Education, Youth and Communities

GDPR Privacy Statement for Schools and Establishments

What is this statement?

This statement explains when and why we collect personal information about you, your child or young person and how this information is used, the conditions under which it may be disclosed to others and how it is kept secure.

Who are we?

North Lanarkshire Council is a Local Authority established under the Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994. Education, Youth and Communities is located in Kildonan Street, Coatbridge ML5 3BT.

Why do we need your personal information and that of your child or young person?

The Council has a legal obligation to deliver an effective education service to all children and young people in North Lanarkshire. In order to do this we need to collect personal information about children, young people and their families so that we can help them to learn and keep them safe.

Legal basis for using your information

We provide this service as part of our statutory function as your Local Authority. Processing your personal information is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest by the Council. If the information we have asked for is not provided, then we will not be able to provide this service to your child or young person.

Your personal information

Education, Youth and Communities uses the national IT system, SEEMiS, to store personal information electronically. We ask parents/carers during registration and enrolment to provide us with their child’s name, date of birth, gender, address, family contact details (phone/email). We will also ask you to update this information annually.

We may also ask you for information about medical conditions, additional support needs, religion, and ethnicity. We may also record information you might wish to provide about your family circumstances.

We require this information to ensure children and young people are educated appropriately, supported, and that we take account of their health and wellbeing.

During a child’s journey through education a pupil’s record is kept, these are mainly paper based and are stored securely in the child or young person’s school.

How will we use this information?

Your personal information will be used:

to provide your child or young person with an appropriate education
for teaching, enrolment and assessment purposes and to monitor educational progress of children and young people
to support pupil learning, improve outcomes and identify where additional support is needed to help children and young people
to provide appropriate pastoral care to support health and wellbeing of children and young people
to keep children and young people safe
to maintain records of attendance, absence and behaviour of children and young people (including exclusions)
to support children and young people during transitions when moving on each year from nursery to primary, primary to secondary and when they move or leave school
to enable schools and establishments to process personal data in support of SQA and Further Education
to monitor and report on pupil attainment and achievement in relation to the national improvement framework issued by the Scottish Government
to assure the quality of our education services in line with national expectations from Education Scotland.

Who do we share information with?

To support your child or young person’s access to appropriate education and meet our legal obligation, personal information may be shared internally between departments of the Council. From time to time, education staff may also need to share information about you, your child or young person with another person from another agency or service, e.g. Social Work, Health.

We also share information with Scottish Government and bodies such as Education Scotland, Scottish Qualifications Authority, Skills Development Scotland and other organisations that support children and young people’s learning.

When a child or young person moves or transfers to another school the Council has an obligation to pass on information with regards to pupil records to the new school.

Only identified staff and those who require to have the information to enable them to carry out their job, will have access to you, your child or young person’s information. We care about the information we hold in respect to the education of children and young people. We will keep this information safe and secure.

How long do we keep your information for?

We only keep personal information for the minimum period of time necessary. Sometimes this is set out in law, but in most cases it is based on what we need to fulfil our function. We maintain a ‘records retention and disposal schedule’ which sets out how long we hold different types of information for. You can view this on our website at http://www.northlanarkshire.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=15003 or you can request a hardcopy of this from Education, Youth and Communities, Kildonan Street, Coatbridge ML5 3BT.

Your rights under data protection laws

You can:

Request access to your information – you have the right to request a copy of the personal information that we hold about you, your child or young person. You can ask us to confirm what personal information is being used and with whom it has been shared with.
Request a correction to your information – we want to make sure that all personal information is accurate, complete and up to date. Therefore you may ask us to correct any personal information that you believe does not meet these standards.
Request the restriction of processing – this enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, your child or young person, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or clarify the reason for processing it.
Request the transfer – you can request the transfer of your information to another party.
Deletion of your information – you have the right to ask us to delete personal information about you, your child or young person where:
you think that we no longer need to hold the information for the purposes for which it was originally obtained
you have a genuine objection to our use of personal information
or, use of personal information is contrary to law or our legal obligations.

If you wish to update any personal information, retrieve it, or have it removed from records please contact your child or young person’s head teacher or head of establishment in the first instance.

The Council’s Data Protection Officer

If you have any questions or are unhappy about the way that we use the personal information of your child, young person or yourself you can contact the Data Protection Officer.

Data Protection Officer (DPO)

Civic Centre,

Windmillhill Street,

Motherwell ML1 1AB

or by email to AITeam@northlan.gcsx.gov.uk

The Information Commissioner

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner about the way the Council has handled your rights, to enquire about any exercise of these rights or to complain about the way the Council has dealt with your rights (or any other aspect of data protection law).

Information Commissioner’s Office,

45 Melville Street,

Edinburgh, EH3 7HL

or by e-mail to casework@ico.org.uk