Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she plans to take to ensure that home educators' right to privacy is protected, in the context of the proposed home schooling register.

The department takes its data protection obligations seriously and is committed to high standards of information security, privacy and transparency. All data received by the department, including as part of the children not in school (CNIS) registers, will be processed in accordance with UK-GDPR principles. No individual personal data from CNIS registers will be published by the department.

The department is conducting a Data Protection Impact Assessment and are consulting with the Information Commissioner’s Office to ensure all data protection risks have been considered and appropriate mitigation are in place before any processing of data has begun. The Data Protection Impact Assessment will be reviewed on a regular basis and updated as required.

Parents have the right under UK-GDPR to object to how their data is used. However, this right is not absolute. If the department or other agencies outlined in the Bill have compelling, legitimate grounds to continue using the parent’s data that outweigh the parent’s rights, they can refuse the parent’s request.

We will outline in future statutory guidance to local authorities how they should inform parents about their rights around data sharing and processing at the point of registration and/or providing updates for the registers.