Schools, Academies, Local Authorities (LA), the Department for Education (DfE) and other educational bodies that process personal data about pupils and staff are required by General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) to issue a Notice to parents/pupils and staff to inform them of the purposes for which that personal data may be held and used. GDPR is effective from 25 May 2018 and introduce new mandatory procedures for data management in the UK. The updated privacy notice template is designed to help schools comply with the new regulations.

Schools and Academies must issue Privacy Notices to new pupils and staff, but this can be done at the same time as other communications that they issue. For example:

• A pupil might receive the Privacy Notice as part of a school brochure or induction pack, or in a school diary, and it could be posted on the school/academy notice board.
• For staff, the Privacy Notice might be included as part of a contract, induction pack, and/or posted on the staff notice board.

Please note that Schools, Academies and PRUs will need to amend the text in the appropriate places (highlighted in red) in the relevant Privacy Notice before it is issued to parents or staff. This may be to remove sections that do not apply to your school or to insert the name of your establishment.

The DfE website gives information about how they store and use pupil, child and workforce data

DfE website

A copy of the latest version of the Privacy Notice for Pupils is attached below along with a version for Staff. Please note that these templates may be subject to small changes as a result of feedback from data protection colleagues but are largely based on wording from the DfE so are considered appropriate for use.

Schools are reminded that if they choose to use these templates, it is under their own direction/ownership as separate data entities.

For any general queries relating to Privacy Notices, please contact the School Management Support Team smst@buckscc.gov.uk.

Privacy Notice for Pupils in Schools,  Academies, Free Schools, University Technical Colleges  and PRUs 

Privacy Notice for Staff employed or otherwise engaged to work in Schools,  Academies, Free Schools, University Technical Colleges  and PRUs 

To help schools prepare their privacy notices the DfE have  produced a section by section guide plus an example privacy notice which can be accessed via the link below and is called ‘Explanation of privacy notices’:

DfE Explanation of privacy notices

The DfE have also provided a general toolkit for schools in preparation for the changes to data protection requirements. This can be found via the link below:

 DfE data protection toolkit for schools