In a world of hybrid work and virtual meetings, the ability to record and transcribe discussions has become an essential tool for productivity.  However, with this convenience comes a responsibility to protect privacy, maintain security and consider your lawful basis for recording/transcribing.  To provide clear guidance we are introducing our new Recording and Transcription Policy Template.

We've had a few questions recently about parents and students recording conversations with members of staff, both covertly or overtly without seeking permission. This article only covers recordings made by external individuals, not organisations or individuals acting on behalf of an organisation.

The DfE previously issued training and guidance about the use of AI in Education - this has now changed to standards.  Standards define minimum requirements that must be met, whereas a guideline offers recommended best practice or advice. The standards outline the safety standards that generative AI products and systems should meet to be used in educational settings.

We're sharing some small snippets over Christmas to share with staff.  Please feel free to share the link to this short news article or follow us over on our social media channels where we share additional help and advice - we'd love to see you there!

We've updated the CCTV policy to consider the requirements of retention, especially over the summer holiday.

There may be situations where at the start of a summer holiday a subject access request comes in for CCTV footage - but there are no resources available in school to stop the footage from being deleted under the regular retention schedule. 

Therefore, where organisations are unable to access and retrieve this footage over the holidays, we recommend extending the re

We're sharing some small snippets over Christmas to share with staff.  Please feel free to share the link to this short news article or follow us over on our social media channels where we share additional help and advice - we'd love to see you there!

The ICO has published some updated guidance for people and organisations who work in the education sector with children and young people under 18.  The idea of the guidance is to help organisations feel confident to share personal information for safeguarding purposes.

Given the Public Sector Fraud Authority estimates that every year between £39.9 billion and £58.5 billion of taxpayer's money is subject to fraud and error, it's no wonder the UK Government has published some guidance about fraud awareness.

With the recent Data Use and Access Act, organisations must now be more precise than ever about how they handle data rights concerns; the complaints process for data rights is clarified and formalised. This article discusses best practice around which complaints process to use when you receive a complaint.

Parents of a school in Birmingham are concerned that a school has accidentally shared a spreadsheet which contained student names for children in Year 7 to Year 11 and parental contact details.

We've updated and added some new policies, including the Data Protection Policy, Model Redaction Guidelines, Data Rights Complaints Process, Freedom of Information Policy, SAR Procedure Template, SAR Response Template, Subject Access Request Clarification Template.  This article shows an amendments made to the documents.

The latest release of the "Keeping Children Safe in Education" guidance brings important updates for schools and colleges, including points relating to the rapidly evolving digital landscape.  Most of the changes in this year's guidance are technical.