There is some essential data that we need to deliver our service to you and some optional data that you can also choose to share.
Optional and essential data
Optional and essential data
Under the principle of data minimisation, we only collect data that is required to deliver our service to you. Below is a list of the data that is essential, what we use it for, and what optional data fields can be provided for full functionality. The Data Fields are also listed in our Terms and Conditions > Section C: Data Handling Agreement > School data being processed.
Data field | Is this an optional field? | Function |
Student forename
| Essential (via MIS link)
| Acts as a student identifier (essential for the student onboarding process) |
Student surname
| Essential (via MIS link)
| Acts as a student identifier (essential for the student onboarding process) |
Student date of birth
| Essential (via MIS link) | Acts as a student identifier (essential for the student onboarding process) |
Student gender | Essential (via MIS link) | Acts as a student identifier (essential for the student onboarding process) |
Student class | Essential (via MIS link) | Assists in allocation of students to the correct class |
Student tutor group | Essential (via MIS link) | Assists in allocation of students to the correct class |
Student year group | Essential (via MIS link) | Assists in allocation of students to the correct class |
Student Unique Pupil Number (UPN) | Essential (via MIS link) | Allows unique identification of students for data accuracy |
Teacher forename | Essential (manual entry) | Acts as an identifier (essential for onboarding process) |
Teacher surname | Essential (manual entry) | Acts as an identifier (essential for onboarding process) |
Teacher role | Essential (manual entry) | For administration and communication |
Teacher school email | Essential (manual entry) | For reporting and communications (also optional SSO if required) |
Teacher classes taught | Essential (manual entry) | For homework allocation and tracking |
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Parental responsibility and priority | Optional (via MIS link) | Identifies contacts with parental responsibility for the purpose of providing weekly homework emails |
Parent email address | Optional (via MIS link) | Allows parents to receive a weekly update on their child's homework completion |
Parent forename | Optional (via MIS link) | Identifies parent |
Parent surname | Optional (via MIS link) | Identifies parent |
Students with English as an additional language (EAL) | Optional (via MIS link) | Allows reporting of student progress for these groups |
Students eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) | Optional (via MIS link) | Allows reporting of student progress for these groups |
Students with Pupil Premium funding (PP) | Optional (via MIS link) | Allows reporting of student progress for these groups |
Student email address | Optional (via MIS link) | Allows for Microsoft or Google single sign on (SSO) integration |
Student assessment results: KS2 results, Sparx curriculum assessment marks, GCSE mock paper marks, or GCSE final grades | Optional (via MIS or manual upload)
| (Sparx Assessments only) Attainment monitoring and reporting |
Why does Sparx need a UPN?
Why does Sparx need a UPN?
In Sparx, we use UPN:
For student matching (to ensure account continuity) when:
A school changes MIS provider. We complete 100s of MIS migrations each year, and UPN is the vital identifier to ensure we can match students.
A school needs to revert to a previous copy of its MIS data due to MIS problems.
We migrate certain schools that have previously not been able to set up an MIS integration (for example, where their MIS was not previously compatible with Wonde).
To assist with student account troubleshooting:
For example, where 2 students' accounts have been overwritten, to deduplicate a student's account, or to resolve a corrupt account resulting from MIS issues.
To allow schools to:
Match our attainment data with their own internal data where they ask us to transfer our data to them.
Transfer their internal exam results to us to assist with research projects that schools have specifically arranged with Sparx.
Our view is that the above use cases all fall within the scope of the DfE's UPN guidance, which permits schools to transfer UPN data to third-party providers of an education-related service or system, subject to the usual transfer controls (in this case, these are set out in our Sparx Learning Terms and Conditions).
Under the GDPR principle of accuracy, we use it in conjunction with other unique identifiers such as name, gender, and date of birth to identify students. We need a combination, as unfortunately, in practice, 'unique' identifiers can be volatile and subject to change. Looking across all schools and the entirety of the changes recorded, UPN is 20 times less likely to change than the other unique IDs.
Why does Sparx need a date of birth?
Why does Sparx need a date of birth?
Date of birth is an essential field which we use for logging in and data reports.
Even though we know what class students are in, and as a result what questions they should be set, we still need dates of birth for the following reasons:
When we used usernames and generated passwords, we found that it became the job of the teacher to keep track of or disseminate login information, so we chose not to use these.
Instead, we decided to use first name, last name, date of birth, and gender to uniquely identify students in a school.
We also use the date of birth to band our statistics by age range, which is proving useful for reports and statistics sent to schools, and is also being used to help drive queries like "What are the skills most commonly set to 12-year-olds?" or "What skills do year 10 students find most difficult?".
Why does Sparx use gender?
Why does Sparx use gender?
We use the gender of students to help uniquely identify students in a school.
It is a particularly useful identifier when differentiating between twins with the same initial, surname, and date of birth should there be any issues with accounts.
We also use gender to differentiate our statistics, which is important for schools, especially those that are trying to overcome a skewed male-female divide in STEM subjects. The data we supply is being used to measure and monitor the skew.
Anecdotally, we have found that the platform is helpful for female students who would prefer to watch a video a number of times rather than question a teacher repeatedly. It is worth noting that students do not see gender on their accounts or during the login process.
It is not currently possible to import genders other than male/female into Sparx.
Equality is something that is fundamentally important to us here at Sparx. We have been working for several years to be able to support students with genders other than male/female. Whilst some MIS providers enable schools to record ‘non-binary’, ‘agender’, or ‘other’, they do not make this data available for Wonde to pick up (it isn’t available in the MIS Application Programming Interface or API). Subsequently, Wonde doesn’t have that information to pass to us, although this is often requested and under review.
To be as inclusive as possible, Sparx has taken the position of using gender-neutral pronouns (they/them) throughout our platform for all students.
What does Sparx use demographic data for?
What does Sparx use demographic data for?
Pupil Premium (PP), Free School Meals (FSM), and English as an Additional Language (EAL) data is useful for student activity reports.
Many schools find the student activity report to be a powerful tool for monitoring these student groups, but it's important to note that sharing PP, FSM and EAL data with Sparx is not mandatory.
The student activity report is a whole-school report which is designed to help teachers easily identify where intervention is needed or praise is merited.
The report allows teachers to filter students by year, class, or registration group and, where the data has been shared with us, teachers can also tick a box to include student demographic data (PP, FSM, and EAL) within the report so that progress or achievement of these specific groups of students can be monitored.
More information can be found on our Accessing and interpreting reports page.
The student demographic element of the student activity report is not available if the school does not wish to provide this data.
It is also worth mentioning that student demographic data has previously been used in our published research at an aggregated level. We also want to assure you that any research we conduct is always based on anonymised data to protect student privacy. For example, to allow us to verify that pupil premium and free school meals students progress using Sparx Reader at broadly the same rate as non-PP/FSM students, halting the attainment gap. Gathering evidence to ensure our products are effective in increasing attainment is important to us, and we prioritise the privacy and data protection of our students.