytics@qualifications.gov.scot with questions or general comments.

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code. You can also email us at data.analytics@qualifications.gov.scot with your comments on how we’re meeting these standards, or you can contact OSR by email at regulation@statistics.gov.uk, or through the OSR website.