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Kent PRU and Attendance Service privacy notice

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and it was last updated in September 2024.

Kent County Council respects your privacy and is committed to protecting your personal data. This privacy notice will inform you as to how we look after your personal data and tell you about your privacy rights and how the law protects you.

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 Kent PRU and Attendance Service (KPAS) is based in the Education and SEN division of KCC and undertakes a wide range of duties in line with key statutory guidance published by the Department for Education which includes providing advice, guidance and training on matters related to school attendance and exclusion. KPAS investigates cases of individual pupil absence and discharges a range of enforcement measures on behalf of KCC in line with the Education Act 1996. KPAS Officers represent KCC at statutory meetings and undertake associated legal duties related to pupil exclusion from school. KPAS also has oversight for issuing work permits and performance licences through the Children in Employment and Entertainment team, ensuring school aged children are safeguarded in accordance with associated legislation.

Personal information we collect and use

In the course of interventions to improve school attendance, we collect the following personal information:

  • Personal information related to parents, guardians or carers of pupils, such as name, address, contact telephone number and email address.
  • Personal information related to pupils, such as name, address, gender, date of birth, plus phone number and email address if available.
  • Special category information, such as ethnicity, health data, special educational needs and disabilities.
  • Other information such as your child’s school name and their attendance data, which may include reasons for absence.
  • Copies of letters the school have sent you, copies of other documents such as meeting notes, attendance contracts and chronologies
  • Details of Children’s Social Care Services involvements
  • Passport style images and/or copies of identification.

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

  • undertake our statutory duties around school attendance
  • enable us to identify the most appropriate intervention to improve school attendance
  • investigate and prosecute offences relating to irregular school attendance
  • issue School Attendance Orders and to investigate and prosecute breaches of School Attendance Orders
  • inform appropriate intervention and support for cases of repeated suspension or where there is a risk of exclusion
  • issue child work permits, child performance licences, and adult chaperone licences.

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)(c) - legal obligation: the processing is necessary for you to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations).
  • 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)(f) – Legal claims or judicial acts.

These legal bases are underpinned by acts of legislation and statutory guidance that dictate what actions can and should be taken by local authorities, including:

  • The Education Act, 1996
  • The Education Act, 2002
  • Crime and Disorder Act, 1998
  • Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984 (PACE)
  • The Registration (Pupil Registration) Regulations 2006
  • Working together to improve school attendance (statutory guidance), 2024.

How long your personal data will be kept

We will hold your personal information securely and retain it from the child  or 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.

Who we share your personal information with

We share your personal data with:

  • schools
  • teams within KCC working to improve outcomes for children and young people
  • professionals from Specialist Teaching and Learning Service (STLS), Education Safeguarding Service (ESS), Virtual School Kent (VSK) and Kent Police
  • commissioned providers of local authority services, such as the School Improvement Service from The Education People (TEP)
  • partner organisations signed up to the Kent and Medway Information Sharing Agreement where necessary, which may include medical professionals from the NHS.

We may also share your personal data with:

  • the gov.uk Notify Service, which sends out postal correspondence and text messages on our behalf
  • Ofsted and His Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) in the event of a statutory local authority inspection.
  • His Majesty’s Court and Tribunals Service
  • Law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law.

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 Commissioner's Office.

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 your school's headteacher 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.

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.

For further information read our privacy statement.