Management Information Sheet

What are we proposing?

The Education Services Review 2017 lead to a realignment of the way in which the LA discharges statutory responsibilities including those for school attendance, children missing education and exclusions. As a consequence, we have identified a need to review systems and improve efficiency in line with statutory responsibilities for safeguarding, attendance, children missing education and data protection. The key to system change and efficiency for all partners is improvements to the infrastructure for collection of data from schools in respect of these responsibilities.

Norfolk County Council (NCC) uses the Synergy Management Information System to record education information about children for whom the Council has a statutory duty of care. The data we propose to extract is already currently provided to the LA via the DfE following census returns but reliance on this method means the data can be out of date and does not support us to fulfil our statutory duties for school attendance and children missing education efficiently. It also means that, at present schools are asked to submit data in a variety of ways by different teams at different times and the method of transfer is not always secure.

We are proposing to use data extracts from your Schools MIS system to populate the Synergy system via overnight feeds of pupil data. No staff data will be extracted as part of this process. This process simply supports the LA and schools with the transfer of data in line with statutory responsibilities as outlined in the Education Act 1996. The application extracts 3 files and securely sends to the LA:

• Pupils – Section 437
• Attendance – Section 436a
• Exclusions – Section 19 (3A/B)

How will we use the data?

We will use the data to:

• To track pupil movement onto a school roll;
• To identify children who have been absent for 10 consecutive school days, persistently absent pupils including those for whom the LA has a responsibility to provide an education under section 19 of the Education Act 1996;
• To ensure that the LA analysis of pupil attendance and exclusion provides a comprehensive and up to date picture that informs targeted support for the most vulnerable children.

What are the benefits?

The proposed data sharing system will:

• Mean that schools will automatically fulfil requirements for providing data about children who are placed on roll at a school and details of children who have been absent for 10 consecutive days or more.
• Create a single, secure, robust method of information sharing about pupil attendance and exclusion that is compliant with GDPR.
• Lead to increased efficiency and a reduction in requests for data submissions and pupil-level queries from the LA e.g. fixed term exclusions, pupil absence.
• Improve capacity to track pupil movement and school attendance reducing the likelihood of children missing education.
• Ensure the LA has access to up to date data leading to more comprehensive analysis to inform targeted support in response to need.

How will this be extracted from your MIS system? (See attached diagram)

Data that will be extracted?

The data being extracted will be the fields that are currently contained within a standard CTF file.

What will happen if the data extract fails to upload to the Synergy system?

In the event that the data extract fails to upload into the Synergy system due to validation errors (i.e. incorrect DOB, no postcode, additional spaces in name) then our Children Services’ team will contact you directly to ask if you can amend your MIS system so this is corrected in the next extract.

This will also benefit you by reducing the number of validation errors on your census returns as we are validating the data on a regular basis.

How long is the data stored?

The data is destroyed automatically in line with the retention schedule compliant with GDPR.

Where is the data stored?

The data we are collecting is stored on our Synergy database hosted on secure servers at County Hall and is mirrored in another data centre off-site.

How does NCC ensure the safety of the data?

It is mandatory for all staff members to have to complete a GDPR training course before they can access any systems. This is repeated at regular intervals afterwards to refresh their knowledge.

• Access to the Synergy database is restricted to only those staff members who need access.
• Some of the safeguards we use are firewalls, data encryption, physical access controls and information access authorisation controls.
• Our network provider (Updata) also pro-actively monitors the network for cyber-attacks etc.

Children’s Services Privacy Notice can be found here.

Next steps

Please see the attached timeline for the rollout of this project. NCC ICT Services 4 Education will contact all schools individually to make arrangements for setting up the data link with their Management Information System.

If you have any questions, please contact:

Kelly Waters
Senior Adviser – Safeguarding
kelly.waters@norfolk.gov.uk

or

Tanya Allen
ICT Portfolio Lead for Schools
tanya.allen@norfolk.gov.uk.