Data Protection Privacy Notice

How we use pupil information

Why do we collect and use pupil information?

Pupil information is collected in order to enrol your child in school. It is a legal requirement for all children to be receiving full time education between the school term after their 5th birthday and the last Friday in June in the school year they turn 16.

In order to enrol you child in school, we must collect information specific to them that will enable us to accept a duty of care while they attend school and to maintain a record of their education.

We collect and use pupil information under the lawful bases of:

Consent: you give clear consent for you to process their personal data for a specific purpose.
Contract: the processing is necessary in order for your child to be enrolled at the school, for us to create and maintain an educational record and for us to fulfil our duty of care when your child is attending school.
Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for you, the parent or carer and the school to comply with the law, which requires that all children receive a full time education. It also requires that the school shares details of the children we educate with appropriate government bodies in the form of statutory returns.
Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life of those pupils with medical conditions.
Public task: the processing is necessary for the school to perform a task in the public interest or for your official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law.
Legitimate interests: the processing is necessary for your legitimate interests or the legitimate interests of a third party unless there is a good reason to protect the individual’s personal data which overrides those legitimate interests. (This cannot apply if you are a public authority processing data to perform your official tasks.)

In addition to general information, we also collect sensitive data. This may include information such as ethnic origin, religion, health and biometric data. These are collected under the lawful bases of:

Consent: you give clear consent for us to process personal data for a specific purpose.
Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for you, the parent or carer and the school to comply with the law, which requires that all children receive a full time education. It also requires that the school shares details of the children we educate with appropriate government bodies in the form of statutory returns.
Vital interests: the processing is necessary to protect someone’s life of those pupils with medical conditions.

We use pupil data to:

to support pupil learning
to monitor and report on pupil progress
to provide appropriate pastoral care
to assess the quality of our services
to comply with the law regarding data sharing

The categories of pupil information that we collect, hold and share include:

Personal information (such as name, unique pupil number and address)
Characteristics (such as ethnicity, language, nationality, country of birth and free school meal eligibility)
Attendance information (such as sessions attended, number of absences and absence reasons)
Assessment information (such as key stage assessment results)
Medical information (such as doctors information, child health, allergies, medication and dietary requirements)
Safeguarding and child protection information (such as court orders and professional involvement)
Behavioural information (such as exclusions and any relevant provision put in place)
Special Educational Needs information (including the needs and raking)

Collecting pupil information

Initial pupil details are transferred to us by the school that your child has previously attended. This is a standardised, automated process followed by all local authority schools. Data is transferred securely using Hampshire County Council systems.

Whilst the majority of pupil information you provide to us is mandatory, some of it is provided to us on a voluntary basis. Data not provided by the school your child is leaving is supplemented by data that we collect from you during the enrolment process.

In order to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation, we will inform you whether you are required to provide certain pupil information to us or if you have a choice in this.

Storing pupil data

As a local authority school, we retain pupil data in accordance with the Data Retention requirements of Hampshire County Council. Data retention times vary from 1 year to 25 years and is detailed in the Hampshire County Council School Records Retention Schedule .

Paper records held in school are stored in a secure location accessible only to selected school staff under the supervision and management of the Headteacher and Data Protection Officer.

Destroying Data

Data is destroyed at the end of the retention period by one of the following appropriate methods:

Secure deletion from the Hampshire County Council pupil management systems that we use to administer school records
Secure deletion from the databases of suppliers
Secure shredding of paper records by a third party who shreds paper materials before they leave our premises.

Who do we share pupil information with?

We routinely share pupil information with:

schools that the pupil’s attend after leaving us
our local authority
the Department for Education (DfE)
School Nurse and NHS
Social Services

In addition to data that we routinely share, we also share selected details with third parties in order to provide additional resources for the curriculum such as:

Curriculum tools to enable class based and extra-curricular study in specific subjects
Third parties in order to enable digital management of information such as learning progress and welfare information

In each case, we collect documentation to confirm that each of these providers manages pupil data in accordance with the requirements of the GDPR.

Why we share pupil information

We do not share information about our pupils with anyone without consent unless the law and our policies allow us to do so.

We share pupil data with the Department for Education (DfE) on a statutory basis. This data sharing underpins school funding and educational attainment policy and monitoring.

We are required to share information about our pupils with our local authority (LA) and the Department for Education (DfE) under section 3 of The Education (Information About Individual Pupils) (England) Regulations 2013.

Data collection requirements

To find out more about the data collection requirements placed on us by the Department for Education (for example; via the school census) go to https://www.gov.uk/education/data-collection-and-censuses-for-schools.

The National Pupil Database (NPD)

The NPD is owned and managed by the Department for Education (DfE) 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 DfE. 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 DfE, 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 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-pupil-database-user-guide-and-supporting-information.

The DfE 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 DfE 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.

Requesting access to your personal data

Information held by the school is made available on request in accordance with the Information Commissioners Office Model Publication Scheme. This publication scheme commits an authority to make information available to the public as part of its normal business activities. The information covered is included in the classes of information explained in our Guide to Published Information .

Under data protection legislation, parents and pupils have the right to request access to information about them that we hold.

To make a request for your personal information, or be given access to your child’s educational record, contact Mr C Grant, Data Protection Officer.

You also have the right to:

to ask us for access to information about you that we hold
to have your personal data rectified, if it is inaccurate or incomplete
to request the deletion or removal of preson ldata where there is no compelling reason for its continued processing
to restrict our processing of your personal data (i.e. permitting its storage but no further processing)
to object to direct marketing (including profiling) and proessing for the purposes of scientific / historaical research and statistics)
not to be subject to decisions based purely on automated processing where it produces a legal or similarly significant effect on you

Withdrawal of consent and the right to lodge a complaint

Where we are processing your personal data with your consent, you have the right to withdraw that consent. If you change your mind, or you are unhappy with out use of your personal data, please let us know by contacting Mr C Grant, Data Protection Officer.

If you have a concern about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office at https://ico.org.uk/concerns/.

Last Updated

We may need to update this privacy notice periodically so we recommend that you revisit this information from time to time. This version was last updated in February 2024.

Contact Information

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice, please contact:

Mr C Grant, Data Protection Officer