Data Protection

Privacy statement for enrolment of pupils in a North Lanarkshire school

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 & Families is located in Civic Centre, Windmillhill Street, Motherwell. ML1 1AB.

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 and Families 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, this core record is mainly paper based and is stored securely in the child or young person’s establishment. If the establishment has requested assistance from educational staff outwith the nursery or school, key staff from these services may also store information securely about your child or young person.

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 and Families, Civic Centre, Windmillhill Street, Motherwell. ML1 1AB.

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.

Education Portfolio (SGEP) exchange data about pupils

either on paper or electronically through the ScotXed

programme.

The data collected and transferred covers areas such as date of birth, postcode, registration for free-school meals, whether a pupil is looked after by his/her local authority, additional support needs including disability, attendance, absence and exclusions from school.

Pupil names and addresses are collected by the school and the council but they are not passed to SGEP. The postcode is the only part of the address that is transferred. Data is held securely and no information on individual pupils can be published by SGEP

Providing national identity and ethnic background data is entirely voluntary. You can choose the ‘not disclosed’ option if you do not want to provide this data. However, we hope that the explanations contained in this message and on our website will help you understand the importance of providing the data.

Why do we need your data?

In order to make the best decisions about how to improve our education service, SGEP and education authorities need accurate, up-to-date data about our pupils.   We are keen to help all our pupils do well in all aspects of school life and achieve better educational outcomes. Accurate and up-to-date data allows SGEP, education authorities and schools to:

Ø  plan and deliver better policies for the benefit of all pupils,

Ø  plan and deliver better policies for the benefit of specific groups of pupils,

Ø  better understand some of the factors that influence pupil attainment and achievement,

Ø  target resources better.

Your data protection rights

The collection, transfer, processing and sharing of ScotXed data is done in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. We also comply with the National Statistics Code of Practice requirements and other legislation related to safeguarding the confidentiality of data. The Data Protection Act gives you the right to know how we will use your data. This message can give only a brief description of how we use data. Fuller details of the uses of pupil data can be found on the ScotXed website (www.scotxed.net).

SGEP works with a range of partners including Education Scotland and the Scottish Qualifications Authority. On occasion, we will make individual data available to partners and also academic institutions to carry out research and statistical analysis. In addition, we will provide our partners with information they need in order to fulfil their official responsibilities. Any sharing of data will be done under the strict control and prior agreement of the Data Access Panel in SGEP, which will ensure that no subject specific data will be made public as a result of the data sharing and that such data will not be used to take any actions in respect of an individual.

Further details are available on:

https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/ScotXed/PrivacyInformation

Any Concerns

If you have any concerns about the ScotXed data collections you can email school.stats@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

or write to The ScotXed Support Office, SEGP, Area 1B,

Victoria Quay, Leith, EH6 6QQ. Alternative versions of this

page are available, on request from the ScotXed Support

Office, in other languages, audio tape, braille and large print.

Want more information?

Further details about ScotXed data exchanges are available on the ScotXed website, http://www.scotxed.net.