This notice explains what personal data (information) we hold about you, how we collect, how we use and intend to share information about you. We are required to give you this information under data protection law.
Dudley Borough Council is the Data Controller for the personal information you provide. The Council’s Data Protection Officer can be contacted on 0300 555 8283 or by email to information.governance@dudley.gov.uk
We collect and hold information about you and your child in order to process your application regarding your child’s admission to school. The Local Authority and schools will need this information to ensure the application is assessed appropriately.
We use your information to allocate your child a place at school in accordance with the School Admissions Code December 2014 and the legislation set out in the Schools Standards and Framework Act 1998.
The Council is responsible for processing admissions to reception class and transfers from primary to secondary school, and also processes all in year admission requests i.e. where a child is moving between schools within the authority, or has moved into the authority from another authority.
The Department of Education’s School Admissions Code published in December 2014, which has statutory force, underpins legislation set out in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. This requires parents and carers to apply for a school place, requests parents/carers to express their school preferences, and allows them an opportunity on the form (and any supplementary form/s) to outline the reasons why they are request the school(s) of preference. For school appeals, the Department for Education’s School Admission Appeals Code published in February 2012, which has statutory force underpins legislation set out in the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 which sets out the requirement to allow a parent/carer to appeal for a school place if they have been refused. The lawful basis for processing your personal data is ‘Public Task’ as we need the information to carry out our public functions as set out in law.
You are required to complete all aspects of the application form. We collect the following information:
- your personal information (such as name, home address, contact details and email address).
- your child’s personal information (such as name, date of birth, address if different from yours).
- Council Tax number.
- current or previous education provision.
- school preference information and parent’s reasons for selection.
- name and date of birth of any sibling already attending your preferred school.
- looked after children, adoption, special guardianship order or child arrangement history.
- professional supporting documents if relevant to your application.
- background education history if applying for an in-year admission.
- country of origin if a new arrival to the country.
- Medical information about your child if pertinent to the application in line with the medical criteria.
We also obtain personal information from other sources as follows:
- additional admissions related information that you have provided directly to your preferred or offered school.
- confirmation of looked after children, adoption, special guardianship order or child arrangement history from Virtual Schools.
- confirmation of Education Health and Care Plan status from SEN Department.
- the result of any school’s own academic/aptitude test that your child has taken part in.
- faith information if application relates to faith criteria.
The initial application for your child to start primary school or transfer from primary to secondary school can either be submitted online or a paper application. Transfers in-year require a hard copy application to be completed. Additional information may be requested either by letter, email, telephone or face-to-face.
The Admissions Team intends to, where a lawful basis exists, also use your information for other legitimate purposes and will share (where necessary) with other Council departments and external bodies responsible for administering services to children and young people. Reasons for sharing information with the internal and external bodies will be; to enable the processing of school application, to fulfil the council’s safeguarding duty and comply with the Prevent Strategy, and to provide Central Government bodies with mandatory data returns, The Home Office to notify of potential illegal immigration, and the Police, at times, request information as part of a criminal investigation. We intend, where necessary, to also share your information with:
- Any of your preferred schools, including the school your child is allocated.
- Members of the independent appeals panel, where necessary, in accordance with the School Admission Code and the School Admissions Appeals Code.
- Black Country Foundation Partnership Trust for school health visits and checks
- Relevant information with neighbouring authorities when applying for a school in their authority in accordance with the schools Standards and Framework Act 1998
- Birmingham Community Healthcare Trust (BCHT) to assist with the administration and management of the Child Health Information System.
- Teams within Dudley Council working to improve outcomes for children and young people.
- External bodies including; other Councils/boroughs where appropriate. Central Government bodies comprising of the Department for Education, the Local Government Ombudsmen and the Office of the School Adjudication.
- For the purpose of validating proof of address, the Schools Admissions Team will refer to data held by any of the services mentioned above, Council Tax Records, the Housing Team, Elections and the Fraud Team
- We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.
Children’s Services uses Power BI as a business intelligence analysis tool that can handle hundreds of thousands of lines of raw data and add value by categorising, calculating and visualising information to give insight.
Working with colleagues in Children’s Services, interactive business intelligence dashboards have been developed to provide analysis into things like, number of service users, number of children in need, different types of interventions applied etc.
These insights can be shared with those members of staff who need the analysis to help Children’s Services improve service operations. Access to personal identifiable level data is restricted to those who have a lawful basis to access it.
The information provided will be retained by the Admissions Service until your child reaches government statutory school leaving age.
No – School places are allocated for Primary Reception and Secondary Year 7 intake using an automated decision making process. The local authority will have manually entered the criteria for each application, the system will then allocated the highest school preference that each child can be offered.
Your information will be securely stored on the Management Information System used by the Council to process application for school admissions and appeals. Currently this is the Synergy Servelec system, but this may change should the Council change its IT provide at any time in the future.
We have appropriate security measures in place to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed in an unauthorised way. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to know it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.
Please contact us if you would like to know more about the information we hold about you and how we use it. The School Admissions Team can be contacted on Tel: 0300 555 2345 between 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.
You have the right to complain to us if you think we have not complied with our obligation for handling your personal information; please contact our Data protection officer at information.governance@dudley.gov.uk or write to Data Protection Officer, Information Governance Service, The Council House, Priory Road, Dudley, West Midlands, DY1 1HF. Your concerns will be investigated via the respective Council’s complaints procedures.
If you are not satisfied with the Council’s response UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) gives you the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). You can visit the ICO website at ico.org.uk/concerns/
Your Rights
You have the right to request a copy of the information that we hold about you. The UK General Data Protection Regulation also gives you additional rights about information we hold about you and how we use it, including the right to:
- Request to have your information deleted where there is no compelling reason for its continued processing and provided that there are no legitimate grounds for retaining it.
- Request your information to be rectified if it is inaccurate or incomplete.
- Have your information transferred or copied should you move to another authority.
- To submit a Subject Access Request email the Information Governance Team at information.governance@dudley.gov.uk