Students: Data Protection

(asked on 10th January 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether the Office for Students plans to publish (a) a register of the recipients of students' personal confidential data and (b) its terms of reference on data distribution.


Answered by
Chris Skidmore Portrait
Chris Skidmore
This question was answered on 16th January 2020

The Office for Students (OfS) was established through the Higher Education and Research Act (2017), which gave it operational independence in the regulation of the higher education sector. This extends to the holding and sharing of different types of data. In December 2018 the OfS published its data strategy, setting out:

“Where we share data with third parties in support of our regulatory activities, we will only do so where we can be sure that the rights and privacy of individuals are assured. We will ensure that those that process students’ data on our behalf operate to the same high standards. Our uses of data should never go beyond those that students might expect from a responsible regulator acting in their interests.”

Further to this, the OfS Data Protection and Privacy Policy sets out how it complies with data protection legislation. This is available here: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/ofs-privacy.

Reticulating Splines