Privacy notice

Why do we collect and use children’s information?

Winford Village Pre School will record, process and keep personal information on you and your child in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulations 2018.

We use this data to:

support children’s learning
make assessments on children’s development
safeguard the children in our care in accordance with relevant legislation
comply with Government legislation
assess the quality of our services

What information do we collect?

Winford Village Pre-school collect, hold and share two kinds of records on children attending our setting.

Developmental records

These include:

developmental information collected prior to the child starting at the setting
observations of children in the setting, photographs, video clips, samples of work and developmental assessment records
a summary of the child’s EYFS profile report

Personal records

These include:

Personal details — including the information provided on the child’s registration form and any consent forms and characteristics such as ethnicity, language and nationality
Contractual matters — including the child’s days and times of attendance, a record of the child’s fees and/or funding entitlement, any records of fee reminders and/or disputes
Emergency contact details — including those people, other than parents/guardians with authorisation to collect the child from the setting
Children’s health and well-being — including discussions about every day matters regarding the health and well-being of the child with the parent/guardian, records of accidents and medication records
Safeguarding and child protection concerns — including records of all welfare and protection concerns and our resulting actions, meetings and telephone conversations about the child and any information regarding a Looked After Child
Early support and SEN — including any focussed intervention provided by our setting, a record of the child’s IEP and, where relevant, their Statement of Special Education Need
Correspondence and reports — including letters and emails to and from other agencies and any confidential reports relating to specific children

Collecting information

Whilst the majority of information you provide to us is mandatory, some of it is provided to us on a voluntary basis. In order to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation, we will inform you whether you are required to provide certain information to us or if you have a choice in this.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (Welfare Requirements) Regulations 2012 place a legal obligation upon us to collect and process much of the information detailed above. Therefore we do not require your consent to collect this information as we have a fair and lawful reason for doing so.

All forms collecting data will clearly state our lawful basis for processing the information you supply, where the request is voluntary or consent is required this will be clearly stated.

Storing pupil data

We ensure that access to children’s files is restricted to those authorised to see them such as the Manager, Deputy, designated person for child protection, the child’s key person or the settings SENCo. These confidential records are stored in a lockable filing cabinet.

We retain children’s records for three years after they have left the setting, except records that relate to an accident or child protection matter. These are kept until the child reaches the age of 21 years or 24 years respectively.

Information security

We will keep information about you and your child secure. We will protect your information against unauthorised change, damage, loss or theft. All information collected on paper forms is kept locked away. All computers and tablets are password protected. For further information about specific types of data and how they are protected please refer to our Data Inventory.

Data Security Controls

We keep all data secure and specific security measures we use are listed on our Data Inventory.

We keep our network secure using firewalls, WPA2 encryption and password protection.

All of our computers are regularly updated, patched and anti-virus/spam protected.

All of our tablets are regularly updated and password protected.

Data Breach

In the event of a major data security breach we will:

notify the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) within 72 hours
notify anyone whose data may have been affected

The information that you provide to us, whether mandatory or voluntary, will be regarded as confidential. We do not share information about your child with anyone without consent unless the law and our policies allow us to do so.

We routinely share information without consent with:

schools that children attend after leaving us
our local authority for the purposes of Early Education Entitlement for 2, 3 and 4 year olds and the Early Years Census the Department for Education (DfE) as part of statutory data collections

We are obliged to share confidential information without authorisation from the person who provided it, or to whom it relates, when:

there is evidence that the child is suffering, or is at risk of suffering significant harm
there is reasonable cause to believe that a child may be suffering, or is at risk of suffering, significant harm
it is to prevent significant harm arising to children, young people or adults, including the prevention, detection and prosecution of serious crime

Requesting access to your personal data

Under data protection legislation, parents and staff have the right to request access to the information we hold about them or their child. To make a request for this please contact the Pre-School Manager.

Children’s developmental records are shared regularly with parents/guardians and formal requests to access these is not required.

You also have the right to:

object to processing of personal data that is likely to cause, or is causing, damage or distress
withdraw consent where given
prevent processing for the purpose of direct marketing
object to decisions being taken by automated means
in certain circumstances, have inaccurate personal data rectified, blocked, erased or destroyed; and
claim compensation for damages caused by a breach of the Data Protection regulations

Questions

If you would like to discuss anything in this privacy notice, please contact the Pre-School Manager.