Data Protection Act 1998 – Fair Processing Notice
Colleges, schools, Local Authorities and the Department for Education, the government department which deals with education, all hold information on young people. This is to run the education system, and in doing so, they have to follow the Data Protection Act 1998. This means that the data held about young people must only be used for specific purposes allowed by law. This notice is to tell you about the types of data held, why that data is held, and with whom it may be shared under the law.
Bilborough College holds information on students to support their teaching and learning, to monitor and report on their progress, to provide appropriate pastoral care, and to assess how well the college as whole is doing. This information includes contact details, assessment results, attendance information, personal characteristics such as ethnic group, special educational needs and any relevant medical information.
How we use your personal information
From time to time we are legally required to pass on some of this data to others.
This may include the Local Authority (LA), the Department for Education, Ofsted, another institution to which the student is transferring, the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and where required, the Young People’s Learning Agency (YPLA) to enable those organisations to fulfil their statutory obligations, principally under the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. Both the SFA and the YPLA are registered as data controllers with the UK Information Commissioners Office.
The Skills Funding Agency – the information you provide may be shared with other organisations for purposes of administration, the provision of career and other guidance and statistical and research purposes, relating to education or training. Other organisations include the Department for Education, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Local Authorities, Connexions, Higher Education Statistics Agency, Higher Education Funding Council for England, educational institutions and organisations performing research and statistical work on behalf of the SFA, the YPLA, or partners of those organisations.
The Skills Funding Agency also administers the learner registration service (LRS) which uses your learner information to create and maintain a unique learner number (ULN).
The Local Authority uses information about students to carry out specific functions for which it is responsible. For example, the assessing of any special educational needs the student may have. It also uses the information to gather statistics to make essential decisions on, for example, funding schools/colleges, and to assess the performance of schools/colleges and set targets for them. It uses the statistics in such a way that individual pupils cannot be identified.
Ofsted uses information about the progress and performance of students to help inspectors evaluate the work of colleges, to assist colleges in their self-evaluation and as part of Ofsted’s assessment of the effectiveness of education initiatives and policy. Inspection reports do not identify individual pupils.
The Department for Education – DfE, uses information about students for research and statistical purposes, to inform, influence and improve education policy and to monitor the performance of the education service as a whole. The DfE will feed back to LAs, colleges and schools, information about their students for a variety of purposes that will include data checking exercises, use in self-evaluation analyses and where information is missing because it was not passed on by a former school or college. The DfE will also provide Ofsted with student level data for use in college inspections. Where relevant, student information may also be shared with other further education institutions to minimise the administrative burden on application for a course and to aid the preparation of learning plans.
Student information may be matched with other data sources that the Department holds in order to model and monitor students’ educational progression and to provide detailed information back to LAs and learning institutions to support their day to day business. The DfE may also use contact details from these sources to obtain samples for statistical surveys - these surveys may be carried out by research agencies working under contract to the Department and participation in such surveys is usually voluntary. The Department may also match data from these sources to data obtained from statistical surveys.
Student data may also be shared with other Government Departments and Agencies including the Office for National Statistics, for statistical or research purposes only. In all these cases the matching will require that individualised data is used in the processing operation, but that data will not be processed in such a way as to identify any individual in published results. This data sharing will be approved and controlled by the Department’s Chief Statistician.
The DfE may also disclose individual student information to independent researchers into the educational achievements of pupils who have a legitimate need for it for their research, but each case will be determined on its merits and subject to the approval of the Department’s Chief Statistician.
Students, as data subjects, have certain rights under the Data Protection Act, including a general right of access to personal data held on them. If a young person wishes to access their personal data, then they should contact the relevant organisation in writing:
- Bilborough College at College Way, Bilborough, Nottingham NG8 4DQ
- the DfE’s Data Protection Officer at DfE, Caxton House, Tothill Street, LONDON, SW1H 9NA
- Ofsted’s Data Protection Officer at Alexandra House, 33 Kingsway, London WC2B 6SE
- SFA’s Information Rights Manager at Skills Funding Agency, Cheylesmore House, Quinton Road, Coventry, Warwickshire CV1 2WT
- YPLA head of Records and Rights at YPLA, Cheylesmore House, Quinton Road, Coventry, Warwickshire CV1 2WT
In order to fulfil their responsibilities under the Act the organisation may, before responding to this request, seek proof of the requestor’s identity and any further information required to locate the information requested.
Providing information to Connexions
For students the college is required to pass on information to the Connexions Service on request. This information includes the name and address of the student and parent, and any further information relevant to the Connexions Service’s role, which is to support young people, helping them to achieve their potential and to realise benefits from education, learning and employment. The student can ask that no information beyond name and address - for student and parent - be passed on to Connexions. If as a student you do not want Connexions to receive from us information beyond name and address, then please contact the college within four weeks of receiving this note (a hard-copy of which is provided at enrolment).
The LA and DfE may provide Connexions with information which they have about a young person, but will not pass on any information they have received from us, if you have notified us that Connexions should not receive information beyond name and address.