Frequently Asked Questions

Your child has been randomly selected from the Department for Education’s National Pupil Database (a database that holds details of all pupils attending state schools in England).  The study will follow Year 8 students in 2024/25 from across England, with around 8,000 families taking part.

We would like to speak to young people selected for the study, and their parents/carers. We would like to speak to them each year as they move through secondary school, and possibly beyond.

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.

We would like to ask you to take part again each year so we can see how young people are getting on. We will get back 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.

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

An Ipsos interviewer will visit each selected family to provide more information about the study and explain what participation involves. They will be available to answer any questions you may have. The interviewer will ask parents or carers to take part in a short interview and a web survey. With the parent’s or carer’s permission, the young person will also be invited to complete a short interview which includes an activity to look at young people’s thinking skills.

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

The interviewer will ask one mother, father or other parental carer to take part in a short ‘household’ interview. This will include the interviewer asking questions about the household and the young person selected for the study. This should take around 20 minutes.

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.

The interviewer will then ask up to two parents or carers in the household (including the parent/ carer who completed the household interview) to complete a short web survey. The web surveys will be about things like parents’ education and employment, health and wellbeing, behaviours and family relationships.

With the parent’s or carer’s permission, the interviewer will invite the young person to take part in a short interview to learn about their views and experiences. They will also be asked to complete a short activity which is designed to help researchers understand their thinking skills. 

If the young person and their parent or carer are happy for the young person to take part, the interviewer will conduct an interview with the young person. Some questions will be asked by the interviewer while others will be answered by the young person themselves on the interviewer’s laptop. This will take about 25 minutes.

The interview will cover topics such as the young person’s health and wellbeing, school, friends and family, and how they spend their time. We will also ask for their mobile number and email address, if they have one, so we can stay in touch  and inform them about future stages of the study.

The young person will also be asked to complete a short activity designed to explore their thinking skills. This will help researchers understand how young people’s thinking skills develop during adolescence, and how they relate to education, school support, and their wellbeing.

The activity should take less than 10 minutes and should ideally be carried out in a quiet and well-lit room, free from distractions.

The activity will be completed on the interviewer’s tablet, with the young person working independently. The task involves visual puzzles where the young person will identify patterns in shapes, colours, or arrangements.

As the results from the activity are analysed alongside data from all participants, the interviewer will not be able to give any individual feedback. The interviewer will explain the activity in more detail and address any questions when they visit.

If you need help to complete the interview or the survey, please speak to your interviewer. The interviewer can help the young person with reading out the questions on the laptop, or, if the young person prefers, the parent or carer can help too.

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 interviewers will not share your answers with anyone you know. However, if the interviewer hears or sees something during their visit that is a cause for concern, they 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. During the young person interview, the young person will be asked whether we can contact their form tutor and, if so, to provide their name. This allows 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. 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 new 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 will be able to gain a better understanding of young people’s educational environment. By speaking to form tutors, we will gain 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 will be 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.

One or more pupils in Year 8 at your school have been invited to take 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 get a more complete picture of young people’s lives, we ask participating young people to provide detail of their form tutor to take part in the study.

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 is up to individual teachers whether or not they take part in the study.

We would like the teacher named in the invitation letter to fill out the survey. It is very important that each selected teacher participates as we cannot replace the named teacher by another teacher in the same school. The young person has specifically consented for this teacher to be included in the research.

This survey covers 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.

The pupil’s teacher will receive a letter inviting them to take part in the study. The letter will contain a direct web link where teachers can complete the study.  When asked, teachers should enter the access code that appears on the letter sent by Ipsos.

The teacher survey is a short online survey and should take no longer than 10-15 minutes to complete.

The information collected as part of Growing Up in 2020s study will help 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), so we can produce statistics. Published research from this study will never identify any school or individual.

Names and contact details of teachers are 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.

Data that we are collecting will be used solely for research purposes.