The role of trust and data management for better educational system

Data on education and learning plays a crucial role in societies. It enables research for a better and more equally educated population as well as an efficient monitoring of the educational system. Main sources for those data are statistical data collections and surveys on theoretical topics. On the other hand, educational data is data on individuals and therefore connected to privacy issues. Thereby, it is not only important to follow the legal rules. Ethical issues are also relevant; but the most important measurement is the trust of the individuals involved into the educational system. It is their trust into the usage of their data and into the benefits of providing their data for research and monitoring purposes. This trust into the system and into the benefits for individuals as well as for the whole population is the key to an efficient educational system based on data driven decisions. The Swiss project Virtual Educational Observatory (VEO) aims on giving a better overview about sources of data for research on education in Switzerland and tries to connect those sources in a meaningful way. To do so, a few different topics need to be addressed. One of them is privacy and ethics in research. The talk will discuss the role of data management for a better understanding of the usage of data and therefore, for more solid trust between the individual participants in the educational system and the research community as well as the political monitoring of the educational system.