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Schools and education

Special Educational Needs and Inclusion Services Privacy Notice

We keep our Special Educational Needs (SEN) Privacy Notice under review. It was last reviewed and updated in December 2022.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, contact our Data Protection Officer.

See City of York Council's privacy and transparency policy.


Personal data

We will collect your child’s personal data, such as:

  • names
  • contact details
  • any special educational needs
  • why the referral has been made
  • school history
  • progress, attainment, attendance, any exclusions
  • medical information
  • NHS patient number
  • unique pupil number (UPN)
  • information relating to relevant social care needs
  • information about family, household and/or carers of the child or young person

It will also include the details of other professionals working with your child, including the details of the SEN coordinator in setting or their counterpart.

See further details about how we define personal data and non-personal data.


Collecting personal data

Information is collected through:

  • completion of the Request for Statutory Assessment, either electronically or a paper copy
  • gathering of information in a My Support Plan or My Agreed Outcomes
  • meetings with you, and your child/young person
  • consultation with other professionals
  • professional/relevant service reports or council databases
  • post, email and telephone conversations as appropriate
  • section 23 notifications from health partners
  • other local authorities where appropriate

When we ask you for personal data, we will:

  • ensure you know why we need it
  • only ask for what is necessary for the work we are undertaking
  • ensure access is only given to authorised staff on a need to know basis

We ask that you:

  • give us accurate information
  • inform us of any changes
  • tell us as soon as possible if you notice mistakes in the information we hold about you/your child

Using personal data

We'll use your personal data to:

  • ensure that services and practitioners understand how they can best help you.
  • support our work with your child in his/her school or setting, or in your home or another setting for those children who are unable to attend school because of ill health
  • complete the detail needed in an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) to describe your child’s needs, the provision, outcomes and actions from planning meetings
  • consult education settings to ask if they can meet your child’s needs, prior to naming a school, early years setting or college in an EHCP
  • keep photographs and/or video recordings of your child for record keeping and assessment arrangements. These would be used in relation to your child’s assessment. They will not be used for any other purpose without asking for your additional explicit and informed consent first
  • provide the child or young people with appropriate services
  • ‘sign post’ the child, young person and family to appropriate support
  • help inform which services and interventions require commissioning across the City of York to support families and communities
  • ensure compliance and high quality standards through audits and quality monitoring
  • create statistics that are anonymous and cannot be linked back to you or your family for the purposes of local and national surveys
  • measure whether our services are improving lives for children, young people and families
  • help us develop and improve our services
  • administer and protect public funds

We will use the information to create statistics that are anonymous and cannot be linked back to you or your family or individuals. For example, we could use these statistics to:

  • see how the council and its partners are supporting families and individuals
  • help design better services
  • inform funding decisions
  • inform performance management
  • inform development of good practice
  • contribute to national surveys and government returns, for example, to the Department for Education (DfE)

As a rule, we do not transfer your personal data to third party processors outside the European Economic Area (EEA).

However, for as long as the provisions of the Local Authorities and Police and Crime Panels (Coronavirus) (Flexibility of Local Authority and Police and Crime Panel Meetings) (England and Wales) Regulations 2020/392 remain in effect we will be hosting strategic meetings to support school improvement and to work with schools to respond to the organisational and operational challenges created by COVID-19. We are currently using Zoom Video Communications Inc Pro or Business version (“Zoom”) to host meetings (version 5) for that purpose.

Where meetings are recorded, recordings will be kept locally on our server and will not be retained by Zoom.

Some personal data, such as user’s names, email addresses; telephone numbers where applicable, IP address, MAC address, other device ID (UDID), device type, operating system type and version, client version, type of camera, microphone or speakers, connection type, etc. will be stored securely on Zoom’s system in the US (that is, outside the EEA) in compliance with the EU – US Privacy Shield Framework.

Zoom’s certification may be viewed online. Zoom does not sell personal data to third parties; collects only the personal data required to provide Zoom services; and retains that data only for so long as is necessary for the provision of those services. Zoom’s privacy policy can be viewed online.

When we use MS Teams to provide secure online conversations, we may record and or transcribe these and you can find out more about this at Microsoft Office 365 (MS365) Teams Meeting recording and transcription privacy notice.


Our legal basis for using personal data

The information you provide to the SEN team helps us to support children, young people and families and we are required to use the information in order to meet our legal responsibilities in accordance with the Children and Families Act 2014.

The information you provide enables us to fulfil our duties including:

  • statutory advice to the Local Authority as part of an education, health and care needs assessment
  • monitoring of provision and outcomes as part of the annual review process for children and young people who have an EHCP
  • monitoring of the quality of provision for children and young people with special educational needs

The information you give us ensures that we can offer an appropriate assessment of need and make decisions on whether a child or young person needs additional support through an EHCP and to make decisions regarding special educational placement.


Sharing personal data

We share information about you/your child with other relevant professionals who are already involved, or who become involved, to ensure support is co-ordinated and to improve multi-agency working.

We regularly share information with the following organisations:

  • educational settings
  • vocational settings
  • York Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Specialist Services
  • professionals from Health, Social Care and Early Help teams

We are required by law to pass on some personal child data to the DfE and other Government departments who use it to help inform:

  • funding
  • policy development

Where required, we will discuss with you the reasons for sharing information and ask for your explicit consent.

We have an agreement in place with Attend Anywhere to provide secure online conversations. See the Attend Anywhere privacy statement.

Sharing data under Data Protection legislation

We may be required or permitted, under data protection legislation, to disclose your personal data without your explicit consent, for example if we have a legal obligation to do so, such as when we feel that you or others are at risk.

We must protect public funds and may use personal data and data-matching techniques to detect and prevent fraud, collect taxes and ensure public money is targeted and spent in the most appropriate and cost-effective way. To do this, your personal data may be shared with other bodies responsible for auditing or administering public funds, including the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Revenue and Customs, the Police and other local authorities.


Retaining personal data

We will store your personal data securely and confidentially and when we no longer have a need to keep it we will delete/destroy it securely.

We only keep your personal data up to the age of 25 years for non-statutory files and 35 years from closure for statutory files (such as EHCPs).

At the end of the retention period, we may pass any relevant information to the City Archives where it is required or appropriate to do so.


Further processing of personal data

If we wish to use your personal data for a new purpose, not covered by this Privacy Notice, then we'll provide you with a new notice.

The new notice will:

  • explain this new use before we start the processing
  • set out the relevant purposes and processing conditions

Where and whenever necessary, we'll seek your consent to the new processing, if we start to use your personal data for a purpose not mentioned in this Privacy Notice.


Your rights relating to personal data

When we collect your personal data we'll tell you how we are going to use it. Where we process your personal data, you have a number of rights under data protection law.

See further information about your rights relating to personal data.


Also see

Data Protection Officer

West Offices, Station Rise, York, YO1 6GA

Telephone: 01904 554145