Passport to Success is a project that will test the effects of Passport on children’s mental health. Passport is a universal social and emotional learning intervention.

Children in Year 4 during the 2022/2023 academic year that attend participating schools in the Greater Manchester city-region and surrounding areas. We will survey these children between April-July of 2023 and again when they are in Year 5 (April-July 2024), and finally in Year 6 (April-July 2025).

Yes, Passport to Success was reviewed and approved by the University of Manchester’s Research Ethics Committee (reference 2022-14050-24401).

Yes. You can read our GDPR notice here:

https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=37095

which outlines the data we will hold, the legal basis for processing these data, how data will be stored and shared, and the rights of data subjects.

There are different lawful bases to process personal data. Our lawful basis for processing personal data is not consent, but rather, public interest and scientific research. We are implementing an opt-out procedure, whereby parents need to indicate they do not wish their children take part in the surveys, in order for the children to be excluded, to satisfy ethical governance regulations at the University of Manchester, which require all parents/carers to be given the opportunity to object to their children’s participation in the research.

There are two different processes relevant to the involvement in the project. One concerns GDPR and the other concerns research ethics. From a GDPR perspective, and as mentioned above, the legal bases for processing the data are not consent, but public interest and scientific research – this is because our study aims to improve understanding of mental health and wellbeing and the best ways to support children in this regard. We hope this will help inform mental health and wellbeing provision in schools in the future. Thus, we do not rely upon consent as a lawful basis to process this data. We do however seek consent to participate from the pupils and their parents to fulfil our research ethics requirements. The requirements of ethics consent are not the same as the GDPR. They cover a wider remit, including, for example, protecting research participants from harm. In terms of research ethics, opt out methods are appropriate given that our surveys are very brief (meaning minimal, if any, disruption to children’s education), are included in government recommendations regarding assessment and monitoring of wellbeing in schools, and involve no direct contact with our research team (given that they are administered online, supported by school staff). We also, as part of Research Ethics Committee approval, support every participant’s right to withdraw from the research at any time.

Your child will always have the final say. Before starting the survey, they will be asked to tick a box confirming that they are happy to proceed. If your child does not want to proceed, then that is absolutely fine. We have instructed schools to provide an alternative activity for children who have been opted out by their parents/carers or who do not assent to participate.

Guidance is given to all schools to support them in the delivery of the surveys. This includes thinking about activities for children whose parents/carers have opted them out and those who have decided themselves that they do not want to take part (as well as those who may finish early).

Parents/carers are given the opportunity to withdraw their child from the online surveys. Your child will also be asked if they would like to take part before completing the survey. You are both free to withdraw at any time, without giving a reason. If, after your child has taken part, you decide that you want us to remove your child’s responses, you can contact us and ask us to delete their information. To do this, please contact passport@manchester.ac.uk stating your child’s name and the name of the school (so we can ensure the right child is opted out). Alternatively, you can call 0161 275 8512.

We completely appreciate why an opt-out consent process may not be preferred by everyone, and it’s something that we gave a lot of thought and discussion to during the development of the research process. In the end our decision was guided by the potential for the findings of the research to contribute to a better understanding of children’s mental health and wellbeing. In particular, the risk that the validity and generalisability of these findings would be severely limited by opt-in procedures, where many children may be excluded due to lack of response rather than a genuine wish for exclusion from research. Finding the balance between these processes is always a challenge but our discussions with the project team focused on how we make the opt-out process easiest such that if we chose this approach we would ensure all who felt unhappy with participation could easily ensure their children were not involved. This included extended periods for opt-out, multiple means for notification, and also ensuring that the assent process for children themselves was ‘opt-in’. As previously mentioned, these processes were reviewed by our ethics board and deemed appropriate.

The online survey addresses several dimensions namely internalizing symptoms, emotional regulation, wellbeing, loneliness, bullying, peer support, health-related quality of life.

No. Children will log into the survey using a unique password and will not be asked to enter any personal details. However, the information that we store securely from the research does include identifiable information that allows us to link responses (e.g., same child at different time points) and to link this information to pupils’ characteristics (such as special educational needs). This information will only be accessible to members of the research team for data management and analysis purposes, and is stored securely.

The online survey should take no more than 20 minutes to complete, but we estimate that most children will complete it in about 10 minutes.

Yes. If you wish to have access to the questions, please email passport@manchester.ac.uk and we will email you a pdf with the questions.

As a research team, prior to your child starting the online survey, we make a commitment to them that their responses will be confidential. If your child chooses to do the survey, we will abide by our commitment, meaning we cannot disclose their responses.

A research team based at the University of Manchester will have access to identifiable child-level data. Members of this research team have been trained in Information Security and Data Governance. Feedback reports that will be provided to participating schools will use aggregated data that will not allow identification of individual childrens’ data.

Data will be kept in an encrypted container/folder (AES-256algorithm), in a protected folder on the University's Research Data Storage system, known as Isilon. Accessing the data requires dual factor authentication as the user needs to log into the university's network. The folder with the container can only be accessed by specific users, and the container itself is protected with a long password.

After the conclusion of a given survey window, the research team clean and prepare the submitted data so that it is ready for the feedback reporting stage to schools.

Schools will receive bespoke, aggregated feedback reports. These will include data summaries, for example bar charts, that will highlight wellbeing trends in schools.

The Passport to Success survey is not intended to be used as a screening tool to identify individuals in need of support. As such, schools will not receive feedback about individual pupils. Accordingly, individual survey scores will not be used as a basis for determining support for young people. Rather, Passport to Success uses aggregated data to flag areas of strength and difficulty across the student population (and subgroups, such as those eligible for free school meals).

A distress protocol is provided to the school staff who are facilitating the completion of the survey. In addition, the surveys will signpost pupils towards sources of support they can seek out (such as parents or guardians, school staff, Childline) in the extremely unlikely event that they feel adversely affected.

We do not believe that completing the survey will have a detrimental effect on your child. When pupils are completing the survey, we ask teachers to identify support available in the school should children feel they need it.

Yes, our principal investigators have worked with children for more than two decades. We have worked with many hundreds of schools across national and regional projects.

All our research team members have Disclosure Barring Service certificates that confirm their suitability to work with children. The team members that will be involved in focus groups, and thus directly working with children, all have Enhanced checks. For more information about these checks please visit:

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/disclosure-and-barring-service

Not all schools will be allocated to deliver the Passport intervention, meaning your child may be in the 50% of schools that will be randomly allocated to what is called a control group, in which it will not be delivered. Instead, your child’s school will continue with usual practice.

If you follow this link you will be able to obtain more knowledge about the Passport intervention:

https://www.partnershipforchildren.org.uk/what-we-do/programmes-for-schools/passport.html