Sunday 27 January 2008

Data Protection Act 1998

Here are some extracts from a letter that was handed out at my little girl's (private) school ...

"Dear Parents

As part of [the local council's] Early Years Funding, we have been asked to provide details of all children eligible for funding. [The local council] informs us they require this data ' ... to have a clear picture of the ethnic groups it accommodates; to identify if there are particular issues for localities/communities; to provide information for a larger date picture - London/England. It is collected and used for those and other reasons as they arise.'..."

Then at the back is a disclaimer headed up 'Data Protection Act 1998' which kicks off as follows:

"Early Years Settings, Schools, Local Authorities, the Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families and the Department for Children Schools and Families ... the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector for Schools and the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) and the National Assessment Agency all process information on children and pupils in order to help administer education and children's services ..."

In other words, whatever data they collect is not secure in the slightest, once all these different quangoes have had their grubby fingers on it, eh?

Further, our State education system is totally f***ed already, I didn't realise how determined Nulab were to smother and stifle private schools with the same layers of quangistic crap.

7 comments:

Henry North London 2.0 said...

Out of the top 12? Sniff

Mark Wadsworth said...

HNL, sorry about that, but your posting has been sporadic as of late, I'm happy to promote you again once it picks up...

Henry North London 2.0 said...

Ok When I get back to posting regularly.... No probs

The Sage of Muswell Hill said...

MW

What would happen if your daughter's school told the local council to get lost? In my (very limited) understanding of this matter, the councils have to inform the Ministry of Education about the cost of providing EYF, but that's the council's problem (and should be easily resolved by looking at the cheque stubs). Info on your daughter beyond the fact that she (or the school she attends) is entitled to funding is egregious (but, as I say, I am not very well up on this particular piece of bureaucracy).

Mark Wadsworth said...

U, that's the irony. Early Years Funding is only paid up to the fifth birthday, so it's only paid for a few girls in the first few months at school, my lass is way beyond that.

Rachel Oxley (UKIP Education spokesman) said that her school had decided complying with all the bureau-crap-cy was more trouble than it was worth and did what you suggest.

CatWoman said...

They are logging data on the ethnic students as well. To see whether they need to lower the grade point average again. God forbid the ethnic students study English a little harder.

Anonymous said...

All questions about ethnicity for me and my family get the "other/not available" treatment. If more people did this it would nicely muck up the penpushers.