Terms of use

Terms of use for Stakeholders: this document is about how data will be used and the checks that schools have given their consent for this use. It is important to read these terms of use before agreeing to them. NOTE: the Inclusive Practices Tools amendments have been bold italicised.

Purpose

The purpose of the Wellbeing@School website and survey tools (Student Surveys, Teacher Surveys and School Self-Review Tool), the Inclusive Practices Tools surveys (Student Survey, Community Survey, Staff Survey and School Review Profile), reports and support information is to support schools to engage in evidence-based self-review. 

Any New Zealand school can elect to use these services.

Focus

The focus of the Wellbeing@School survey tools is the extent to which school practices create a safe and caring school climate that deters bullying.

The focus of the Inclusive Practices Tools is the extent to which a school includes all students in all aspects of school life.

Users

The intended users of the Wellbeing@School website (including Wellbeing@School surveys/tools and the Inclusive Practices Tools) are New Zealand school principals, school administrators, the Ministry of Education and other approved agencies (by the Ministry of Education).
All responses to the survey tools are anonymous and remain confidential.

NZCER primarily acts as a safe and confidential custodian to the data. NZCER will analyse the data to provide aggregated and anonymised pictures of student and school practice. In time this will contribute towards national reference data. The data will also be used refine the psychometric qualities of the tool. 

Ministry of Education and other approved agencies will be able to view reports of grouped data. No schools or individuals will be identifiable in these reports.
Grouped data may be used to:

  • report national profiles for the Wellbeing@School and Inclusive Practices Tools data
  • show how the data varies across a number of variables, such as school size, region, type of school, and decile
  • analyse the performance of the survey questions and
  • inform general research questions.

Surveying

Surveying staff

Schools who use the Wellbeing@Schools website and tools (School Self-Review Tool, W@S Student and Teacher Survey) and the Inclusive Practices Tools surveys (Student Survey, Community Survey, Staff Survey and School Review Profile) agree to respect the anonymity of the survey respondents, and the right of parents, caregivers, students, or staff to freely opt into or out of completing their surveys and the School Self-Review Tool/School Review Profile without coercion.

Surveying students

It is the responsibility of the class administration person for the Student Survey (usually the classroom teacher or parent/caregiver) to inform students that their responses are confidential and that the information will be used to help the school to improve the school climate/inclusiveness, and that the data for all schools involved will be grouped and reported to the Ministry of Education to identify national trends about school climate and school inclusiveness in schools.

If the survey causes notable stress or anxiety students should be given the option to opt out and be referred to the school pastoral student support network, or be given details of Youthline support.

School contact person

The principal is required to register the school. At this point they should enter the name and email address of the staff member they wish to act as a survey administrator (principals can nominate themselves to fill this role). The school survey administrator will be responsible for facilitating the completion of the survey tools in the school. This will include:

  • Working with the staff to complete the School Self-Review Tool/School Review Profile
  • Ensuring validity of the data through confidentiality of the survey process
  • Being a first point of contact for any issues staff, parents/caregivers or students experience
  • Monitoring the survey completion rate
  • Reviewing and printing the reports. They will know how many student completions from a given class, but will not be able to see individual responses from the survey, or who has completed the survey.
  • Starting and closing the survey period
  • Ensuring the security of the school password.

Data storage and confidentiality

The data is stored securely on password protected servers based in New Zealand. Schools have access to their own school-community data which they can compare to the national reference data.

NZCER has the role of custodian of the data, and providing support services around the survey tools, as well as the analysis to allow confidential reporting.

The school level reports are intended for school leaders and are to be used at their discretion. We recommend that results are shared with the wider school community.

Any data used for any other analyses will be stripped of all identifying features. At no time will the identity of a school or an individual be made available by NZCER to anyone else. NZCER will only use school contact information to communicate with schools. All personal information, including email addresses are kept securely and will not be shared with any third party.

NZCER reserves the right to withhold any survey information that could potentially be used to identify a survey respondent (for instance, results from a small group of respondents).

Anonymised data will be used for national reporting to the Ministry of Education to inform sector monitoring. Schools can request to have their data deleted from the server making it unavailable for any future reruns of reports. This, however, will not affect the anonymised data used for reporting to the Ministry of Education.