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Children Missing Education privacy notice

We keep this privacy notice under regular review and was last updated in May 2026.

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 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). We are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information. Our Data Protection Officer is Benjamin Watts.

The Children Missing Education (CME) Team is responsible for identifying and tracing children who are not enrolled at a school or receiving a suitable education other than at a school, and engaging those children and their parents to access a suitable education, or updating our records and making relevant referrals should those children no longer be in Kent.

Personal information we collect and use

Information collected by us

In the course of fulfilling our statutory duties and legal obligations around identifying, tracing and engaging Children Missing Education and their families, we collect the following personal information when you provide it to us:

  • Parent/guardian personal information (such as name, gender, age, date of birth, addresses, contact details, language, nationality, country of birth)
  • Child personal information (such as name, gender, age, date of birth, addresses, contact details, language, nationality, country of birth)
  • Information relating to Looked after children, adoption, special guardianship order or child arrangement history
  • Educational history (such as schools previously attended and attendance, attainment and exclusion Information)
  • School admissions information (including details of selection tests and appeals)
  • Young carer status
  • Other professional involvement (such as Attendance and Inclusion, Early help, Social Care, SEN)

We also collect the following special category data (personal data which is more sensitive and is treated with extra care and protection) when you provide it to us:

  • race and ethnicity
  • relevant health information (including details of educational health care plans)
  • religious affiliations (such as membership of a particular church if relevant to admissions)
  • details of any other protected characteristics (within the meaning of the Equality Act, 2010)

We also obtain personal information from other sources as follows:

  • Other teams within Kent County Council
  • Housing
  • Receipt of benefits and pensions via HMRC
  • Council Tax
  • Involvement with the Home Office
  • Involvement with the police and / or probation
  • NHS
  • Other local authorities

How we use your personal information

We use your personal information to:

  • Maintain a register of children in Kent who are not enrolled at a school
  • Inform families about how to access services and facilities from other agencies that would generally be delivered via school
  • Establish and update records where a child is no longer in Kent County Council and make referrals to other local authorities as relevant
  • Issue School Attendance Orders and prosecute breaches of School Attendance Orders (for more information, see the privacy notice for the Kent PRU and Attendance Service)
  • Advice and support families who require support with returning children to school and identifying a school place
  • Make arrangements to establish the identities of children who are not registered at a school and are not receiving a suitable education otherwise
  • Analyse service provision and effectiveness and model patterns of service involvement to support future service delivery planning

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 lawful bases under UK GDPR:

  • Article (6)(1)(c) - Legal obligation: the processing is necessary to comply with the law (not including contractual obligations)
  • 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 lawful bases under UK GDPR:

  • Article 9(2)(g) – Reasons of substantial public interest. We rely on the ‘statutory etc and government purposes’ and ‘equality of opportunity or treatment’ purpose conditions from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(g) to process your special category data
  • Article 9(2) (j) – Archiving, research and statistics. We rely on the ‘Research’ purpose condition from Schedule 1 of the Data Protection Act 2018 when relying on Article 9(2)(j) to process your special category data.

These legal bases are underpinned by acts of legislation and statutory guidance that dictate what actions can and should be taken by local authorities, including:

  • Education Act, 1996
  • Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, 2026

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

  • teams within Kent County Council working to improve outcomes for children and young people
  • commissioned providers of local authority services (such as education services)
  • Kent schools including, where necessary, schools that were not named as a preferred school
  • schools and In Year Fair Access (IYFA) panels, when a school place is required at the request of the parent or when a suitable education is not being provided and a school needs to be identified for the purpose of a School Attendance Order
  • post-16 education and training providers
  • other councils/ boroughs
  • Home Office
  • HMRC
  • Department for Work and Pensions
  • 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 NHS, health visitors, midwives, housing providers, Police, school nurses, doctors, and mental health workers
  • Department for Education and other government departments as required

We will share personal information with law enforcement or other authorities if required by applicable law or in connection with legal proceedings.

We will share personal information with our legal and professional advisers in the event of a dispute, complaint, or claim. We rely on Article 9(2)(f) where the processing of special category data is necessary for the establishment, exercise, or defence of legal claims or whenever courts are acting in their judicial capacity.

Your rights

Under the UK GDPR you have rights which you can access 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
  • ask us to correct any mistakes in the information we hold about you
  • object to direct marketing
  • make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office

Depending on our reason for using your information you may also be entitled to:

  • object to how we are using your information
  • 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
  • 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 Information Commissioner's Office on individuals’ rights under the 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.

Who to 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

The UK GDPR also gives you the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at their website or telephone 0303 123 1113.

For further information visit, read our privacy statement.