Education service privacy notice

This Privacy Notice is for all children and young people who are on roll at a school or setting in Cambridgeshire, (including those taking up a Cambridgeshire County Council funded early years place) and their parents/carers. It is also relevant for individuals working in or supporting education settings. Our Education Service provides

• School and Early Years place planning
• School admissions service
• Support and challenge to schools and Early Years providers to promote good quality education, particularly for the most vulnerable children, including advice about safeguarding issues, complaints and leadership issues
• Promoting uptake of, and/or verifying claims for Early Years Funding Education Welfare Benefits, entitlement to Home to School and Post 16 Transport
• Services to promote good attendance and inclusion at schools and settings
• Youth support service – this is a statutory service which supports young people who are not in employment, education or training to make positive progressions into Education Employment or Training (EET).
• Services and support for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).
• School governance advice, guidance, information and training through a subscription service and administrative support for governing boards via a clerking service
• Qualifications and training to early years, childcare and playwork practitioners
• A range of “traded services” that schools and settings can purchase

Parent/carers, children and young people may also wish to view our Privacy Notice for Children and Safeguarding which applies to children and their families who receive support from us.

What information do we hold, and about who

We hold information about children and young people receiving education and care, parent/carers, education professionals and those involved in school governance. The information we hold varies according to the service we are providing to you but might include

• personal identifying information (such as name, date of birth, unique pupil numbers, addresses and email addresses)
• personal characteristics (such as ethnicity, first language, gender, religion and sexual orientation)
• family circumstances or entitlements (for example whether eligible for free school meals, pupil premium funding or free childcare, whether a child has SEND, whether a child is looked after, whether home educated)
• information school attendance and exclusions
• information about parents’ views in regard to their children’s education (including complaints and admission appeals)
• information about children and young people’s attainment, education and training history
• information about the health and wellbeing of young people who accept youth support services and/or for supporting assessment of SEND
• where a school shares these with us, records of advice we give in regard to safeguarding concerns and complaints
• records of children and young people’s participation in activities provided by our traded services

We also collect and process information about the education workforce

• Details of Newly Qualified Teachers and early years practitioners and their progress through training
• Contact details, training records and application forms for those involved in school governance and other staff such as head teachers, SENDCOs, Education Welfare Officers, Educational Psychologists and providers of early years and childcare services
• Where commissioned from our clerking service, documents relating to governing bodies which may include information about individuals
• Records of the education workforce who participate in activities provided by our traded services

Where we collect special category data, we do so in order to carry out our statutory duties and to help us provide the right services.

Why we collect and use this information

We collect personal and some special category information for some of the duties the council must perform. These are called our statutory duties i.e. a law or piece of legislation means that we have to do it. These duties are described in the

• Education Act 1996 and 2002 : As the Local Education Authority, we have the statutory duty relating to the provision of education to children of compulsory school age
• Education and Inspections Act 2006
• Childcare Act 2006
• School Standards and Framework Act 1998
• Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998
• Education and Skills Act 2008 : We hold information about young people living in our area, including about their 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 educational need or disability).  Under parts 1 and 2 of the Education and Skills Act 2008, education institutions and other public bodies (including the Department for Education (DfE), police, probation and health services) may pass information to us to help us to support these provisions.
• School Governance (Constitution) (England) Regulations 2012
• Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016
• Children’s Acts
• Health and Social Care Act 2012

Whilst the majority of children and young person’s information provided to us is required by law, some of it is given to us on a voluntary basis. We will inform you whether you are required to provide certain information to us or if you have a choice in this. Schools make regular transfers of information from their school information systems to the Council’s database. They are obliged to do this by law. The Council also shares information back to schools about their pupils.

We will use the information we collect to :

• support school leadership to support children and young people’s learning
• identify and manage non-attendance issues
• monitor and report on the progress of children and young people, including to the DfE
• provide appropriate pastoral care
• assess the quality of our services and other agencies providing education or training for children
• carry out research and analysis to help us plan services that improve outcomes for children in Cambridgeshire as a whole and to assess the future provision of those services
• provide support to settings
• monitor the education of children in our care wherever they are accommodated, in line with statutory guidance
• provide school admissions services for schools and academies including school admissions appeals
• provide and support post-16 education and training, youth support services and careers advice
• promote the safety, health and well-being of children and young people

Storing this information

The information we collect about children and young people, parent/carers and professionals is recorded in paper files, in databases and in electronic folders on Cambridgeshire County Council’s secure network where it is accessible only to staff who need to see it to do their jobs.

Some information about children may form part of a social care record if they reach the threshold for these services to be needed and in those cases we are required by law to keep records for legally specified time periods; for example records relating to children who are looked after by the Local Authority are kept for 75 years.

Who we share this information with

We routinely share children and young person’s information with: 

• The Department for Education (DfE) - on a statutory basis under section 3 of The Education (Information About Individual Pupils) (England) Regulations 2013 and for children in Alternative Provision (Information about Children in Alternative Provision) (England) Regulations 2007. This data sharing underpins school funding, educational attainment policy and monitoring and enables 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.
• Academies/Federated Trusts and other own admission authority schools
• Youth support services – under section 507B of the Education Act 1996 : Once pupils reach the age of 13, we pass their details to our 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 to provide youth support service and careers advice. Our youth support services will also keep relevant information about pupils not in education, training or employment (such as their contact details) aged 16+. A parent / guardian can request that only their child’s name, address and date of birth be passed to their provider of youth support services by informing us at . This right is transferred to the child/pupil once he/she reaches the age of 16.
• Children’s Social Care and Children’s Early Help services where children and their families are having support from these teams
• The Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO)
• Other Local Authorities, District Authorities
• Appropriate regulators such as Ofsted, Regional Schools’ Commissioner
• Awarding bodies for Qualifications
• The Police and the NSPCC
• The Council’s Legal and IT Services
• Health Agencies and Public Health
• Foster Carers
• Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs
• Department of Work and Pensions
• UK Border Agency
• Courts and solicitors
• Training providers and providers of Alternative Education
• Companies who process child level data on behalf of schools and settings, Local Authorities and the Department for Education to provide anonymised and aggregated management information or to help us support particular groups of children. These data processors include: NexusFischer Family Trust (FFT) Aspire; Cambridgeshire Assessment System for Early Years” (CASEY) provided by Sentinel Partners Limited; "Welfare Call ltd" (for monitoring and supporting attendance and educational needs of our Looked After Children)

We do not share information about children and young people without consent unless the law and our policies in relation to statutory guidance allow us to do so.

We share personal data about education professionals, including those involved in school governance with other County Council departments and with schools where this is appropriate, for example where individuals are or have been school governors.

More information about National 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) visit the GOV.UK website.

 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.

The law requires us to provide information about our pupils to the DfE as part of statutory data collections. Some of this information is then stored in the national pupil database (NPD). The legislation that requires this is the Education (Information About Individual Pupils) (England) Regulations 2013.

Find out more about the NPD on the GOV.UK website.

The Department 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 Department 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:the GOV.UK website.

For information about which organisations the department has provided pupil information, (and for which project), please visit the GOV.UK website.

Contact DfE

The National Client Caseload Information System (NCCIS)

The Local Authority is required to provide information to the DfE to enable them to monitor the extent to which young people are meeting their duty to participate in education or training. We are required to hold the information we need in order to support young people to engage in education and training; to identify those who are not participating and to plan services that meet young people’s needs in our local Client Caseload Information system. For more information about the NCCIS you can visit their website.

Your Rights

You have various rights around the data we hold about you.

• Right of access (to receive a copy of your personal data)
• Right to rectification (to request data is corrected inaccurate)
• Right to erasure (to request that data is deleted)
• Right to restrict processing (to request we don’t use your data in a certain way)
• Right to data portability (in some cases, you can ask to receive a copy of your data in a commonly-used electronic format so that it can be given to someone else)
• Right to object (generally to make a complaint about any aspect of our use of your data)
• Right to have explained if there will be any automated decision-making, including profiling, based on your data and for the logic behind this to be explained to you.

Any such request can be submitted to the Data Protection Officer. Whether we can agree to your request will depend on the specific circumstances and if we cannot then we will explain the reasons why.

If we are processing your information based on you giving us consent to do so, you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Doing so may mean we are unable to provide the service you are hoping to receive and the implications of you giving or withdrawing your consent will be explained at the time.

If you are unhappy with any aspect of how your information has been collected and/or used, you can make a complaint to the Data Protection Officer.

You can also report your concerns to the Information Commissioner’s Office.