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Privacy Notice - Education and Early Years Directorate

Privacy notice - Education and Early Years Directorate

What this privacy notice is for

Our core data protection obligations and commitments are set out in the council’s primary privacy notice at:

This notice provides additional privacy information for:

  • Children/Young People who attend any Oldham Local Authority maintained educational establishments and Children/Young People who are undertake home elected education.
  • Parents/Carers of children who receive entitlement to free nursery places
  • Parents, Carers and/or Guardians of Children/Young People who attend Oldham Local Authority associated childcare/educational establishments, to whom we offer advice, guidance and support.
  • Parents/Carers who access the Oldham Council ‘Directory of Approved Childcare Providers’
  • Council and Local Authority Maintained school employees.
  • Third parties who may be involved with complaints and/or legal matters concerning the Council or educational establishments. This in respect of where the Council or educational establishments may require internal legal advice such as property and contract matters, civil litigation and claims.
  • Any other individuals in respect of whom data is processed to enable the Education and Early Years Directorate to carry out its statutory functions and services including regulatory and administrative functions in a lawful manner. These include the facility of services in the area of school place provision, attendance, exclusion, school workforce matters, SEND provision, safeguarding, Human Resources and Payroll matters, Early Years provision, learning and school improvement, provision of post 16 education and school governance

Updating our privacy notices

We may update or revise our privacy notices at any time so please refer to the version published on our website for the most up-to-date details.

What we use your information for

We collect or obtain your personal information for the following purpose(s):

  • In delivering Education and Early Years services and support to you and your child to ensure that the Council is acting lawfully.
  • In carrying out regulatory activities of the Council such as, planning, safeguarding of children, school attendance special educational needs and the provision of school places.
  • If you apply for a job or become employed in schools or the Education and Early Years Directorate or pursue an employment claim, complaint or appeal against a maintained school or the Council.
  • To advise Oldham schools in relation to any statutory issues which they might face.
  • To administer in relation to school places, inclusion, SEND. Post 16 Education, Children Looked After (CLA), home-educated pupils, attendance and appeals.
  • To ensure that requests for disclosure of education and related data from government agencies are dealt with lawfully.
  • For ensuring the health and safety of staff and pupils in maintained schools and the Education and Early Years Directorate
  • To transact the Council’s legitimate business regarding school land and school property transactions, for the commissioning of services and contractual arrangements with third-party organisations or individuals as they relate to the Education and Early Years Directorate.
  • To comply with the Council’s constitution and ensure open and transparent governance and scrutiny.
  • In responding to Freedom of Information requests if they relate to Education and Early Years, school appeals and other miscellaneous education-related FOI requests and ensuring any data is dealt with in a lawful manner.
  • For research and statistical purposes. The information used would be in anonymised format unless we obtain your explicit consent to use your personal information for this purpose.
  • In providing administrative support and services to schools and academies that purchase service level agreements from the Education and Early Years Directorate.

We also use this information to assess the quality of our services and evaluate and improve our policies and procedures.

What categories of personal information do we use?

Personal information can be anything that identifies and relates to a living person. This can include information that when linked with other information, allows a person to be uniquely identified. For example, this could be your name and contact details.

The law treats some types of personal information as ‘special category’ and/or ‘sensitive’ data where the information requires more protection due to its specific nature.

Information is considered special category and/or sensitive when it relates to:

  • Racial or ethnic origin
  • Sexual orientation and/or sexual life
  • Religious and/or philosophical beliefs
  • Trade union membership
  • Political opinions
  • Genetic and/or bio-metric
  • Physical and/or mental health
  • Criminal convictions and offences

In order to carry out any of the purposes listed above we collect and obtain the following personal information

Personal data

  • Personal details of child and/or young person including your name, home address and any secondary home addresses, date of birth, telephone number/s and email address/es
  • Family details including any contact details of those with parental responsibility and/or classed as emergency contacts
  • Personal identifiers – unique pupil number, unique learning number, National Insurance number, NHS number, case management system references
  • Financial details
  • Education details including school attendance
  • Employment details
  • Visual and audio recordings, photographic images
  • Personal appearance and behaviour
  • Student and pupil records
  • Case file information
  • Information relating to travel patterns for school bus route planning

Sensitive/Special Category personal data

  • Physical, emotional, social development and mental health needs
  • Religious or other beliefs of a similar nature
  • Racial or ethnic origin
  • Trade union membership
  • Criminal offence and convictions

We will only collect and use the minimum amount of personal information required when delivering our services.

Legal basis for processing

Most of the personal information we process is provided to us by you. Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for using your personal information are:

  • You gave us your consent (UK GDPR Article 6 (a)
  • We have a contractual obligation with you (UK GDPR Article 6 (b)
  • We have a legal obligation (UK GDPR Article 6 (c)
  • We need it to perform a public task (UK GDPR Article 6 (e)

When we also collect data that is considered ‘special category’ we further rely on the following lawful bases:

  • You gave us your explicit consent (UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (a))
  • We need it for employment, social security or social protection (UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (b))
  • We need to protect your vital interests in situations where you are incapable for giving consent (UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (c)
  • We need to collect it for Substantial Public Interest in order to comply with UK legislation (UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (g)
  • We are providing you with health and social care support (UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (h))
  • We need to analyse your information (UK GDPR Article 9 (2) (j))

The primary legislation upon which we rely to ensure the Education and Early Years Directorate complies with its legal obligations and functions includes but is not limited to:

  • Apprenticeship, Skills, Children and Learning Act (ASCL) 2009
  • The Children’s Act 1989 & 2004
  • The Education Act’s 1980 – 2011
  • Education and Adoption Act 2016
  • The Childcare Act 2006 & 2016
  • Children and Families Act 2014
  • Early Years Foundation Stage (Learning and Development Requirements) Order 2007
  • The School Standards and Frameworks Act (SSFA) 1998
  • Learning and Skills Act 2000
  • The Equality Act 2010
  • Education and Inspections Act 2006
  • The School Teachers Pay and Conditions Document
  • The School Staffing Regulations 2013
  • Education and Skills Act 2008
  • The Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015
  • Special Educational Needs and Disability Regulations 2014
  • Crime and Disorder Act 1998
  • Employment Acts (various)
  • The Academies Act 2010
  • Provision of Education (England) Regulations 2008
  • Children and Young Persons Act 1933 and 1963 and the Children (Performances and activities) (England) Regulations 2014

Where information is not provided, we may not be able to comply with the Council’s duties contained in the above legislation and also ensure that services provided by the Council, the Directorate, maintained schools and academies, are done so in a lawful way.

In certain circumstances, if you decline to provide specific items of information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations.

Examples being, we’re unable to provide a school place or consider a school appeal or offer specialist advice as part of an Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment.

Information sharing/recipients

We may share personal information about you with the following organisations /types of organisations:

  • Students and Pupils and their relatives, guardians, carers or representatives
  • Any other representatives of the person whose personal data we are processing
  • Nurseries and other Early Years settings, schools, academies and colleges
  • Independent schools and independent specialist providers approved under Section 41 of the Children and Families Act 2014
  • Department of Education
  • Department for Works and Pensions
  • HMRC
  • HM Courts & Tribunals Service
  • Educators and examining bodies
  • Healthcare professionals
  • Healthcare, social and welfare organisations
  • The Disclosure and Barring Service
  • Police forces including non-home office police forces
  • Youth Offending Teams and relevant youth custodial establishments
  • Current, past and prospective employers
  • Local and central government
  • Greater Manchester Combined Authorities
  • Transport for Greater Manchester
  • Local Government Association
  • Ombudsman and regulatory authorities/bodies
  • Trade unions
  • Political organisations
  • Professional advisers and professional bodies
  • Religious organisations
  • Our data processors

As well as information collected directly from you, we may also obtain or receive information from:

  • Other Local Authorities
  • Health and social care provider
  • Family members/Guardians
  • Central Government Agencies
  • HM Courts & Tribunals Service
  • Employers
  • Further Education and Higher Education Colleges
  • Schools including Academies, Early Years Providers and Special School Providers
  • Commissioned Partners
  • Finance department
  • Transport for Greater Manchester
  • Greater Manchester Combined Authorities
  • Local Government Association
  • Other third-party organisations, as allowed by law
  • Pupil referral units
  • Police
  • Legal representatives
  • Education providers
  • Members of the public where safeguarding/child protection concerns are raised

Data Transfers beyond United Kingdom

The majority of our service area functions do not require information to be shared outside of the UK.

However, there are some instances where it is necessary to share your information outside of the UK to fulfil our purposes.

At present we share your information with the following countries:

  • Canada

Automated Decisions

Most of the decisions we make about you involve human intervention however we may make automated decisions about you in respect of:

  • Free early education for two year old’s entitlement

Our Guide to Exercising Your Rights outlines the procedure to ask us for an automated decision to be reviewed by an appropriate officer. This can be found at: 

How long do we keep your data?

Your personal information will be securely stored on our network, in our offices and also at our central records centre.

Our retention periods for keeping your personal data vary, depending on business needs and/or statutory guidelines. This includes taking into consideration the age of a person at the point of interacting with our services.

It will not be retained for longer than necessary and will be in relation to the purposes for which it was collected. Following the relevant retention period, we will securely destroy the information.

Where we need to use your personal data for research or reports (including publicly available) it will be in an anonymised and summarised format.

Education and Early Years have a retention schedule of case files which can be accessed by emailing:

Where can I get advice

More information on how to seek advice in order to exercise your rights, raise a concern or complain about the handling of your personal information by the council, can be found in the council’s privacy notice which can be found at: