Privacy Notice
Privacy Notice - Template
Information for parents
The Local Authority (LA) uses information about children it provides services to. This allows the LA to carry out specific functions it is responsible for, such as the assessment of any special educational needs the child may have. The information is also used to get statistics to assist decisions to, for example:
- fund schools
- assess the performance of schools
- set targets for schools
The statistics are used in a way that individual children cannot be identified from them. The LA use information about its school workforce for:
- research and statistical purposes
- evaluating and developing education policy and strategies
The statistics are used in a way that individual staff cannot be identified from them. The LA may also use it to support and monitor schools for sickness and recruitment of staff.
For more information please see the document 'How the DFE and the LA uses data'.
Information for Schools
The Information Commissioner has recommended that the term 'Fair Processing Notice' be replaced by 'Privacy Notice'. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DFE) is therefore adopting this approach in its data collections from 2011, and has reviewed the whole process of issuing Privacy Notices. In the past, the suggested text has included the use of school information made available by the LA or the DFE. However, the new process will mean much simpler Privacy Notices, where details of any organisations with which the LA and DFE share data are contained on the LA and DFE websites, with links from the Privacy Notices. This means that Privacy Notices do not need reissuing on an annual basis. The aim is to make the Privacy Notices issued to children and staff general and constant. The new approach is that a single, short and easily understandable Privacy Notice can be provided to pupils and staff by the school at the same time as other communications that they issue. For example:
- A pupil might receive the Privacy Notice as part of a school brochure or induction pack, or in a school diary, and it could be posted on the school notice board.
- For staff, the Privacy Notice might be included as part of a contract, induction pack, and posted on the staff notice board, etc.
It is anticipated that staff, and young people over the age of 12 with the maturity to make their own decisions, should generally be able to request to see their personal information themselves under the Subject Access Provisions (S.7) of the Data Protection Act. For young people under 12, their parents will act on their behalf. In any event, it will be for the school, as data controller, to assess whether the child is capable of understanding the personal information in question, and so decide whether the parent needs to make the request on the child's behalf.
Schools can download the Privacy notice template from the extranet or by accessing the link below.
