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Admissions privacy notice

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and was last updated in September 2023.

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.

KCC’s Admissions Team supports schools and parents with the school admissions process. The Primary Admissions process includes both entrance to reception (year R) and junior (year 3) and begins in November when applications are submitted, through to National Offer Day in April and then the final reallocation of places in June. The Secondary school admissions process consists of several stages starting with the Kent Test registration, which begins in June, through to the National Offer Day in March and then the final reallocation of places in April.

The In Year Admissions process includes all children that move through the school year, across all year groups.

We work to ensure that every child is offered a school place suitable to their age, ability and needs.

Personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

In the course of offering every child a school place we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

  • your personal information (such as name, address, contact details)
  • your child’s personal information (such as name, address, date of birth and any photo of their likeness that is provided with their application)
  • current school (if applicable)
  • school preference information and parent’s reasons for selection
  • name and date of birth of any sibling already attending a preferred school
  • looked after children, adoption, special guardianship order or child arrangement history
  • special category information (Education Health and Care Plan status and detail of any Special Educational Need)
  • registration and outcome of Kent Test.

We also obtain personal information from other sources as follows:

  • additional admissions related information that you have provided directly to your preferred or offered school (such as attendance at a particular church,  details of your child’s aptitudes, information about attendance)
  • confirmation of looked after children, adoption, special guardianship order or child arrangement history from Virtual Schools
  • confirmation of Education Health and Care Plan status from KCC’s SEN Department
  • result of any grammar school’s own selection test that your child has taken.
  • requests for school admission appeals and related appeals paperwork and outcomes.

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

  • allocate your child a school place for the following school year through the co-ordinated admissions process. School offers are identified using a semi-automatic decision making process. After schools have manually prioritised applications into their own oversubscription criteria order, KCC’s admissions system works out the highest ranked school preference that each child can be offered
  • identify schools that you may have approached for a school place during the school year through the in year admissions process and record which schools have made you an offer
  • facilitate school admission appeals for KCC schools and own admission authority schools
  • ensure the integrity of the Kent Test process and other own admission authority selection processes
  • to support children missing education by staying in touch and supporting those who need help for two academic years after Year 11 or up to age 25 with learning difficulties or disabilities. For more information please see the staying in touch and supporting young people privacy notice
  • automatically assess your child’s entitlement to free school transport against KCC’s transport criteria
  • record the details of children deferring their start date at primary school to facilitate future admission at the correct time.

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)(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.

How long your personal data will be kept

We will hold your personal information securely and retain it from the child /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:

  • your child’s current school including Independent schools
  • other Kent schools including, where necessary, schools that were not named as a preferred school
  • teams within KCC working to improve outcomes for children and young people
  • commissioned providers of local authority services (such as education services)
  • Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT) who are responsible for the Child Health Information Service that facilitates the screening and immunisation programmes for the health and wellbeing of your child (if you do not wish your child to take part in these programmes, this will not affect your admissions application, or your child being entitled to access any additional services offered such as Adolescent Health and Targeted Emotional Wellbeing Services)
  • partner organisations signed up to the Kent and Medway Information Sharing Agreement, where necessary, which may include school nurses
  • the Kent Intelligence Network (KIN) to detect, prevent and deter fraud and corruption affecting Kent authorities’ public services. View the KIN privacy notice for more information
  • selection test providers and other admission authorities and/or local authorities performing similar testing
  • the gov.uk Notify Service, which sends out postal correspondence and text messages on our behalf (information is encrypted and only held for 7 days).

We will share personal information with 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 Commissioners Office
  • withdraw consent at any time (if applicable)

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 Commissioners 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 the Information Resilience and Transparency Team at data.protection@kent.gov.uk 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.

You can contact our Data Protection Officer, Benjamin Watts, at dpo@kent.gov.uk, or write to: Data Protection Officer, Sessions House, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1XQ.

UK GDPR also gives you right to lodge a complaint with Information Commissioner, who may be contacted via the Information Commissioner's website or call 03031 231113.

Read our corporate privacy statement.