AMONG the usual pile of correspondence to the chair of governors awaiting me at school was one demanding money with menaces. I am threatened with criminal prosecution if I don’t cough up pound;75. They Know Where I Live and will write again if I fail to meet their demands.
The letter was from the Data Protection Registrar. “Protection” in this case seems to carry the same weight of meaning as when used by the Mafia. There is no indication of any benefit accruing from paying out the school’s precious money, just dire warnings about consequences of failing to comply.
Presumably they send th lads round. I may wake up one morning to find Class 3‘s hamster toes-up on my pillow.
No, but seriously, what is this all about? Whom does the Data Protection Registrar protect and from what? Most of the data on our school is very much in the public domain.
Certainly we hold personal, educational, family and medical information about our pupils in school, both on computers and in written form. This information is confidential, closely monitored and only revealed on a need-to-know basis.
How does paying pound;75 to a quango in Wilmslow assist this process? I need to know.
