bmaloney

Sorry but your assertion is wrong. If it were as easy as adding a correspondence address and then the schools would click on a link in an email I would have done that by now. Remember I have seen all the papers, made the arguments and I was at the appeal hearing.

Do you have time to read multiple policies from 20,000 schools? I don't which is why I didn't ask for copies. If they were all to send me copies of policies by email, how much data would my inbox need to cope with? I had one letter in reply which was 14MB. Not a policy, but a 2 page letter. 20000*14MB is 280GB. My inbox is not that large. I have explained repeatedly my reasons for the approach I chose. Given the number of schools involved it is not possible for such a project to be conducted by free form correspondence, there has to be some structure. It has to be automated, it has to be electronic, not paper based, it must be possible to uniquely identify each respondent as many schools share the same name. Basic checks on the consistency of the responses is prudent to ensure schools don't just input nonsense. Google Forms runs into the same issue of schools not being required to click on a link in an email. If you want to prove to me that would work, be my guest, I'll give you a random sample of schools and you can see how many you can get to respond. Don't expect me to believe that because the people on here respond that any unsuspecting school will do the same. You are allowed to send an Excel or Word template and ask for that format to be used. It is not appropriate for the school to then respond in PDF or with a paper copy if you've requested an electronic format.

I did, my site does this. I looked at Google Forms, there's no easy way to cross check between fields.

Your request doesn't include an address for correspondence. These are the questions: 2. Total Number Of Pupils On Register 3. Number of Pupils Where Both Natural Parents Details Are On Record 4. Number of Pupils Where Only Mother's Details On Record 5. Number of Pupils Where Only Father's Details On Record There is validation code which ensures 3+4+5 is less than or equal to 2. The response cannot be submitted if the numbers don't make sense. I've explained Google Forms itself does not provide this, please show me how you would do this in Google Forms? Your sample is a captive sample of people on this forum. This is not a sample of schools receiving an unsolicited email with a link.

Go on then, show me it works.

Then show me, on a small sample, that your proposal actually works? Because it sounds to me like it has the same problems you've all been complaining about, i.e. a link in an email to a website which schools don't usually use.

Of course, since 2016 I haven't put in any effort, developing the website, the forms, the data validation, the email responses, collecting the list of contact details, correcting the ones who have changed their email address, collating and plotting the results is me not doing any work. Taking the matter to the ICO and then to appeal took no time at all, and after the Tribunal decided schools cannot be compelled to click on a link in an email you're all suggesting I send them a link in an email, just make it Google Forms, everyone will respond to that. When I point out the problems and ask someone to show me, on a small sample, that I'm wrong and everyone will immediately reply to a Google Forms link in an email, even if the data cannot be checked for consistency without learning javascript and the Google Sheets API, literally nobody offers to show me I'm wrong.

OK, if someone on this list want to do the work using a Google Form, I'll give them the list of school contact details for schools who have not yet replied and you can give me the results, if it's really that easy and you can guarantee schools will have to respond. Any volunteers?

So where is this list of known sites and how do I get on it? Fact is there isn't one and anyone can object to any site, Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. if they are not already using it. It was my problem, I solved it with a form. I'm now going to solve it again with automatic checking and reporting of errors, back to the person who made the error.

What Do They Know are email based and when I started in 2016 they did not have the details of all schools in their list of authorities. I started adding them, but doing this with 20,000 schools is not practical. Nor is it practical to inspect the responses from all these schools which would be on their website, not sent to me. What Do They Know is not practical. Unless I'm mistaken Google Forms would require clicking on a link in a website, which would present the same objection. Google Forms does not allow checking between fields such that 3+4+5<= 2, so again more work sorting out the responses from people who can't add up.

I've just received this in a response to my FOI: It's Ms Mandy Gage, so I assume that's female. But this is an example of the awkwardness of those responding, the response came from the PA to the Principal, who presumably knows what gender the Principal is as they work together!

@minimoo quite honestly if you don't make it impossible for people to mess up the formatting, there is no hope they will respect the layout or put the responses in the correct places, making an editable email unworkable.

The government collects data on the gender of staff: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/school-workforce-in-england-november-2015 and they don't have a "prefer not to say" option. The point is if you publish a picture of the headteacher on the website and it's obvious which gender they identify with from the picture and the title, why would you put "prefer not to say"? If you don't publish a picture, the name is ambiguous and you don't use a gendered title then by all means put "prefer not to say", but it's not private data if it's in the public domain. It's the same with governors, they are performing a public function and they are responsible for the school, they can't hide behind anonymity, their names are in the public domain. When you take on the job, that's one of the requirements.

This is what I'm working on now.

I'm not hiring anybody to do this, there's no money in this project, it's non-commercial. PDF forms allow you to ask exactly the same questions in exactly the same way, but delivered by email. You can also add a "Submit" button which will submit the data to a URL using the POST or GET method. My webform currently uses the POST method to submit to the URL. Consequently I can move the exercise to PDF forms with the school's unique link embedded in the form. If they don't want to press the submit button themselves, all they have to do is fill it in and send it back to me and I'll click the submit button. Slightly more work, but entirely manageable. This also gets around the objection to not having a copy of the response, they can keep a copy of the PDF. Of course this won't stop those who like to fill it in, print it off, scan in back in again and send that to me, but as I say some schools behave in a way indistinguishable from being awkward. If you submit the PDF form in acrobat reader you can even return the "Thank you" response message as a PDF dynamically.