This notice is to help parents understand how and why we collect your child’s personal information and what we do with that information.  It also explains the decisions that you can make about your child’s information.

We are giving you this notice because you can exercise your child’s data protection rights on their behalf.  When your child is older (usually when they reach the age of 12) they will be considered mature enough to exercise their own data protection rights.

If you have any questions about this notice please talk to our Privacy Officer, Mr Denis Lundie (privacy@forest.org.uk).

What is ‘personal information’?

Personal information is information that the School collects about your child.  This includes information such as their date of birth and address as well as things like exam results, medical details and behaviour records.  The School may also record your child’s religion or ethnic group.  CCTV, photos and video recordings of your child are also personal information.

How and why does the School collect personal information?

The admissions forms which you complete give us lots of personal information.  Your child’s old school also gives us information about them.  We get information from your child, his / her teachers and other pupils.

Sometimes we get information from your child’s doctor and other professionals where we need this to look after your child.

We collect this information to help the School run properly, safely and to let others know what we do here.  Here are some examples:

  • We need to tell all appropriate members of staff if your child is allergic to something or might need extra help with some tasks.
  • We use CCTV to make sure the School site is safe for your child and others.  CCTV is not used in private areas such as changing rooms. In exceptional circumstances, we may use CCTV to assist locating items that have been reported lost.
  • We may need to report some of your child’s information to the government.  For example, we may need to tell the local authority that your child attends the School or let them know if we have any concerns about your child’s welfare.
  • Depending on where your child will go when they leave us we may need to provide their information to other schools, colleges and universities or potential employers.  For example, we may share information about your child’s exam results and provide references.
  • If your child takes public examinations, we will need to share information about them with examination boards.
  • We may need to share information with the police or our legal advisers if something goes wrong or to help with an inquiry.  For example, if one of your child’s classmates is injured at School or if there is a burglary.
  • We may share some information with our insurance company to make sure that we have the insurance cover that we need.
  • We may share your child’s academic and (where fair) their behaviour records with you or their education guardian so you can support their schooling.

We will only share your child’s information with other people and organisations when we have a good reason to do so.

We will monitor your child’s use of email, the internet and mobile electronic devices e.g. iPads.  If you would like more information about this you can read the Responsible Use of Information and Technology Policy for Pupils or speak to your child’s tutor or the Director of Information and Technology.

We may use photographs or videos of your child for the School’s website and social media sites or prospectus to show prospective pupils what we do here, as well as for teaching purposes. We may use photographs of your child for school and bus badges, and in our school systems for school trips for his/her safety.

We publish our public exam results, sports fixtures and other news on the website and put articles and photographs in the local news to tell people about what we have been doing.

We may keep information about your child for a very long time or even indefinitely if we need this for historical, research or statistical purposes.  For example, if we consider the information might be useful if someone wanted to write a book about the School.

We will keep details of your child’s address when you leave so we can send them the Old Foresters NewsLetter and find out how they are getting on.  We may also pass their details onto the alumni organisation.

What do we do with your child’s personal information?

The Director of Information and Technology is the person responsible at our School for managing how we look after personal information and deciding how it is shared.

Like other organisations we need to keep your child’s information safe, up to date, only use it for what we said we would, destroy it when we no longer need it and most importantly – treat the information we get fairly.

In exceptional circumstances we may keep your child’s information for a longer time than usual or share it more widely than we would normally.

What decisions can you make about your child’s information?

If information is incorrect you can ask us to correct it.

If you would like us to change or update the information we hold about your child please speak to Head of Section. You can also ask what information we hold about your child.

If you would prefer that we keep certain information confidential then please speak to the Head of Section.

Our Privacy Officer is Mr Denis Lundie. If you have any questions about these notices you can contact our Privacy Officer:

Privacy Officer
Forest School
Snaresbrook
London, E17 3PY