Privacy in Schools
Schools rely on information about people. The moment a school collects information about a student, or a student’s family, there may be issues about the way the information is collected, stored, used, and disclosed. Good information handling is what helps build the trust that needs to exist between everyone who participates in the life of the school. While for the most part, schools do handle personal information with care, many a time, situations can arise where finding the ‘right’ answer may not be so straightforward. With the advent of the DPA here in the Philippines, schools (as is the case with almost all organizations) must be doubly careful on how personal information is handled.
A school must first understand the base privacy guidelines (or principles) that schools around the world have adopted. Secondly, they must then view these guidelines in the context of the relevant law (here, the DPA), to understand how the law requires your school to handle personal information in a particular way. The school must then be able to apply the guidelines in conjunction with the law to common issues for e.g. enrolment (process and documentation), reporting, disciplinary action etc. Finally, the school must acknowledge that, no matter what, mistakes and errors are bound to be made, and develop a repeatable, measurable process to help reduce such instances.
We hope that in providing an outline of the guidelines, we help schools in anchoring a starting point, to base their privacy efforts on. We also hope that some guesswork is avoided. Some of the guidelines may seem intuitive and obvious, but a deeper look into the guideline might be worth the effort to ensure compliance. You will find that the privacy guidelines seem reasonable once we put respect for the privacy of the individual into the school’s culture.
A school must first understand the base privacy guidelines (or principles) that schools around the world have adopted. Secondly, they must then view these guidelines in the context of the relevant law (here, the DPA), to understand how the law requires your school to handle personal information in a particular way. The school must then be able to apply the guidelines in conjunction with the law to common issues for e.g. enrolment (process and documentation), reporting, disciplinary action etc. Finally, the school must acknowledge that, no matter what, mistakes and errors are bound to be made, and develop a repeatable, measurable process to help reduce such instances.
- Collect only the information you need
- Source the information from the individual concerned
- Tell the individual what you are doing
- To collect data
- Use lawful methods
- Be fair
- Be reasonable
- Ensure that you provide for the individuals to access their information
- Use the collected information for its purpose
- Ensure that the information is stored, and shared (transmitted), securely
- Ensure that the data is accurate before use. Provide for a process to identify and deal with incorrect information
- Store the information only as long as its absolutely necessary
- Ensure that there are limits on disclosing personal information
We hope that in providing an outline of the guidelines, we help schools in anchoring a starting point, to base their privacy efforts on. We also hope that some guesswork is avoided. Some of the guidelines may seem intuitive and obvious, but a deeper look into the guideline might be worth the effort to ensure compliance. You will find that the privacy guidelines seem reasonable once we put respect for the privacy of the individual into the school’s culture.
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