News

We present an article written by our Featured Guest Expert Ralph T O'Brien for our school and multi academy trust customers about using AI in schools and trusts. Ralph O’Brien is a global privacy and data protection professional with over 25 years’ experience helping organisations manage data protection and privacy risk, prevent data harms, and build practical, trustworthy information governance programmes

Artificial Intelligence is shorthand for more automation.  Less humans, more machines.  AI is already in schools, and not because the headteacher has approved an AI strategy. Not because the governors have discussed it.

It's been a busy summer behind the scenes of the DPE Knowledge Bank. Alongside the new academic year checklists and cyber alerts you'll have seen in our regular articles, we've been steadily updating of the portal: new courses, new guidance documents, a reorganised menu structure, and upgrades to several of the compliance tools you use every day. Here's a full round-up of what's changed.

A new academic year brings a full inbox of statutory guidance, policy refreshes and operational pressure — often all landing in the same first few weeks of term. Before the pace picks up, it's worth pausing to check that the key data protection foundations are in place. Here's what should be on your radar this September.

We've published a new e-learning module for 2026 data protection training.

Schools across the Thames Valley area are being targeted by criminals attempting to access staff payroll accounts, according to a warning issued by the South East Cyber Crime Unit's Cyber Protect team. In several confirmed cases, the attacks have succeeded, leaving affected staff without their pay after criminals diverted their salaries elsewhere.

The DfE doesn't tell you which standard to start with. Here's the reasoning we would use in your position.

Twelve standards, no prescribed sequence, and a 2030 deadline that still feels comfortably far away until it isn't. That's the position most schools and trusts are in with the DfE Digital and Technology Standards. 

The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the educational landscape is moving faster than ever. While AI offers transformative potential for lesson planning, administration, and student learning, it brings with it significant data protection and safeguarding responsibilities.

Keeping Children Safe in Education is the statutory guidance every school, college and MAT must work to, and every member of staff needs to understand it, every year, without exception. Our new KCSIE 2026 course is now live in your DPE training portal, built to make that annual refresh straightforward, accurate, and genuinely useful, not just a box-ticking exercise.

The Department for Education confirmed that hackers have accessed its internal helpdesk and the Turing Scheme portal, taking more than 600,000 records. Contact details belonging to headteachers, senior school leaders, government officials and university staff were among the data taken, and some of it has since appeared on the dark web.

Understandably, this has caused a lot of anxiety across the sector and, predictably, a lot of speculation. Was this preventable? Should the DfE have done more? Who's to blame?

A Management Information System (MIS) is the single most important data processing system a school operates. It holds pupil records, including special category data, safeguarding information, and family contact details. So when the Department for Education publishes guidance on choosing one, DPOs and data protection leads should pay attention, even when, as here, the guidance is framed in commercial rather than data protection terms.

The Academy Trust Handbook 2026 was published on 15 July 2026 and comes into effect on 1 October 2026. This year's edition strengthens the position on the DfE digital and technology standards and introduces new procurement requirements that have direct data protection implications, most notably around Management Information Systems (MIS).

On 15 July 2026, the Department for Education published How to reduce procurement risk: good practice guide for academy trusts. The guide is aimed at business managers, finance staff and others involved in procurement decision making, and follows the four phases of the procurement lifecycle: plan, define, procure and manage.

On 9 July 2026, the DfE added a new section to its Data Protection in Schools guidance: Procuring educational technology (EdTech). It sets out what schools should consider before, during and after procuring EdTech tools, and the questions to put to prospective suppliers. Significantly, it is the first DfE guidance to directly reference the ICO's EdTech Examined audit report, telling schools to take the ICO's findings into consideration when procuring EdTech tools.

A summary of the data protection changes in the new KCSIE guidance, including the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, information sharing and child protection file transfers.

The Statutory Independent Inquiry into Grooming Gangs has issued a formal notice to preserve all documents potentially relevant to their investigation. As this is a formal statutory inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, schools may be required to produce relevant records to assist.

The ICO's edtech audit programme, covering 28 providers used across UK primary and secondary schools, has resulted in one of the most significant data protection reports to affect the education sector in years. Published in June 2025, the ICO's EdTech Examined report made 596 recommendations and found widespread compliance failures in how edtech providers handle children's personal data. This article sets out what was found and what schools and DPOs need to do about it.

The Department for Education (DfE) updated its Data protection in schools guidance on 17 June 2026, this refresh aligns the guidance with the wider expected KCSIE 2026 guidance and reinforces existing obligations that schools should already be acting on.

This article sets out what has changed, what it means for your school in practice, and the actions your data protection lead should be taking now.

The Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) document obliges schools and colleges in England to “ensure appropriate filters and appropriate monitoring systems are in place and regularly review their effectiveness”. This responsibility is now a standard, no just a technical tick box, but a core leadership and safeguarding function.

In May 2026, Shottermill Junior School in Haslemere, Surrey became the latest UK primary school to fall victim to a ransomware attack. The LockBit 5.0 group officially listed the school as a victim on 9 June 2026, with threat intelligence monitors detecting the initial network infiltration as far back as 20 May 2026. This means the attackers had approximately three weeks of dwell time inside school systems before the attack became public knowledge.

When a Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) accidentally leaks highly sensitive pupil data, it makes national headlines.

Earlier this year, we brought together schools and multi academy trusts from across the sector for a day focused on something that continues to challenge us all:  data protection in education.

The response was incredible.

What Happened?

On 4 June 2026, Powys County Council confirmed that a cyber security incident had resulted in the theft of personal data belonging to pupils, staff, and others connected to schools in mid-Wales. Thirteen schools were affected by the wider incident, with personal data specifically taken from at least one. The attack was first identified in April 2026 and, according to the council, was “quickly contained”, but not before unauthorised access to personal data had already occurred.

When we talk about environmental responsibility, we reach for the obvious symbols: carbon footprints, single-use plastic, recycling bins in the staffroom. But in schools and Multi-Academy Trusts, there’s another kind of clutter building up quietly and can carry its own consequence.

As your external Data Protection Officer, we are pleased to introduce the May 2026 updates to our suite of model privacy notices. These revisions ensure that the schools we support remain at the forefront of compliance, specifically addressing the requirements of the Data Use and Access Act (DUAA) and the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act.

We present an article written by our Featured Guest Expert Ralph T O'Brien for our school and multi academy trust customers about the Data Use and Access Act where he breaks down what the latest legislative changes mean for the education sector.

ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Data Protection

A Practical Guide for School Leaders and Data Protection Officers

This article combines guidance from the Guardians of Privacy series, produced by Data Protection Education in collaboration with Litus Digital, with urgent new advice issued in May 2026 following confirmed blackmail attempts against UK schools using AI-manipulated images of children. Key sources include the UK Safer Internet Centre (8 May 2026) and the Internet Watch Foundation.

Cyber attacks on schools are no longer a distant threat. The Department for Education (DfE) has just launched a dedicated Cyber Security Hub to help schools navigate this growing danger, and as a school leader, it's worth understanding exactly what it offers and why it matters.  If you were at our conference in February you were lucky enough to see a preview of the tool!