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Benchmark.Pulse

Data protection pack

Parent and carer survey privacy notice

Template for schools. Replace the [placeholders], then share it with families before the survey opens, for example as a link in the invitation message or on the school website. Have your DPO review it.

Version: draft v1.3, 12 October 2026

[School name] parent and carer survey: how your information is used

[School name] is running an anonymous survey for parents and carers, [survey title], from [opening date] to [closing date]. We use a service called Benchmark.Pulse to run it. This notice explains what happens to your answers.

Taking part is voluntary. Nothing happens to you or your child if you choose not to.

Who is responsible

[School legal name / academy trust name] is the data controller. Benchmark.Pulse ([company legal name] Ltd) runs the survey for us under a contract and may only use the data on our instructions.

What is collected

  • Your answers, including anything you write in the comment boxes.
  • Your child's year group, which you choose from a list, so we can see whether families in different year groups feel differently.
  • The day you responded, but not the time.
  • Your email address, only if we invited you by email. It is used to send your personal link, and a reminder if the school chooses to send one. It is deleted as soon as you use the link, 30 days after the link was sent, or when the survey closes, whichever comes first.

What is not collected

Your answers are stored with no name, email address, link, account, IP address or device information. The school cannot tell which answers are yours.

How anonymity works

  • No results are shown at all until at least 10 families have answered.
  • Results by year group are only shown for groups of 5 or more families. If a year group has fewer than 5 responses, its results are hidden, and another group is hidden too where needed, so the hidden one cannot be worked out by subtraction.
  • Any answer chosen by fewer than 5 people is shown only as "fewer than 5".
  • First names, names with titles, some initials, class codes, email addresses, UK phone numbers and web links are removed from comments automatically before they appear in the report or the download. This can miss things, so please still leave out details that would identify you, your child or anyone else.
  • The school can remove any comment from the report. A removed comment is deleted from the report and the download, and this cannot be undone.
  • The school can download the results, not your individual answers.

If a comment worries us

Comments are checked automatically for signs that a child or adult may be at risk of harm. A comment that might be a concern goes straight to the school's named safeguarding leads, who see it as you wrote it. It is kept out of the survey report, the AI commentary and the download, and its text is deleted 30 days after it has been reviewed. If you write a comment in Arabic, Bengali, Punjabi, Urdu or another language our check cannot read, it also goes to the safeguarding lead to read, and it is not included in the survey report. Because the survey is anonymous, the school cannot tell who wrote it. This survey is not the way to raise a safeguarding concern about a child. If you are worried about a child, contact [school DSL name and contact details] directly. If a child is in immediate danger, call 999.

Use of AI

[Choose one, to match the setting you chose for this survey. AI commentary is on by default for parent surveys.]

  • If written commentary is on: when the school unlocks the full report, Benchmark.Pulse uses an AI model (Claude, made by Anthropic) to group comments into themes and write a short summary. Nothing is sent to the AI before then. Names are removed before anything is sent, comments flagged for safeguarding are never sent, and every statistic the AI writes is checked against the data. Your answers are not used to train AI. [check: confirm Anthropic data retention and processing location before issuing this notice.]
  • If written commentary is off: Your comments are not sent to any AI service.

How long it is kept

  • Email addresses: deleted as soon as your link is used, 30 days after it was sent, or when the survey closes, whichever comes first.
  • Survey answers and reports: [3 years from the closing date], then deleted.

Our lawful basis

[School to complete with your DPO. For example: "We process this information to carry out our public task of providing education and engaging with parents (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(e))."]

Your rights

You have rights to access, correct and delete your information, to object, and to restrict how it is used. Because your answers cannot be traced to you, we usually cannot find, change or delete your individual answers after you submit them. You can ask us to remove your email address from the invitation list at any time before the survey closes.

Where the data is held

Survey data is stored in the UK. [check: confirm the production database region is London.] Some of Benchmark.Pulse's suppliers may process data outside the UK under approved safeguards. The full list is published at [link to sub-processor list].

Contact and complaints

  • Questions about this survey: [name, role, email]
  • Our data protection officer: [name, email]
  • If you are unhappy with how your data is handled, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office: https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

[Date of this notice]