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 involved where a child’s educational record notes a risk of parental abuse and the child’s parent wants to see the record. For details of all our school hotline queries, please see Practice note, Schools hotline FAQs.
Q: A parent has requested access to his son’s educational record. The record contains a letter stating that the child may be at risk of abuse from the father. Should we release the letter?
A: Parents of children at maintained schools have the right to see their children’s educational records under the Education (Pupil Information) (England) Regulations 2005 (SI 2005/1437) (Pupil Information Regulations). Parents of children at any school may also exercise their child’s right to see his or her own educational records under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA 1998), on the child’s behalf. However, schools should not disclose information that is restricted under the DPA 1998 (Data Protection (Subject Access Modification) (Education) Order 2000 (SI 2000/414)). This includes information that would be likely to cause serious harm to the physical or mental health or condition of the child.
Schools can also refuse access to the information relating to potential child abuse if it would not be in the child’s best interests for his father to see it. This applies even if the parent requesting access is not the alleged abuser. In such cases, schools must always consider the child’s best interests.