Privacy Notice – Students

Privacy Notice – Students

You have a legal right (under the General Data Protection Regulation), to be informed about how John Taylor Multi Academy Trust (JTMAT) uses any personal information that we hold about you. To comply with this, we provide a ‘privacy notice’ to you where we are processing your personal data.

This privacy notice explains how we collect, store and use personal data about you.

We, the Trust, are the ‘data controller’ for the purposes of data protection law.

You can contact our data protection officer (DPO) here.

The personal data we hold

Personal data that we may collect, use, store and share (when appropriate) about students includes, but is not restricted to:

  • Contact details, contact preferences, date of birth, identification documents
  • Results of internal assessments and externally set tests
  • Student and curricular records
  • Characteristics, such as ethnic background, eligibility for free school meals, or special educational needs
  • Bio-metric information, such as fingerprints
  • Exclusion information
  • Behavioural information
  • Details of any medical conditions, including physical and mental health
  • Attendance information
  • Safeguarding information
  • Details of any support received, including care packages, plans and support providers
  • Photographs
  • CCTV images captured

We may also hold data about students that we have received from other organisations, including other schools or academies, local authorities and the Department for Education.

Why we use this data

We use this data to:

  • Support student learning
  • Monitor and report on student progress
  • Provide appropriate pastoral care
  • Provide appropriate systems to enhance learning
  • Protect student welfare
  • Assess the quality of our services
  • Administer admissions waiting lists
  • Carry out research
  • Comply with the law regarding data sharing

Our legal basis for using this data

We only collect and use students’ personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we process it where:

  • We need to comply with a legal obligation
  • We need it to perform an official task in the public interest
  • We need it to perform a contract

Less commonly, we may also process students’ personal data in situations where:

  • We have obtained consent to use it in a certain way
  • We need to protect the individual’s vital interests (or someone else’s interests)

Where we have obtained consent to use students’ personal data, this consent can be withdrawn at any time. We will make this clear when we ask for consent, and explain how consent can be withdrawn.

Some of the reasons listed above for collecting and using students’ personal data overlap, and there may be several grounds which justify our use of this data.

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

We may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

Collecting this information

We collect pupil information via:

  • registration forms at the start of the school year
  • Common Transfer File (CTF)
  • secure file transfer from previous school
  • admissions form
  • Our staff via MIS, Paper, survey or other means

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 and we will tell you what you need to do if you do not want to share this information with us.

How we store this 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 schedule and how we keep your data safe, please visit our Records Management Policy

Data sharing

We routinely share pupil information with:

  • schools
  • local authorities
  • youth support services (pupils aged 13+)
  • the Department for Education (DfE)

Where it is legally required, or necessary (and it complies with data protection law) we may share personal information about students with these organisations/providers.

Why we regularly share pupil information

We do not share information about students with any third party without consent unless the law and our policies or internal procedures allow us to do so.

Youth support services Pupils aged 13+

Once our pupils reach the age of 13, we also pass pupil information to our local authority and / or provider of youth support services as they have responsibilities in relation to the education or training of 13-19 year olds under section 507B of the Education Act 1996.

This enables them to provide services as follows:

  • youth support services
  • careers advisers

A parent or guardian can object to any information in addition to their child’s name, address and date of birth being passed to their local authority or provider of youth support services by informing us. This right is transferred to the child / pupil once they reach the age 16

Data is securely transferred to the youth support service.

Pupils aged 16+

We will also share certain information about pupils aged 16+ with our local authority and / or provider of youth support services as they have responsibilities in relation to the education or training of 13-19 year olds under section 507B of the Education Act 1996.

This enables them to provide services as follows:

  • post-16 education and training providers
  • youth support services
  • careers advisers

A child / student once they reach the age of 16 can object to only their name, address and date of birth is passed to their local authority or provider of youth support services by informing us.

Data is securely transferred to the youth support service.

For more information about services for young people, please visit our local authority website.

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 regulation 5 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

Parents and students’ rights regarding personal data

Under GDPR, 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 click here to find all the information you require.

Depending on the lawful basis above, you may 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 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.

Other rights

Depending on the lawful basis above, you may 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 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/

To exercise any of these rights, please contact our data protection officer.

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 our use of your personal data, please let us know by following our complaints procedure.

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 on 18th May 2021.

Contact us

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice, please contact our data protection officer.

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 GCSE results or 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

Sharing by the Department

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 supplies data on around 600 pupils per year to 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