An awareness day to promote data protection best practices for businesses, education institutions, consumers and families.
Marked internationally on 28th January each year, Data Protection Day (or Data Privacy Day in some countries) aims to raise awareness about the importance of protecting personal data and encouraging compliance with local data protection legislation.
Personal data in schools
Schools collect and store a mountain of personal data from their students throughout the course of their education and, as children don’t give their explicit consent for this, protecting it must be taken extremely seriously.
Even though data protection policies and procedures are likely decided by school governors, senior leaders and network managers (at the very least), that doesn’t mean that nobody else needs to think about it!
Data protection is everyone’s responsibility. For example, at a basic level, this means always keeping your device passworded and secured, ensuring you send emails containing confidential student personal data only to the people who need to see them, and knowing what to do if you’ve left a device containing personal data unattended and you suspect someone else has used it.
Data in apps and solutions
AI apps are another area where schools need to be cautious. Checking how they use the data you enter into them is critical. Most AI apps use any data inputted into them by default for training and future development, and you’ll often need to search for the ‘opt out’ setting to ensure your data is not used.
EdTech solution vendors do a range of different things with data, so it’s always a good idea to check directly with them – and complete a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) for any new solutions you want to use.
Schools should already have guidelines for adopting new EdTech and AI solutions in place that will cover personal data, where it is stored and what it is used for – but if you don’t, or yours needs updating, now is a great time do it!
Further information for schools
There are numerous sources that have comprehensive guidance for school personal data protection. Here are our top three recommendations:
- The Information Commissioner’s Office: https://ico.org.uk/
- Data protection in schools guidance (Department for Education): https://www.gov.uk/guidance/data-protection-in-schools
- School Digital Strategy Guide 2026 (from RISE sponsor, NetSupport): https://www.netsupportsoftware.com/digital-strategy/
Wishing you all a happy Data Protection Day!
