Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) - 2026 - Privacy Notice

We used the names and date of birth of pupils in your child’s school to randomly select pupils to take part in PIRLS.

We will collect information on what your child has learnt about reading, from their answers to the PIRLS assessment questions. We will also ask questions about their home and school. In addition, we will ask you to complete a questionnaire about your child’s early learning experiences, about what you and your child do together and what you think about different things related to your child’s school. The answers to these questions help us to understand how the things they tell us about affect the ways that people learn.  We do not publish the answers to any question, and you, your child and their school cannot be identified from any report or publication.

We will put the information we collect from you and your child, including their test results and the answers to questions about home and school with other information which we already have. This includes information in the Pupils in Scotland database provided to us by your child’s school such as their marks in tests. Some of the information we ask for, or which we already have and will use in PIRLS is called sensitive personal data. This includes name, date of birth, and whether your child was born in Scotland. To use this data we have to tell you that we are using it, and to take extra care to protect the information.