Education Support Service including school admissions privacy notice

This policy provides information and details of team protocol which aims to ensure that the Education Support Service is fully compliant with new legislation General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR) which comes into effect in May 2018.

Service Data Protection Officer

Gateshead authority has a designated Data Protection Officer who holds responsibility for data controls and ensuring compliance with this policy and raising awareness of data protection.

Who we are and what we do

The Education Support Service consists of six areas of work; Admissions, Fair Access, Primary Behaviour Support, Legal Intervention, Exclusions and support for Elective Home Education. The teams provide support to children, young people and their families in schools/academies and parents who have chosen to home educate their children.

Admissions are a team of five staff who manage first year entry admission into school (reception and Y7) as well as transfer requests for a child to move to a new school. The team works with residence of Gateshead as well as those families who move into the borough.

Fair Access are a team of four people (one teacher and three Education Support Staff) who support children, young people, parents and schools through the process of transferring into a new school via the primary and secondary fair access process. The team also monitors schools placement of young people on alternative education.

Primary Behaviour Support are a team of two teachers and five specialist behaviour support teaching assistants who work in schools to support primary aged children and schools with children's behaviour. They will also signpost parents to support provided by other agencies.

In the area of exclusions there are two officers who work with schools/academies, children and young people and parents; an Exclusion officer who manages the exclusions process and an Assessment and Triage officer who works with permanently excluded pupils and those who are medically unfit to attend mainstream school to ensure that they are in receipt of appropriate educational provision.

Legal Intervention (Non-attendance) Team is a team of four staff who are responsible for;

Penalty notices (non-attendance, Unauthorized leave of absence, Exclusions)
Prosecution in Magistrates Court
School Attendance orders (SAO)
Education Supervision Orders in Family Court
Child Performance Licenses
Child Employment Permits
Multi-agency Risk Assessment conference (MARAC)
Children Missing from Education (CME)
Multi-agency Tasking and Coordination (MATAC)

We also have several members of staff (teachers) who support parents who have chosen to home educate and the elective home education multi-agency panel.

Why we need your information and how we use it

Personal data is received, stored and processed in order for the Education Support Service to;

meet its aim to provide appropriate and effective support to children and young people in the area highlighted above. This advice and support will be available from the point the service is contacted until the issue in question is addressed. Support and advice will be dependent upon each individual need and the team contacted.
monitor and analyse the service provided for individual children and young people
help us develop and improve our services
complete statistical returns to national organizations for example: DfE

What type of information is collected about you or your children

This information may be collected directly from you or from other agencies e.g. schools or Children Social Care.

name and date of birth
address where the child/young person ordinarily lives
sibling links
parent name and contact details (telephone numbers and e mail address)
parents name and date of birth (where applicable)
information from current or previous school
- attainment
- attendance
- Special Educational Needs (SEN)
- Behaviour
- exclusions
medical information
who your information may be shared with (internally and externally) when we need your consent for this. Information may also be shared on a lawful basis other than through consent
information relating to episodes of being a child in need (such as referral information, assessment information, Section 47 information, Initial Child Protection information and Child Protection Plan information)
episodes of being looked after (such as important dates, information on placements)
photographic evidence of learning from parent(s)/carers who choose to electively home educate

What are the lawful bases for processing?

The lawful bases for us processing personal data are set out in Article 6 of the UK GDPR. They are:

Consent: the individual has given clear consent for us to process their personal data for a specific purpose e.g. admission of their child into school

Legal obligation: the processing is necessary for us to comply with the law e.g. locating children that go missing from education.

Vital interests: the processing may be necessary to protect someone's life.

Public task: the processing is necessary for us to perform a tasks for our official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law e.g. keeping a register of children that electively home educated to ensure we can evaluate that their education is at least satisfactory.

Under Article 9 we process data in line with:

9(g) For reasons of substantial public interest (with a basis in law) when we are processing ethnicity information for equality monitoring purposes or to complete data returns e.g. DfE census

9(h) For Health or social care reasons (with a basis in law)e.g. when we participate in social care meetings with regards to families.

Who your information may be shared with:

Sometimes, we might need to ask another team or organisation to help you. To do this, we might need to give the organisation information about you.

We share information with:

Internal departments

Children with disabilities team
Higher Incidents Needs Team (HINT)
Lower Incidents Needs Team (LINT)
Early Help
Educational psychology
Early years assessment and intervention team (EYAIT)
Looked after children's team (REALAC)
Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service (EMTAS)
Social care
Legal department

External

other local authorities
benefits and housing
your child's school/academy staff
other schools/academies
for post 16 transition-staff at your child's further education college, sixth form college and university
Child and Mental Health Services (CAMHS)/Child and Young Peoples Services (CPYS)the First-tier Tribunal (SEN and disability)
other third-party organisations, as allowed by law other partner agencies that provide services on our behalf
agencies with whom we have a duty to co-operate, such as police

Whenever we let people outside of the Council see your information, we give them instructions about what they can do with it. We also ask them to show us that they will look after the information properly.

Can I see my child's information?

Yes, you can ask the Council for your information.

How long we keep your information

Personal data will not be retained for longer than necessary in relation to the purposes for which they were collected. For those with Special Educational Needs and/or disabilities, data will be retained for 25 years after the case is closed.
Documentation containing personal data is then archived.

Marketing and E-Newsletters

The Education Support Service always acts upon your choices around what type of communications you want to receive and how you want to receive them. We use phone calls and on occasion email to keep families/carers in touch with what we are doing, news and events. We aim to keep your data up to date and welcome any updates to your details or corrections to any inaccuracies you may wish to provide.
Please see the relevant section of the Corporate Privacy Notice.

Protecting your information

Please see the relevant section of the Corporate Privacy Notice.

How you can access, update, or correct your information

The accuracy of your information is important to us to be able to provide relevant services more quickly. We are working to make our record keeping more efficient. In the meantime, if you change your address or email address, or if any of your circumstances change or any of the other information we hold is inaccurate or out of date, please email us at educationsupportservice@gateshead.gov.ukand let us know of the changes.

The Data Protection law gives you the right to apply for a copy of information about yourself. This is called a 'Subject Access Request'.

Find out how to make a Subject Access Request on our Data protection webpage.

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
claim compensation for damages caused by a breach of the Data Protection regulations

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.

Your information choice and rights

Please see the relevant section of our Corporate Privacy Notice.

Information Commissioner's Office