Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 76: 76: Clause 14, page 8, line 10, at end insert ““which relates directly to the pupil or student’s educational record, or educational and support needs”” The noble Baroness said: The amendment relates to Clause 14, which puts a duty on educational institutions to provide information to the local authority, "““for the purpose of enabling or assisting it, exercises functions under this Part””." Subsection (3) contains a list of what information is required and paragraph (c) mentions, "““information in the institution’s possession about the pupil or student””." The purpose of this amendment is to tease out what sort of information the school or the college is under a duty to supply and, more particularly, whether it can legitimately resist supplying it. Would the school be obliged to provide sensitive information about a young person, such as social security information, facts about their background or their family, any services with which they have had dealings—for example, young offender teams, children and young persons mental teams, drug rehabilitation charities, family planning clinics—and so forth? There is a wide range of information which a creative local government officer might find apparently good reasons to request. It is important that schools and colleges are clear that this information can be restricted to only that, "““which relates directly to the pupil or student’s educational record, or educational and support needs””." In these days when far too much information about all of us is flying around the globe, we should not add to the opportunity for confidential information to get into the public domain. I beg to move.