Privacy Notice for pupils (also provided to parents and carers)

This letter might be difficult for you to understand. You can ask your parents or another adult such as your teacher to help you understand it.  It is about how we use information about you and what we do with it. We call this information about you ‘personal data’ or ‘personal information.’

Who we are

You already know that your school is called Flintham Primary School. and that it is part of the Equals Trust but we have to tell you that the Academy Trust is the organisation which is in charge of your personal information. This means the Academy Trust is called the Data Controller.

The postal address of the Academy Trust is Equals Trust, c/o Keyworth Primary School, Nottingham Road, Keyworth, Nottingham.

If you want to contact us about your personal information you can contact our Data Protection Officer who is the Trust Compliance Manager. You can speak to her in school or you can leave a letter at reception or send one by post.

How we use pupil information

We at Equals Trust collect and hold personal information relating to our pupils and may also receive information about them from their previous school, local authority and / or the Department for Education (DfE). We use this personal data to:

  • support your learning
  • monitor and report on their progress
  • provide appropriate care for you; and
  • assess the quality of our services
  • to comply with the law about sharing personal data

This information will include your contact details, national curriculum assessment results, attendance information, any exclusion information, where you go after you leave us and personal characteristics such as your ethnic group, any special educational needs you may have as well as relevant medical information.  We will also use photographs or you. More details about this are in our photograph policy.

The Academy may make use of limited personal data (such as contact details) relating to pupils, and their parents or guardians for fundraising, marketing or promotional purposes and to maintain relationships with pupils of the academy, but only where consent has been provided to this.

The use of your information for these purposes is lawful for the following reasons:

  • The Academy Trust is under a legal obligation to collect the information or the information is necessary for us to meet legal requirements imposed upon us such as our duty to safeguard pupils.
  • it is necessary for us to hold and use your information for the purposes of our functions in providing schooling and so we can look after our pupils. This is a function which is in the public interest because everybody needs to have an education. This means we have a real and proper reasons to use your information.
  • We will not usually need your consent to use your information. However, if at any time it appears to us that we would like to use your personal data in a way which means that we would need your consent then we will explain to you what we want to do and ask you for consent. This is most likely to be when we are involved in activities which are not really part of our job as an Academy Trust / School but we are involved because we think it would benefit our pupils. If you give your consent, you may change your mind at any time. If we think that you will not understand what we are asking then we will ask your parent or carer instead. Usually, we will involve your parents even if you can make your own decision.

When we collect personal information on our forms, we will make it clear whether there is a legal requirement for you / your parents to provide it, whether there is a legal requirement on the school / academy trust to collect it. If there is no legal requirement then we will explain why we need it and what the consequences are if it is not provided.

When we give your information to others

We will not give information about our pupils to anyone without your consent unless the law and our policies allow us to do so. If you want to receive a copy of the information about you that we hold, please contact:

  • . Trust Compliance Manager

We are required, by law (under regulation 5 of the Education (Information about Individual Pupils) England Regulations 2013, to pass some information about our pupils to the Department for Education (DfE).  This is the part of the Government which is responsible for schools. This information may, in turn, then be made available for use by the Local Authority.

The DfE may also share information about pupils that we give to them, with other people or organisations. This will only take place where the law, including the law about data protection allows it.

The National Pupil Database (NPD)

The NPD is owned and managed by the Department for Education and contains information about pupils in schools in England. It provides invaluable evidence on educational performance to inform independent research, as well as studies commissioned by the Department. It is held in electronic format for statistical purposes. This information is securely collected from a range of sources including schools, local authorities and awarding bodies.

We are required by law, to provide information about our pupils to the DfE as part of statutory data collections such as the school census and early years’ census. Some of this information is then stored in the NPD. The law that allows this is the Education (Information About Individual Pupils) (England) Regulations 2013.

To find out more about the pupil information we share with the department, for the purpose of data collections, go to https://www.gov.uk/education/data-collection-and-censuses-for-schools.

To find out more about the NPD, go to National pupil database: user guide and supporting information – GOV.UK.

The department may share information about our pupils from the NPD with third parties who promote the education or well-being of children in England by:

•           conducting research or analysis

•           producing statistics

•           providing information, advice or guidance

The Department has robust processes in place to ensure the confidentiality of our data is maintained and there are stringent controls in place regarding access and use of the data. Decisions on whether DfE releases data to third parties are subject to a strict approval process and based on a detailed assessment of:

•           who is requesting the data

•           the purpose for which it is required

•           the level and sensitivity of data requested: and

•           the arrangements in place to store and handle the data

To be granted access to pupil information, organisations must comply with strict terms and conditions covering the confidentiality and handling of the data, security arrangements and retention and use of the data.

For more information about the department’s data sharing process, please visit:

https://www.gov.uk/data-protection-how-we-collect-and-share-research-data

For information about which organisations the department has provided pupil information, (and for which project), please visit the following website: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-pupil-database-requests-received

To contact DfE: https://www.gov.uk/contact-dfe

We will also normally give information about you to your parents or your main carer. Where appropriate, we will listen to your views first. We will also take family circumstances into account, in particular where a Court has decided what information a parent is allowed to have.

We will also disclose your personal data to:

Seek further advice if there is a concern over lawfulness.

  • Your new school if you move schools
  • Disclosures connected with SEN support – e.g. nonLA professionals [explain what these are]
  • School nurse
  • School Counsellor
  • CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service)

The information disclosed to these people / services will include sensitive personal information about you. Usually this means information about your health and any special educational needs or disabilities which you have. We do this because these people need the information so that they can support you.

Our disclosure of your personal data is lawful for the following reasons:

•           The Academy Trust is under a legal obligation to disclose the information or disclosing the information is necessary for us to meet legal requirements imposed upon us such as our duty to look after our pupils and protect them from harm.

•           It is necessary for us to disclose your information for the purposes of our functions in providing schooling. This is a function which is in the public interest.

•           We have a legitimate interest in disclosing your information because it is necessary in order to provide our pupils with education and pastoral care and connected purposes as outlined above.

•           We will not usually need consent to disclose your information. However, if at any time it appears to us that we would need consent then this will be sought before a disclosure is made.

It is in your vital interests for your personal information to be passed to these people or services. We will ask you for consent once we think that you can understand what we are asking. This is because the law requires us to ask you if you can understand. Normally, we involve your parents too. By law we won’t need their consent if you can give it but parents like to be involved because it is part of looking after you. Before you are old enough to understand we will ask your parents to consent for you.

We do not normally transfer your information to a different country which is outside the European Economic Area. This would only happen if one of your parents lives abroad or if you move to a new school abroad. If this happens we will be very careful to make sure that it is safe to transfer your information. We will look at whether that other country has good data protection laws for example. If we cannot be sure that it is safe then we will talk to you and your parents about it and make sure that you are happy for us to send your information. As this is not something we normally do and we don’t know which country we might need to send your information to, we cannot tell you more about it now but if we want to transfer your data to a different country then we will tell you whether or not we think it is safe and why we have decided that.

How long we keep your information

We only keep your information for as long as we need to or for as long as the law requires us to. Most of the information we have about you will be in our pupil file. We usually keep these until your 25th birthday unless you move to another school in which case we send your file to your new school. We have a policy which explains how long we keep information. It is called a Records Retention Policy and you can find it here [insert link] or ask for a copy at reception.

Your rights

You have these rights:

  • You can ask us for a copy of the information we have about you
  • You can ask us to correct any information we have about you if you think it is wrong
  • You can ask us to erase information about you (although we may have good reasons why we cannot do this)
  • You can ask us to limit what we are doing with your information
  • You can object to what we are doing with your information
  • You can ask us to transfer your information to another organisation in a format that makes it easy for them to use.

There is more information in our Data Protection Policy or you can ask Trust Compliance Manager

The policy can be found at www.equalstrust.org or you can ask for a copy at reception.

You can complain about what we do with your personal information. If you are not happy with our answer to your complaint then you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Tel: 0303 123 1113 (local rate) or 01625 545 745 if you prefer to use a national rate number.