We’d like you to help us with the British Academic Written English Secondary School (BAWESS) corpus project. Please read this information sheet carefully and ask us if you have any questions about any details of the project, or what taking part would mean for you.

Take your time to decide if you’d like to take part. It’s up to you if you want to do this. If you don’t, that’s absolutely fine.

If you want to participate, you’ll be asked to sign a consent form (which you will receive via email). If your child is under the age of 16 years old, they will also be asked to sign an Assent Form (consent for juniors).

1) What is the purpose of the project?

We aim to collect a sample of written texts from exam classrooms (iGCSE/GCSE, A Level and IB). These texts will form the British Academic Written English Secondary School (BAWESS) Corpus (a digitally accessible collection of texts), which will help us understand the writing demands and the language used in specific subject areas and develop a learning resource for teachers and students.

2) Why has my child been selected to take part?

All students who are studying for iGCSE/GCSE, A Level and IB exams will be invited to participate.

3) Does my child have to take part?

Participation is completely voluntary. It is up to you to decide if you’d like your child to participate. If you agree that your child can take part, we’ll ask you to sign a Parent/Guardian Consent Form. If you provide consent, your child will then be given information about the BAWESS project. Should your child wish to take part, they’ll be asked to sign Young Person’s Assent Form.

4) What will my child be asked to do?

Your child won’t have to do any extra work. We plan to collect the writing tasks that they are currently doing in their class together with some contextual information (e.g. exam type, task type, subject, exam board, awarded grade). We’ll be collecting texts from February 2025. Your child’s teacher will make a copy of their written work, remove your child’s name and share the copies with the research team. We’ll make the texts digital and develop a corpus which will part of an online resource for researchers, teachers and students.

5) What are the exclusion criteria?

The work must be written in English in preparation for iGCSE, GCSE, A Level or IB. The student must be over the age of 14 years old and must have the capacity to personally agree to voluntarily participate in the study.

6) What are the benefits of taking part?

When the corpus is ready, we’ll offer sessions in schools for teachers and students that demonstrate how a corpus tool can inform improvements in examination writing (e.g., it could provide key vocabulary and language structures commonly used in different subject areas).

7) What are the possible disadvantages and risks of taking part?

There are no obvious disadvantages to your child taking part in the project. If your child chooses not to participate and doesn’t want to share their written work, that’s fine.

8) Will my child’s participation involve any discomfort or embarrassment?

Your child shouldn’t feel any discomfort or embarrassment when taking part in the project. If, however, they do feel uncomfortable or appear upset at any time, they can speak to their teacher or a member of the research team and we’ll remove their data from the study.

9) Who will have access to the information that my child provides?

Only the research team will have access to the information that your child provides. This includes access to your child’s anonymised texts complemented by contextual information (such as region, school type, exam type, task type, subject, exam board, awarded mark). The data held by the research team will be completely anonymous and treated as confidential. We will keep any record we have of your child taking part in the project (such as your consent forms) securely for 10 years. After 10 years they will be disposed of in a secure manner.

10) What will happen to the collected data and results of the project?

All collected data will be treated as confidential and kept in a locked cabinet at the University of Bath, or on a password protected file on the University of Bath’s secure server (X drive). This data will be stored following the current UK data protection legislation. If you’d like, we can send you a summary of the project results when it’s finished. We’ll develop an online learning resource for teachers and students. Your child’s name or other identifying information won’t be disclosed in this online resource or any presentation or publication from the research. Once the project is completed, other teachers, learners and researchers may access the BAWESS corpus, which will be publicly available online and will contain your child’s anonymised texts complemented by contextual information (such as region, school type, exam type, task type, subject, exam board, awarded mark). Any additional use of your child’s data will only occur with your consent and the University of Bath’s approval. Data will continue to be stored in accordance with GDPR.

11) How can I withdraw my child from the project?

If you wish to withdraw your child from the project, please inform your child’s teacher or the contact person at your school at your earliest opportunity. You can withdraw your child from the project at any point without providing reasons for doing so and without consequence, until the anonymised data has been received by the BAWESS research team. This will typically be two weeks after your child’s written texts have been collected by their teacher. After the anonymised data has been given to the research team, the research team won’t be able to identify your child’s texts anymore and won’t be able to withdraw any data from the study.

12) Who has reviewed the project?

This project has been given a favourable opinion by the University of Bath, Social Science Research Ethics Committee (SSREC) [reference: 1112-11759].

13) University of Bath privacy notice

The University of Bath privacy notice can be found here.

14) What happens if there is a problem?

If you have a concern about any aspect of the project, you should ask to speak to the main researcher, Gail Forey, at the University of Bath (email: g.forey@bath.ac.uk; telephone: +44 (0)7853144556), who will do her best to answer any questions.

If Gail is unable to resolve your concern or you wish to make a complaint regarding the project, please contact the Research Governance and Compliance Team at research-ethics@bath.ac.uk

15) If I require further information, who should I contact and how?

You can contact Professor Gail Forey, who will be happy to answer any questions that you have. Please do also talk to your students about taking part (or not) in the project.

Principal Investigator: Professor Gail Forey, Professor of Applied Linguistics, Department of Education, University of Bath, BA7 2AY, UK. Email: g.forey@bath.ac.uk; telephone: +44 (0)7853144556

Thank you and your child for taking the time to help us with this project!