Furness Vale Primary School

Privacy Notice for Pupils and their Families

Furness Vale Primary School is the Data Controller for the use of personal data in this privacy notice.

The categories of pupil information that we process include:

personal identifiers and contacts (such as name, unique pupil number, contact details and address)
characteristics (such as ethnicity, language, and free school meal eligibility)
safeguarding information (such as court orders and professional involvement)
special educational needs and disabilities, where relevant
medical and administration (such as doctors information, child health, dental health, allergies, medication and dietary requirements)
attendance (such as sessions attended, number of absences, absence reasons and any previous schools attended)
assessment and attainment (such as key stage 1 and phonics results, post 16 courses enrolled for and any relevant results)
behavioural information (such as exclusions and any relevant alternative provision put in place)
trips and activities, catering and free school meal management

This list is not exhaustive. Whilst the majority of the personal data you provide to the school is mandatory, some is provided on a voluntary basis. When collecting data, the school will inform you whether you are required to provide this data or if your consent is needed. Where consent is required (e.g. the use of images), the school will provide you with specific and explicit information with regards to the reasons the data is being collected and how the data will be used.

Why we collect and use pupil information

We collect and use pupil information, for the following purposes:

to support pupil learning
to monitor and report on pupil attainment progress
to provide appropriate pastoral care
to assess the quality of our services
to keep children safe (food allergies, or emergency contact details)
to meet the statutory duties placed upon us for DfE data collections

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing pupil information are:

Article 6: Public task – necessary to perform a task that is in the public interest or for our official functions as educators
Article 6: Legal obligation – necessary for us to comply with the law
Article 6: Vital interests – necessary to protect someone’s life (e.g. where a child has an accident on a school trip)
Article 6: Consent – necessary where other legal bases are not applicable and we need your consent for processing personal data for a specific purpose, e.g. taking photographs of pupils and using them in school, on the school website or social media
Article 9 (special category data – health data) – necessary for meeting the needs of all pupils and keeping them safe

How we collect pupil information

We collect pupil information via registration forms, Common Transfer File (CTF) or secure file transfer from a child’s previous school.

Pupil data is essential for the schools’ operational use. Whilst the majority of pupil information you provide to us is mandatory, some of it requested on a voluntary basis. In order to comply with the data protection legislation, we will inform you at the point of collection, whether you are required to provide certain pupil information to us or if you have a choice in this.

How we store pupil data

We hold pupil data securely for the set amount of time shown in our data retention schedule. For more information on our data retention, please see our Data Protection Policy and Data Retention Schedule on the school website.

We routinely share pupil information with:

schools that the pupils attend after leaving us
our local authority
the Department for Education (DfE)
the NHS, where relevant
provided we have obtained your consent, online educational providers we buy into, where children access the learning directly, using a secure passcode, e.g. maths or phonics providers, online learning platforms

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

Department for Education

The Department for Education (DfE) collects personal data from educational settings and local authorities via various statutory data collections. We are required to share information about our pupils with the Department for Education (DfE) either directly or via our local authority for the purpose of those data collections, under Section 3 of The Education (Information About Individual Pupils) (England) Regulations 2013.

All data is transferred securely and held by DfE under a combination of software and hardware controls, which meet the current government security policy framework.

For more information, please see ‘How Government uses your data’ section.

Local Authorities

We may be required to share information about our pupils with the local authority to ensure that they can conduct their statutory duties under

the Schools Admission Code, including conducting Fair Access Panels.

Requesting access to your personal data

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 the School’s Business Officer, Tina Daniels, or the data protection officer.

You also have the right to:

object to processing of personal data that is likely to cause, or is causing, damage or distress
prevent processing for the purpose of direct marketing
object to decisions being taken by automated means
in certain circumstances, have inaccurate personal data rectified, blocked, erased or destroyed; and
a right to seek redress, either through the ICO, or through the courts

If you have a concern or complaint 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/.

For further information on how to request access to personal information held centrally by DfE, please see the ‘How Government uses your data’ section of this notice.

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 our use of your personal data, please let us know by contacting enquiries@furnessvale.derbyshire.sch.uk

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 January 2024

Contact

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

Data Protection Officer Name:	GDPR for Schools, Education Data Hub, Derbyshire County Council
DPO Email:	gdprforschools@derbyshire.gov.uk
DPO Phone:	01629 532888
DPO Address:	Room 396, North Block, County Hall, Smedley Street, Matlock, Derbyshire, DE4 3AG

How Government uses your data

The pupil data that we lawfully share with the DfE through data collections:

underpins school funding, which is calculated based upon the numbers of children and their characteristics in each school.
informs ‘short term’ education policy monitoring and school accountability and intervention (for example, school Pupil Progress measures).
supports ‘longer term’ research and monitoring of educational policy (for example how certain subject choices go on to affect education or earnings beyond school)

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)

Much of the data about pupils in England goes on to be held in the National Pupil Database (NPD).

The NPD is owned and managed by the Department for Education 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 Department.

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.

To find out more about the NPD, go to https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-pupil-database-user-guide-and-supporting-information

The law allows the Department to share pupils’ personal data with certain third parties, including:

schools
local authorities
researchers
organisations connected with promoting the education or wellbeing of children in England
other government departments and agencies
organisations fighting or identifying crime

For more information about the Department’s NPD data sharing process, please visit:

https://www.gov.uk/data-protection-how-we-collect-and-share-research-data

Organisations fighting or identifying crime may use their legal powers to contact DfE to request access to individual level information relevant to detecting that crime. Whilst numbers fluctuate slightly over time, DfE typically suppliesdata on around 600 pupils per yearto the Home Office and roughly 1 per year to the Police.

For information about which organisations the Department has provided pupil information, (and for which project) or to access a monthly breakdown of data share volumes with Home Office and the Police please visit the following website: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dfe-external-data-shares

How to find out what personal information DfE hold about you

Under the terms of the Data Protection Act 2018, you are entitled to ask the Department:

if they are processing your personal data
for a description of the data they hold about you
the reasons they’re holding it and any recipient it may be disclosed to
for a copy of your personal data and any details of its source
If you want to see the personal data held about you by the Department, you should make a ‘subject access request’. Further information on how to do this can be found within the Department’s personal information charter that is published at the address below:

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-education/about/personal-information-charter

To contact DfE: https://www.gov.uk/contact-dfe

GDPR