The way in which the school handles information will be covered by the Data Protection Act 1998. Under the strict guidelines of this Act, information is gathered by the school in the context of safeguarding and child protection must be used only for that purpose. If any individuals concerned wish to know the information which is held about them, they have a right to access it, this could be, for example, parents of children in primary school. They are also entitled to see their own educational record. There are only a few main exceptions to this, namely:
• Information which may cause serious harm or risk of abuse to the health of the pupil or another individual.
• Information given to a court or in an adoption.
• Information in parental order records.
• Copies of
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pupil activities and assessments, progress and attendance records etc.
• Data Protection Act 1998 - prevents the disclosure of materials that are likely to cause harm to the development of the pupil, those concerning child abuse cases and references supplied to the potential employers of the pupil. The pupil records have to be locked up in a file cabinet or stored in a computer secured by a password, being available only for authorised personnel. Each pupil has to have a separate file for their records and these documents have to be kept for five years. Parents have the right to see what is recorded about their child, correct any mistakes and add any relevant information to it. Under the Data Protection Act the information held by the schools can only be used for specific purposes (i.e. to support the child’s development), and individuals have the right to access the data held about them.
• The Freedom of Information Act 2000 provides public access to information held by public authorities.
It does this in two ways:
public authorities are obliged to publish certain information about their activities;