Privacy notice - School Admissions

The School Admissions team manages the application process for school places. This includes children moving in the transition period from nursery to Reception (starting full time school), the transition period from Y6 primary school to Y7 secondary school, and children moving school mid-year.

In order to process your admission we need the following children’s data

• Name
• Date of birth
• Address (current and previous)
• School or nursery (current and previous)
• Gender
• Details of periods if a child was or is ‘in care’ i.e. looked after by a Local Authority and details of adoption or Special Guardianship Orders and names of social workers involved.
• Details of exceptional social and medical needs provided by parents to meet school admission oversubscription criteria, such as written statements from parents or supporting letters from professionals such as social workers or doctors etc.
• Reasons given by parent as to why they are wanting to change a child’s school
• Whether or not the child has a Statement of Special Educational Needs or Education Health and Care Plan
• Details of any support received in school from specialist services, i.e. speech and language support etc.
• Names, dates of birth and addresses of siblings in schools
• English language proficiency
• Nationality
• Whether or not the child is seeking asylum, or is a refugee and documentation to support this

Guardian or Parents data

• Name
• Relationship to child
• Address
• Email address
• Contact telephone number
• Language spoken if interpreter required at appeals
• Name of friend if accompanying to an appeal

We may collect your Personal Data in a number of ways,

• Paper and online application forms to apply or give your preferences for a school place
• Paper and online application forms to transfer from one school to another (Mid-year)
• School appeal forms you complete
• When you register with us to apply online for school places
• Information shared from schools and nurseries.
• Information shared from other Middlesbrough Council service areas
• Information shared from other Local Authorities
• Information you share directly with us either via telephone, in person or letter / email

We follow statutory guidance for admissions, school adjudicators and admission appeals.

The School Admissions Regulations 2012, The Education Act 1998 and the Education Order 1998.

In addition to the School Admissions Code 2014 and the School Standards and Framework Act 1998.

Your personal information and that of your child will be used for:

• To process your child’s application for a school place.
• To administer any school appeals that may be heard
• To provide you with our services and to develop and improve
• To ensure the information we hold is kept up to date
• To prevent and detect fraudulent applications for school places
• To help investigate any worries or complaints you may have about our service
• To contact you with surveys, which will be optional, to ask you about the level and quality of service we provide

Your personal information and that of your child will be shared with:

• Your child’s current or previous school
• Your child’s allocated (new) school
• Any school you may have applied for on your child’s application
• Other Local Authorities if you apply for a school outside of Middlesbrough or you live in another Local Authority
• The Department for Education
• The NHS, School Health
• Other council services or other external services such as health or social worker professionals for example for the purposes of Safeguarding, or the prevention of fraud, or to verify or use information on your application such as details submitted regarding exceptional social and medical reasons would be shared with professionals for their opinions/decisions regarding the school application
• The Police ( if they request information relating to the prevention or detection of crime or fraud)

The security of your personal information is important to us. This is why we follow a range of security policies and procedures to control and safeguard access to and use of your personal information.

After we deliver a service to you, we have to keep your information as a business record of what was delivered.

The retention periods for this service are as follows.

• Admissions and Transfers: 6 years plus the current application year
• Appeals: Until child’s 25^th birthday

We do not send your personal information outside of the European Economic Area to be processed.

At no time will your information be passed to organisations external to us and our partners for marketing or sales purposes or for any commercial use without your prior express consent.

Your Information Rights are set out in law and, subject to some exceptions, you have the:

• Right to rectification - to ask for information to be corrected
• Right to erasure - to have your personal data deleted
• Right to object - to how your data is used
• Right to restriction - to request limits on how your data is used
• Right to portability - to request that we move your data to another organisation
• Right of subject access - to request a copy of data the Council holds about you

If you have a concerns about the way we are collecting or using your personal data, you should raise your concern with us in the first instance or directly to the Information Commissioner's Office. Visit the website of the Information Commissioner's Office.

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice or your information rights, please contact:

The Data Protection Officer
Middlesbrough Council
PO Box 500, Middlesbrough, TS1 9FT
Phone: 01642 245432
Email: dataprotection@middlesbrough.gov.uk