School admissions and education services privacy notice

We provide support to help children and their parents or careers who live in Waltham Forest find a local school place.

We need to collect and share information in order to deliver our services effectively. We take our responsibility to protect your data seriously and we will use it in accordance with the legal requirements, which includes the Data Protection Act 1998, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

We will be compliant with the School Admissions Code, which has the force of law. The purpose of the Code is to ensure that all school places for maintained schools (excluding maintained special schools) and Academies are allocated and offered in an open and fair way and in accordance with the published admission arrangements for the school. The Code requires local authorities to coordinate the admission arrangements for entry to Reception, Year 3 in junior schools and Year 7 in secondary schools.

In respect of in-year admissions, the local authority is the admission authority for all community schools. Academies, including free schools, foundation and voluntary aided schools may delegate the coordination of their admissions to the local authority or may handle their own in-year applications as own admission authority (OAA) schools

In order to effectively and efficiently process 11+ registration applications, applications for admissions to schools and school admission appeals the following information is collected:

• name, date of birth and gender of the child
• address where the child ordinarily lives at the time of application, which will be used for distance calculation purposes
• school preferences
• reasons for requesting a school place
• reasons for appealing against the refusal of a school
• supplementary information, if required by individual school admission policies
• parent name and contact details
• details of siblings
• current or last education provision
• child looked after status or adoption
• additional certification if applying for a faith school on denominational grounds
• whether the child has a statement of educational need or EHC Plan
• whether the parent works for the school requested
• whether the child has been permanently excluded from their last provision
• whether the child has attended school in England before
• additional information as required under our Fair Access Protocol
• fostering arrangement, if applicable

The lawful basis for processing personal data gathered within applications for school places is under a Legal Obligation where it is personal data, and under substantial public interest where the processing relates to special category information such as race, ethnicity, and health information.

Agencies we will share the information with:

• education providers to advise them of upcoming admissions
• other local authorities, to enable neighbouring LAs to run their co-ordinated offer scheme accurately
• OAA schools to enable them to administer their admissions accurately
• department for Education to comply with statutory data collections
• other teams within the LA to verify the information provided so that the admission process can be accurately administered
• identified selective school where an 11+ selection test will be taken
• admission appeal panels
• the Schools Adjudicator in response to any complaints made
• the Local Government Ombudsman who has a remit for investigating maladministration in respect of school admissions and appeal

Where you have indicated on your child’s school admission form that the child is in a private fostering arrangement (i.e. an arrangement between the child’s parent and a nominated person, who is not a close family member, and with whom the child has been living with for more than 28 day), then this data will be shared with social services in accordance with our duties under the Children (Private Arrangements for Fostering) Regulations 2005.

The information you provide to us on your application, including any supporting papers will be used to:

• process your application
• ensure the efficient co-ordination and fair allocation of school places in accordance with the School Admissions Code and local Fair Access Protocol
• consider Admission Appeals
• to register your child to sit the 11+ selection test
• populate our education database which runs our admissions and transfers allocation system

We retain your information for five years if you are refused a school place and for one year if you are offered your first preference school.

Where you have indicated that your child is in a private fostering arrangement this data will be held for six years.