North Lanarkshire Council, Education and Families

GDPR Privacy Statement for Education                

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 Headquarters 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 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, are 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 enrol your child or young person in nursery or school
• to provide your child or young person with an appropriate education
• for teaching, assessment and planning 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 e.g. of attendance, absence, attainment 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 Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) and to support young people’s access to Further Education
• to allow us to process Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) applications
• to make appropriate transport arrangements for children and young people
• to process placing requests
• 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
• to contact you by post, email, telephone or text, when required.

Who do we share information with?

To support your child or young person’s access to appropriate education and meet our legal obligations, personal information may be shared internally between services within Education.  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 peoples’ 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 of 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 Headquarters, 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.
• 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 transfer – you can request that your information is transferred 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
• 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.