PLASC - THE BACKGROUND

The 1996 Education Act (s537) provided for each school in England and Wales to return a census to the DfES. Initially the information requested from the school was limited to general, statistical data, and names and addresses of pupils were not sought – they were given a ‘Unique Pupil Number’ (UPN) instead to safeguard their anonymity.

Changes were made to the Education Act via secondary legislation. By 2001 schools were being asked for the first time to supply detailed information about each pupil – or ‘pupil level’ information. This is now collected annually from every school computer system by Capita, using ‘SIMS’ software.

Schools are under a statutory duty to supply the information - in other words, a school must comply. Such a statutory duty also provides an 'exception' to the provisions of the Data Protection Act, which means that the consent of the pupil's parents, or the pupil if over 16, need not be sought. Normally, the supply of this type of information would require their written consent.

In 2001 the government asked for pupils’ names and postcodes for the first time. After a campaign by ARCH to draw attention to PLASC, many people – and head-teachers concerned about the potential breach of pupil confidence - telephoned the DfES to ask about it, and also contacted us. They were told by DfES that the names and addresses of pupils wouldn’t be shared with anyone else - they were needed purely for 'technical' reasons.

In a parliamentary written answer on January 28^th 2002, the (then) Schools Minister said:

"The Department has no interest in the identity of individual pupils as such, and will be using the database solely for statistical purposes, with only technical staff directly engaged in the data collation process having access to pupil names"

He set out the very limited number of people who would have access to the database – child, parents, schools and LEAs, and researchers approved by the Secretary of State for Education – and confirmed that: "No disclosures of personal data beyond those listed above are anticipated at this time."

In the same answer, he said that: "The Department does not intend to delete the records of pupils who leave the maintained schools sector, either at age 16 or 18, or before then."