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Elective home education privacy notice

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and was last updated in October 2021.

This notice explains what personal data (information) we hold about you, how we collect, how we use and may share information about you. We are required to give you this information under data protection law.

Who we are

Kent County Council (KCC) collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are regulated under the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018). We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.

The Elective Home Education (EHE) team provide advice and guidance to families who are home educating their children, ensure an appropriate standard of education is provided, and support reintegration into school where this is requested by parents.

Personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

In the course of supporting and monitoring elective home education we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

  • personal details (such as name, gender, age, date of birth, address, contact details, language, nationality, country of birth)
  • special category characteristics (such as ethnicity and special educational needs)
  • educational history (such as schools previously attended and attendance, attainment and exclusion information)
  • other professional involvement (such as Attendance and Inclusion, Early Help, Social Care, SEN)
  • EHE History (communication with families, visit reports and evidence of suitable education)

We also obtain personal information from other sources including personal details, characteristics, educational history and professional involvement, from previously attended schools, NHS, other local authorities, and other KCC departments.

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

  • maintain a record of children in Kent who are known to be home educated
  • provide advice and guidance to home educating families
  • inform families about how to access to services and facilities from other agencies that would generally be delivered via school
  • advise and support families who request support with returning children to school or identifying a school place
  • make arrangements to establish the identities of children who are not registered at a school and are not receiving a suitable education otherwise
  • analyse service provision and effectiveness and model patterns of service involvement to support future service delivery planning.

How long your personal data will be kept

We will hold your personal information securely and retain it from the child /young person’s date of birth until they reach the age of 25, after which the information is made inaccessible to system users or securely destroyed.

Reasons we can collect and use your personal information

We collect and use your personal information to carry out tasks in the public interest. We rely on the following legal bases under UK GDPR:

  • Article (6)(1)(e) - Public task: the processing is necessary to perform a task in the public interest or for official functions (task or function has a clear basis in law)

When we collect or share special category personal data, we rely upon the following legal bases under UK GDPR:

  • Article 9(2)(g) - Reasons of substantial public interest. We rely on the ‘equality of opportunity or treatment’ purpose condition from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(g) to process your special category data
  • Article 9(2)(j) - Archiving, research and statistics. We rely on the ‘Research’ purpose condition from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(j) to process your special category data

Who we share your personal information with

We share your personal information with:

  • teams within KCC working to improve outcomes for children and young people
  • commissioned providers of local authority services (such as education services)
  • schools
  • schools and In-Year Fair Access (IYFA) panels, when a school a place is required at the request of the parent or when a suitable education is not being provided and a school needs to be identified for the purpose of a School Attendance Order
  • post-16 education and training providers
  • partner organisations signed up to the Kent and Medway Information Sharing Agreement, where necessary, which may include NHS, health visitors, midwives, police, doctors and mental health workers
  • Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT) who are responsible for the Child Health Information Service that facilitates the screening and immunisation programmes for the health and wellbeing of your child (if you do not wish your child to take part in these programmes, this will not affect your child being entitled to access any additional services offered such as Adolescent Health and Targeted Emotional Wellbeing Services)
  • Department of Education, and other government departments, as required
  • Gov.uk Notify Service, which sends out postal correspondence and text messages on our behalf (information is encrypted and only held for 7 days)

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.

The Children and Young People (CYP) Integrated Data Set

The CYP Data Set is owned and managed by KCC and contains personal data and special category information about children attending KCC schools, and matches additional personal data from multiple data sources within KCC to the pupils.

The aim of the dataset is to allow statistical analysis and research to;

  • support and inform council transformation by ensuring the holistic characteristics and needs of the child population are fully understood
  • provide appropriate levels of insight, evidence and evaluation in order to embed knowledge and understanding of children and young people’s needs and issues into service programmes and projects, including the commissioning of new services
  • inform future service delivery planning and integrated working in order to improve outcomes for children and young people.

We have robust processes in place to ensure the confidentiality of our data is maintained and there are stringent controls in place regarding access and use of the data. The child-level data set is not shared outside of KCC. All personal data is stored in secured electronic files with restricted access. Only pseudonymised data is used for analysis. Outputs and analysis take the form of aggregated data, and are for the purpose of KCC teams and partners working to improve outcomes for children and young people.

Your rights

Under UK GDPR you have rights which you can exercise free of charge which allow you to:

  • know what we are doing with your information and why we are doing it
  • ask to see what information we hold about you (subject access request)
  • ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
  • object to direct marketing
  • make a complaint to the Information Commissioners Office
  • withdraw consent at any time (if applicable)

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:

  • ask us to delete information we hold about you
  • have your information transferred electronically to yourself or to another organisation
  • object to decisions being made that significantly affect you
  • object to how we are using your information
  • stop us using your information in certain ways

We will always seek to comply with your request however we may be required to hold or use your information to comply with legal duties. Please note, your request may delay or prevent us delivering a service to you.

For further information about your rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, see the guidance from the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under UK GDPR.

If you would like to exercise a right, please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk.

Keeping your personal information secure

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.

Contact

Please contact the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk to exercise any of your rights, or if you have a complaint about why your information has been collected, how it has been used or how long we have kept it for.

You can contact our Data Protection Officer, Benjamin Watts, at dpo@kent.gov.uk, or write to: Data Protection Officer, Sessions House, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1XQ.

UK GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner who may be contacted via the Information Commissioner's website or call 03031 231113.

Read our corporate privacy statement.