What you should know

Statistics on Financing and Expenditure of Private Education is an official survey, planned for the Decree 153/2020, of December 29, which approves the Annual programme for statistical action for the year 2020,. This operation is conducted every five years.

The operation collects data on two collectives from highly differentiated centres, for each of which a specific questionnaire has been designed:

• Non university education centres. Information is collected from private centres that provide regulated non-university education (pre-school, primary, compulsory secondary (ESO), baccalaureate, vocational degrees, etc.). These centres may or may not have an agreement with the Ministry of Education of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Nursery schools are included.
• University education centres. Information is collected from private centres (owned by, affiliated with or linked to universities) that during the school year have taught an official first-, second- and/or third-cycle higher education course, as well as from private universities.

2. What are the objectives?

The objective of the survey is to find out about the structure, activity and economic situation of private education centres, and to analyse its evolution.

This information will also serve to deal with demands formulated regarding the behaviour of this activity sector made by different public administrations and international bodies such as the European Union and Unesco.

3. To who is the survey addressed?

The survey is addressed at all private education centres that offer regulated or officially recognised education programmes.

In the case of university education centres, the survey includes all private universities and centres linked to public or private universities that teach official university degree programmes.

In the case of nursery schools and non university centres, a randomly selected stratified sample of 50% will be surveyed.

4. When is the data collected?

The field operation takes place between the months of October 2021 and March 2022.

5. How is the survey answered?

The information was collected via Internet through two online questionnaires designed especially for these statistics.

The surveyed centres receive a letter signed by the management of Idescat and INE, which specifies the objectives and characteristics of the survey. They are provided with an Internet address, as well as a code and password in order to securely answer the questions via the Idescat website.

If the centre has any difficulties responding to the survey, we provide a telephone helpline and email address to help resolve their queries or problems.

6. Is it compulsory to answer?

Yes, answering is compulsory. Given that these are statistics of public interest, as established by the Parliament of Catalonia, like all statistics forming part of the Statistical plan for Catalonia, the collaboration of the population and companies in responding to the questionnaires is a legal obligation, in order to guarantee the right quota of replies and therefore statistically reliable results (chapter V of the Law 23/1998, dated 30th December 1998 on statistics in Catalonia). As expressed by article 38: "All citizens, entities and institutions are obliged by law to provide the information requested and this information must be complete and truthful".

7. Is the information in the survey properly protected?

All data of an individual nature in the surveys is protected by statistical secret under the terms established by the Law 23/1998, dated 30th December 1998 on statistics in Catalonia. This supposes that all individualised data contained in the questionnaires cannot be made public and neither can it be communicated to any person or entity, not even public administrations, unless they are also bound by the obligations of statistical secret. In this sense, all Idescat staff and other bodies that participate in official statistics in Catalonia make a solemn declaration that they will respect statistical secret and face severe penalties if they fail to do so.

Also, the obligation to preserve statistical secret is extended to the publication of results, whereby both Idescat and other bodies in the Catalan statistics system take special care to ensure that data containing information of an individual nature cannot be deduced from tabulated data.

8. Where can the results of the survey be found?

The statistical results are published for free on the Idescat website.