The recent update to the Keeping Children Safe in Education Document obliges schools and colleges in England to “ensure appropriate filters and appropriate monitoring systems are in place and regularly review their effectiveness”.

We have released a new document: Guidance for the use of school email and applying email retention in schools.

As it's on the lead up to Christmas and the end of term, we thought we would highlight some data protection questions that we usually receive around now, and some thoughts about some end of term checklists.

The ICO has recently published some guidelines/tips for early years settings.  They have created five practical data protection top tips for nurseries, pre-schools, child minders and other early years settings.

The IAPP recently wrote an article about how organisations and lawmakers are striving to protect the online safety of children and teens in today's advance digital environment.  They find themselves working to solve a 'puzzle' that tries to balance varying legal jurisdictions and cultural considerations.

The Trust Initial Plan Checklist has been updated to include a notes area for each section. This will allow you to record any ongoing tasks or actions for each section.

An updated version of the Data Retention Workshop Powerpoint slides has been uploaded to the Records Management Best Practice Area:

The Governors and Data Best Practice area has been updated with some new content from the Norfolk and Suffolk Constabularies.  There is a training video: 'Protecting Yourself and Your School from Cybercrime' and a pdf of the slides from the video. There is input for school governors to highlight the risks presented by cyber crime and the resources and support available to help you improve your organisation's cyber security.

We are often asked to help and advise when it comes to redaction as part of a subject access request.

We launched our Schools Best Practice area at the beginning of this term which includes specific guides and support for schools.  There is also a specific area for Trusts and the Central Team.  The Trusts Central Team section is a specific area for additional requirements and guidance for the central team of a trust and should be used in conjunction with the other tabs in the best practice area.  

Google have recently published some guidance to help IT admins meet the DfE digital and technology standards in schools and colleges.  The guidance takes all of the standards in the Meeting digital and technlogy standards in schools and colleges document and offers advice around the use of Google products in applying the standards.

During our data walks we are looking at data breach risks, in terms of 'Who has access to what data?'.  As part of our walk we may ask who has access to the school other than the employees and children attending, for example, Lettings.  As Lettings usually occur outside of the school working day, physical security can be overlooked or not thought about and so raises the risk of a data breach.  This article is launching our Lettings Checklist for schools which is shown at the end o