Ensuring privacy through synthetic data generation in education

High-volume, high-quality and diverse datasets are crucial for advancing research in the education field. However, such datasets often contain sensitive information that poses significant privacy challenges. Traditional anonymisation techniques fail to meet the privacy standards required by regulations like GDPR, prompting the need for more robust solutions. Synthetic data have emerged as a promising privacy-preserving approach, allowing for the generation and sharing of datasets that mimic real data while ensuring privacy. Still, the application of synthetic data alone on educational datasets remains vulnerable to privacy threats such as linkage attacks. Therefore, this study explores for the first time the application of private synthetic data, which combines synthetic data with differential privacy mechanisms, in the education sector. By considering the dual needs of data utility and privacy, we investigate the performance of various synthetic data generation techniques in safeguarding sensitive educational information. Our research focuses on two key questions: the capability of these techniques to prevent privacy threats and their impact on the utility of synthetic educational datasets. Through this investigation, we aim to bridge the gap in understanding the balance between privacy and utility of advanced privacy-preserving techniques within educational contexts.