Documents evidencing initial ONS review of student suicides

FOI reference: FOI-2024-2460

You asked

I am writing to submit a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Please provide copies of any documents, emails, internal communications, or reports that discuss, explain, or record ONS's decision to undertake its initial review of student suicides, as reported in 'Estimating suicide among higher education students, England and Wales: Experimental Statistics,' released on 25 June 2018.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/estimatingsuicideamonghighereducationstudentsenglandandwalesexperimentalstatistics/2018-06-25

This should include, but not be limited to, any assessments of user need, strategic planning documents, or stakeholder feedback that contributed to the decision to commence this work.

We said

Thank you for your request.

The published minute, agenda, and papers for the Eleventh Meeting of the National Statistician's Data Ethics Advisory Committee (NSDEC) contains information regarding the linkage of suicide deaths data to Higher Education Student Registry data conducted for the publication referenced. Please see point 5 on page 7 for the reference to this work in the minute and pages 53-70 for the submitted NSDEC paper regarding this.

Following a search of our systems, we have also located an email regarding this work, which is provided in the associated PDF document. Personal data has been redacted from this email under Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Owing to the passage of time between 2018 and now, and in line with our records management and retention policies, it is possible that documentation or emails relating to this could have been deleted. The attached provides the information we hold following a reasonable search of the all the areas where the information is likely to be held.