Your Child’s Data

As a school we are required by law to collect some essential data from you as parents.  This data can be a simple and as routine as your address a contact number or any medical conditions your child may have. Such information is not only legally required by the school, but also ensures that children and their families are well served by the school for routine matters.

In most cases, this data will be provided by you in written form but will then be processed and entered onto the school’s information management system (SIMS) and other internal systems.

Be assured that our systems are:

• Password protected and encrypted where required
• Restricted to those with a need to know
• Regularly and securely back up externally
• Managed in accordance with the law and local guidance

However, as a school we handle and use a much wider variety of data which may include our CCTV recordings, test data, referrals to social care, and much more.

Sharing your data

We will always endeavour to tell you what we are doing with your data. However, on occasion we may be required to pass on data to other people / agencies. The circumstances in which we would likely do so, would include:

• At the request of a court law
• Where we believe your child is at risk of harm
• We are legally required to do so
• At the request of the police

Data Protection Officer

We are required to appoint a Data Protection Officer (DPO) to monitor our policies and procedures in relation to data.  Our DPO is a representative from Spiral Trust Partnership.  If you require further information or have any concerns in the first instance speak with our School Business Manager.

School Duties

The school must operate within the law (GDPR). This means that the school must:

• Have a Data Protection Officer (see above)
• Have policies for the management of data
• Respond to complaints or requests in line with our policies
• Keep parents informed of what we do with any data
• Inform you of any breach in our data that affects you

The school will not usually charge for any requests by parents.  However, it would consider making a charge when requests are considered to be unfounded or excessive.

Your Rights

It is important that you know your rights but remember some rights are overridden by the necessity of key school functions, for example if disclosure of information puts a child in danger.  Your basic rights are as follows:

• Right to be informed - to know what, how, where, and for how long your child’s and their data is used
• Right of access - to be able to see and know what data is being held
• Right to rectification - to fix any errors in the data held
• Right to erasure - to choose to have the data erased
• Right to restrict processing - to stop data being used for certain purposes
• Right to data portability - to move a copy of the data elsewhere
• Right to object - to complain about how your data is used
• Rights related to automated decision making and profiling