Practical Law Public Sector addresses the questions that schools may ask local authorities regarding day-to-day school management and sets out the legal issues to consider when responding:
In this edition, we look at the issues raised by parents attempting to access personal data about each other by requesting their child’s school records. For details of all our school hotline queries, please see Practice note, Schools hotline FAQs.
Q: The father of one of our year 6 children has asked to see his son’s educational record. We know this child’s parents are going through a difficult divorce and it seems that the purpose behind the request is to find out where the child’s mother is living. Do we have to give the record to the father?
A: The parents were married, so the father has parental responsibility (unless it has been removed by a court, which is rare). The father therefore has the right to access his child’s educational record under the Education (Pupil Information) (England) Regulations 2005 (SI 2005/1437) (Pupil Information Regulations). Note that the Pupil Information Regulations only apply to maintained schools. However, the school also has an obligation to the child’s mother not to disclose her personal data against her wishes (Schedule 2, Data Protection Act 1998) (DPA 1998). You should discuss the request with the mother. If she does not want her personal data (that is, her address) disclosed, you can “redact it” (blank it out) from the file and explain to the father that you have done this in accordance with the provisions of the DPA 1998.