Frequently Asked Questions

Your child was randomly selected from the Department for Education’s National Pupil Database (a database that holds details of all pupils attending state schools in England). In total, over 8,000 families took part in the first stage of the study. All those who took part in the first stage of the study are being invited to take part in the future stages of the research when young people are in Year 9, Year 11 and Year 12.

We would like to ask you to take part when young people are in Year 9, Year 11 and Year 12 so we can see how you are getting on. We will get in touch with you when it is time to take part again. By taking part this time you do not commit yourself or your family to take part in the future.

For each stage of the study, we would like to hear from the parent and young person who took part in the first stage of the study. In most cases we will invite young people and parents to complete a short web survey, but we may also invite you to take part in a face-to-face interview. The letters and emails we send at each stage of the study will outline what participation involves.

Taking part is completely voluntary, so it will always be up to you to decide whether you want to take part or not. If you do take part, you can change your mind and withdraw from the study at any time. If you do take part, you don’t have to answer all the questions – if there are any questions you don’t want to answer, we understand and won’t ask why.

Please get in touch with us if your contact details change.

If you took part in the first stage of the study, you will receive a letter in the post from us. The letter invites parents and young people to fill in a short web survey, and explains how to log into the survey. You will also receive reminder emails and text messages from us if you gave us your details in the first interview. Please get in touch with us if you experience difficulties.

See the links below for more information about what is involved for parents/carers and young people.

In the first stage of the research, one parent or carer in each household was interviewed in person by an Ipsos fieldworker. We would like the same parent to complete the web surveys in the later stages of the research. Hearing from the same parent makes it easier to understand how things have changed over time. Please get in touch with us if this is not possible.

Each parent will receive a letter from us which explains how to log into their survey. The link is just for them, and cannot be shared. In most cases it should take no more than 15 minutes for parents to fill in the survey.

We’ll ask parents about their child’s school and education, health and wellbeing, their relationship with their partner (if applicable), and their family circumstances. We’ll also check if there’s been any changes in who lives in the household since last year, and check we have the correct details to keep in touch with parents so they can be invited to the next stage of the study.

There is no need to prepare. You don’t need any special knowledge, we just want to find out about your and your child’s lives and their experiences of school. Some of the questions we ask are similar to those we asked last year. This is so we can see where things have changed (or not changed) since last year. We also ask about some new topics.

In the first stage of the research we invited up to two parents/carers in each household to take part in the study, but for the later waves we only need to hear from one parent/carer.

We would like young people to complete a 25-minute web survey for the second stage of the study. The invitation letter for them to take part will be sent to parents, and we ask that parents pass that letter to their child. We’ll ask young people about their friends, family and school. We also want to hear about how they’re feeling and what they like doing in their free time. There are no right or wrong answers – just be yourself. There is also a memory activity for young people to try.

We will also send reminders to young people by email and text message, if parents and young people gave permission for us to hold and use their contact details in the first stage of the study. If you have changed your mind about us using these details please contact our helpline team using the contact details below.

As part of the survey in the second stage of the study, young people will be asked to complete a short activity focusing on their memory. This will help researchers understand how young people’s memory skills develop during adolescence, and how they relate to education, school support, and their wellbeing.

The activity takes a few minutes and should ideally be carried out in a quiet and well-lit room, free from distractions.

As the results from the activity are analysed alongside data from all participants, we will not be able to give any individual feedback.

If you need help to complete the interview or the survey, please ask a friend or neighbour to help you. You can tell us in the survey that you are being helped, so that we ask the most appropriate questions for you.

Each participant will take part in the study separately and will not know about the responses given by anyone else involved in the study.

It’s up to you if you want to talk to other people about what you tell us. The researchers will not share your answers with anyone you know. However, if you tell us anything that is a cause for concern, we may need to tell someone who can help.

If the young person and their parent or carer agree, we will contact the young person’s form tutor to ask a few questions in the first stage of the study (when they are in Year 9) and the third stage of the study (when they are in Year 11).

During the young person interview in the first year of the study, the young person was asked whether we can contact their form tutor and, if so, to provide their name. This allowed us to gather insights about the young person’s progress at school, providing a fuller picture of their experiences both at home and at school. We hope to do the same in the third stage of the study when the young people are in Year 11.

It is still possible to be part of the study without agreeing to the young person’s form tutor taking part.

The interviews are being carried out by Ipsos, an independent research organisation. Ipsos is working with the organisation, Anna Freud and University College London.

The study has been reviewed by an independent group of people called a Research Ethics Committee, to protect your safety, rights, wellbeing and dignity. This study has been given ethical approval by University College London’s Research Ethics Committee (reference number 28343/001).

Growing Up in the 2020s is a national study of around 8,000 young people in secondary schools in England. The study follows young people and their families throughout the secondary school years to understand how they develop over time. The study focuses on the opportunities and challenges facing young people in today’s world. It involves interviews with young people, their parents and carers and their teachers. It aims to understand the factors that influence young people’s progress and wellbeing.

The study will provide unique insights into how young people’s school, home life and relationships shape their future attainment, wellbeing and employment outcomes.

The findings from Growing Up in the 2020s will inform national policies concerning schools, education and services. These policies will then help support families and young people in the future.

By contacting teachers we gain a better understanding of young people’s educational environment. By speaking to form tutors, we build a holistic picture of the young person’s engagement in school, their behaviour, their attainment, and their overall wellbeing. The perspectives of teachers who interact with pupils on a regular basis are invaluable for this study because they can provide us with unique insights of their experiences in the classroom. This information is evaluated together with information about young people’s family environment and experiences to create a detailed picture of the factors that shape young people’s lives during the secondary school years.

It is very important that the pupil’s form tutor takes part in Growing Up in the 2020s study. The teacher selected cannot be replaced because we are interested in understanding the school environment that is unique to the young person participating in the study.

A teacher survey was carried out as part of the first stage of the study; the next one will take place at the third stage of the study in a couple of years’ time.

One or more pupils in Year 8 at your school have taken part in the Growing Up in the 2020s study. A group of young people were selected at random from the National Pupil Database to represent pupils in their year group across England. To make sure we got a more complete picture of young people’s lives, we asked participating young people to provide details of their form tutor to take part in the study. In some cases, due to the timing of the school holidays, we asked teachers to tell us about pupils who they taught or tutored in the last academic year.

We do not know yet if the teachers who took part at the first stage of the study will be asked to take apart again.

The interviews are being carried out by Ipsos, an independent research organisation. Ipsos is working with Anna Freud and University College London.

The study has been reviewed by an independent group of people called a Research Ethics Committee, to protect your safety, rights, wellbeing and dignity. This study has been given ethical approval by University College London’s Research Ethics Committee (reference number 28343/001).

In the first stage of the study, we carried out face-to-face interviews with the young person and their parent(s) and/or carer(s). During these interviewers we informed young people about the purpose of the teacher survey and asked whether they were happy for us to contact their form tutor. If they agreed, we then asked them  for the details of their form tutor. However, it was up to individual teachers whether or not they take part in the study. We will also obtain the informed consent of young people and their parents before asking teachers to take part in the third stage of the study.

In the first stage of the study, we asked the teacher named in the invitation letter to fill out the survey. It was very important that each selected teacher participated as we could not replace the named teacher by another teacher in the same school. The young person specifically consented for this teacher to be included in the research.

This survey covered a range of topics about young person’s engagement in school, behaviour, potential attainment, overall wellbeing and the teacher/young person relationship. All the answers will be treated in strict confidence.

In the first stage of the study, the pupil’s teacher received a letter inviting them to take part in the study. The letter contained a direct web link where teachers could complete the study. When asked, teachers entered the access code that appeared on the letter sent by Ipsos. We also sent reminders by email to the school’s general email address.

The teacher survey was a short online survey and should have taken no longer than 10-15 minutes to complete.

The information collected as part of Growing Up in 2020s study is helping us create a holistic picture about how young people’s school, home life and relationships shape their education and development.

The information from teachers will be combined with the information collected from the young person and their parent(s) or carer(s), to help us understand what life is like for young people today. Published research from this study will never identify any school or individual.

Names and contact details of teachers were collected and stored solely for the purpose of sending the surveys and communications. These details will not be shared with anyone and we will never pass data on to third parties to be used to evaluate school’s performance or for benchmarking against other schools.

The data we collect is used solely for research purposes.

A small number of young people taking part in Growing Up in the 2020s were invited to take part in the Internet Use Study.

We want to better understand young people’s use of the internet. For this part of the study we used an app which we asked participating young people to install on their mobile phone. This app worked without young people having to do anything. It collected data from the phone to help us understand the types of websites and apps young people use on a regular basis. This information will be analysed along with the answers you gave in the interview, to look at what relationships there are between the activities young people do online and their offline behaviour.

We couldn’t see what you were looking at on these websites and/or apps, and we did not record anything you said or did on the sites. Instead, we only wanted to know which ones you were visiting and how much time you spend on them.

Like your answers to the survey questions, we will keep your data confidential so no one outside Ipsos knows you took part.

Only a small number of researchers at Ipsos will see the websites and apps you visited. Ipsos will not tell your parent(s) or teachers or anyone else the websites and apps you visited and how long you stayed on them.

A summary of the data we collected about your internet use (such as types of online activities and how much time you spent on them) will be linked to the information you’ve already given us in your interview, and shared with other members of the study team. This will not include your name or any information that identifies you.

The team at Ipsos sent young people a text message or email with a link to download the app. We also sent parents a message to let them know what we sent to you.

We also sent instructions so participating young people knew how to download the app.

When young people downloaded the app, they just needed to leave it on their phone for 28 days. The app collected information about the websites and apps they visited.

At the end of the 28 day period, young people were free to delete the app. The Ipsos team sent you an email with a £30 Love2Shop voucher as a thank you for taking part in this element of the study, and a reminder to delete the app.

RealityMine is widely used by Ipsos on our studies, including a study of 8-12 year old’s for Ofcom. It’s the UK’s official online measurement tracker, and it was set up with UKOM, the governing body for UK Online Measurement. Since 2020, it has been used by online audience measurement by UKOM via a large panel of over 10,000 adults. 

Only those selected for this part of the study would take part. We may invite more young people to take part in this element of the study in future waves.