Middlesbrough Council as the local authority (LA) uses information about children for whom it provides services to enable it to carry out specific functions for which it is responsible, such as the assessment of any Special Educational Needs that a child may have. It also uses the information to produce statistics to inform decisions, for example, on the funding of schools, and to assess the performance of schools and set targets for them. The statistics are used in such a way that individual children cannot be identified from them.
The local authority will use information about its school workforce for research and statistical purposes, and to evaluate and develop education policy and strategies. The statistics are used in such a way that individual staff cannot be identified from them. The LA may also use the information to support and monitor schools regarding sickness and the recruitment of staff.
Primary Care Trusts (PCT) use information about pupils for research and statistical purposes, to monitor the performance of local health services, and to evaluate and develop those services. The statistics are used in such a way that individual pupils cannot be identified from them. Information on the height and weight of individual pupils may however be provided to the child and their parents, and this will require the PCTs to maintain details of pupils' names for this purpose for a period designated by the Department of Health following the weighing and measuring process. PCTs may also provide individual schools and LAs with aggregate information on pupils' height and weight. The LA will share information on pupils in its schools and their parents with the PCT to enable the PCT to carry out dental and other surveys in the most effective way and to maintain the accuracy of the PCT databases. Any such surveys will still require the consent of parents for the survey to be undertaken.
For pupils aged 13 years and over, the school is legally required to pass on certain information to the provider of youth support services in their area. This is the local authority support service for young people aged 13 to 19 in England. The school must provide the name and address of the pupil and their parents and any further information relevant to the support service's role. In addition, the date of birth of the pupil is supplied.
Until pupils are aged 16 or older, their parent(s) can ask that no information beyond their children's name, address and date of birth (and their own name and address) be passed to the youth support services provider. This right transfers to the pupil on their 16th birthday. Pupils and/or parents will need to inform the school if this is what they wish.
Tees Valley Unlimited carries out the following functions on behalf of Middlesbrough Council: strategic planning, in particular the Tees Valley Structure Plan, sub-regional economic development strategy, strategic transport planning and technical support, information and forecasting service, and the management and administration of European programmes. It processes young people's information on behalf of the LA and provides estimates of pupil numbers, planning information, and helps to inform bids for national and European funding.
Aimhigher is a national programme which aims to widen participation in higher education by increasing awareness of higher education and raising aspirations and attainment among young people from under-represented groups. Aimhigher uses information about children to identify who may require access to their service and to produce statistics to help inform local decisions on which children to target.
RM are providers of software, infrastructure and services to schools in Middlesbrough. The RM Learning Platform provides an environment that integrates the components of each school's ICT provision to deliver a consistent and personalised teaching and learning environment for schools, teachers, pupils and parents. Pupil data from the schools' management information system is extracted by RM to populate and support the delivery of the virtual learning environment. This data is stored on ICT infrastructure maintained by RM on behalf of the secondary schools. Schools also contract other IT support companies, including Mouchel, SICTU and Advantex to deliver similar services.
Secondary schools may also share information with the Learning Records Service (LRS). The information will be used by the Chief Executive of Skills Funding to issue a Unique Learner Number (ULN) and to create Personal Learning Record. Further details of how the information is processed and shared by LRS and Chief Executive of Skills Funding can be found online.