Privacy notice - schools

North Somerset Council (NSC) use information about children and young people to enable us to carry out specific functions for which we are responsible. We also use this personal data to derive statistics which inform decisions we make, for example regarding the funding of schools, assessing their performance and to set targets for them.

We are legally obliged to share information with other agencies (for example the police, health services, schools) when there are safety concerns about children.

We hold information about young people living in our area, including about their school placement, education and training history. This is to support the provision of their education up to the age of 20 (and beyond this age for those with a special education need or disability), and we hold that data for the time that children spend within our educational institutes. Those institutes, and other public bodies (including the Department for Education (DfE), police, probation and health services) may pass information to us to help us to do this under the Education and Skills Act 2008, parts 1 and 2.

We share some of the information we collect with the DfE to enable them to produce statistics, assess our performance, determine the destinations of young people after they have left school or college, and to evaluate government funded programmes.

We may also share information with post-16 education and training providers to secure appropriate support for our young people. This includes information being shared as part of the statutory duty of local authorities to provide the September Guarantee, raise the participation age, and to ensure that all young people are offered appropriate learning and training opportunities up to the age of 19. This information will be shared with the DfE in accordance with the National Client Caseload Information System (NCCIS) management information requirement which is reviewed and published annually.

For pupils aged 13 and over, schools are legally required to pass certain information to us so that we can track participation in education and training up to the age of 19 with their youth support services.

NSC youth support services share some of the information collected with the Department for Education (DfE) to enable them to produce statistics, assess our performance, determine the destinations of young people after they have left school or college and to evaluate government funded programmes.

NSC youth support services pass on some of the information they collect to other local authorities, for example when a young person is resident in a different local authority, but is participating in education or training within North Somerset. Information may also be shared with providers who secure government funding to support young people’s participation or employment. This may include name, contact details, aspirations, participation history and any information that may support participation. Any information sharing will be supported either by data sharing agreements or under the Digital Economy Bill and will operate within data protection and information governance guidelines.

NSC and the Department for Work and Pensions have a joint data sharing protocol which enables us to share data.

We will use information about our school workforce for research and statistical purposes, and to evaluate and develop education policy and strategies. The statistics are used in such a way that individual staff cannot be identified. We may also use it to support and monitor schools regarding sickness and recruitment of staff.

Since the implementation of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, and specifically the duty for local authorities to provide a sustainable travel to schools strategy, North Somerset Council has been involved with assessing pupil travel needs and reviewing transport infrastructure to all its schools. School mode of travel information, collected from schools, is shared with our school travel advisers in the sustainable travel team.

We will use data collected from schools (attendance, exclusion and data relating to behaviour) along with our own data, to assist with the identification and subsequent monitoring of children or young people in families who are likely to meet or who do meet the criteria of a high impact family.

Families meeting the criteria will be offered a variety of services and support depending on their individual needs. The high impact families programme represents the local element of the government’s national initiative to turn around the lives of 400,000 multi-need families by 2020. The aim is that the children in these families have the chance of a better life.

Health services use information about pupils for research and statistical purposes, to develop, monitor and evaluate the performance of local health services. These statistics will not identify individual pupils.

It is necessary for certain health information about children (such as their height and weight) to be retained for a certain period of time (designated by the Department of Health) and requires local health services to maintain children’s names and addresses for this purpose. Local health services may also provide individual schools and local authorities with aggregated health information which will not identify individual children. We may supply pupil details to assist with national immunisation programmes or other national health monitoring initiatives (for example to North Somerset Community Partnership Community Interest Company).

Connecting Care brings together information sharing across health and local government in the south west via an online portal. It is not new sharing – it is simply sharing done in a more effective way.

Your local authority is a partner in Connecting Care, a project which links social care information with health information. The Connecting Care local record is a new way for staff who are directly involved in a child’s care to share relevant information about their care in a way that is secure, controlled, consistent and efficient. It allows health and local council staff who are directly involved in a child’s care to access a summary of existing records, such as those held by the GP, hospital or social care provider. Staff who are directly involved in a child’s care will only access their record with a legitimate reason, and if they can, they will ask your permission before they look at it.

The Connecting Care record will contain information on:

• who is involved in a child’s care
• any allergies they have
• medications
• recent appointments (but only whether they were attended, this will not include any information about what was discussed at that appointment)
• diagnoses

The Connecting Care record will not contain information about conversations with the GP or any information on sensitive subjects such as sexual health. Staff who have a responsibility for designing services to improve children’s general well-being will also have access to relevant information from the record. The detail that staff can see is linked to the job they do. If they don’t need to see specific information, they cannot see it.

For further information about Connecting Care contact PALS 0800 073 0907 or visit the Connecting Care website.

The DfE may share individual level personal data that we supply to them with third parties. This will only take place where legislation allows it and in compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998.

Decisions on whether the DfE releases this personal data to third parties are subject to a robust approval process and are 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 level data, requestors must comply with strict terms and conditions covering the confidentiality and handling of data, security arrangements and retention and use of the data.

You have the right to see the personal data we process about you, as well as the right of objection, rectification and restriction (to destruction of records only).