St. Joseph's Catholic Primary School is required to keep and process certain information about its staff members and pupils in accordance with its legal obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The school may, from time to time, be required to share personal information about its staff or pupils with other organisations, mainly the LA, other schools and educational bodies, and potentially children’s services.

Organisational methods for keeping data secure are imperative, and St. Joseph's Catholic Primary School believes that it is good practice to keep clear practical policies.

A great deal of the processing of personal data undertaken by schools will fall under a specific legal basis, ‘in the public interest’. As it is in the public interest to operate schools successfully, it will mean that specific consent will not be needed in the majority of cases in schools.

GDPR will ensure data is protected and will give individuals more control over their data, however this means schools will have greater accountability for the data:

• Under GDPR, consent must be explicitly given to anything that isn’t within the normal business of the school, especially if it involves a third party managing the data. Parents  must express consent for their child’s data to be used outside of the normal business of the school.
• Schools must appoint a Data Protection Officer and be able to prove that they are GDPR compliant
• Schools must ensure that their third party suppliers who may process any of their data is GDPR compliant and must have legally binding contracts with any company that processes any personal data. These contracts must cover what data is being processed, who it is being processed by, who has access to it and how it is protected
• It will be compulsory that all data breaches which are likely to have a detrimental effect on the data subject are reported to the ICO within 72 hours