EA Privacy Notice (Employees, Former Employees, Workers and Contractors)

The Education Authority (EA) collects, uses and is responsible for certain personal information about you. The EA takes your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy notice carefully as it contains important information on who we are, how we collect, store, use and share your personal information and what your information rights are.

When we collect or use your personal information, we are subject to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (“data protection legislation”) and we are responsible as the “data controller” of that personal information. As a data controller, we are required to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.

This privacy notice applies to employees, former employees, workers and contractors. We may update this notice at any time but if we do so, we will make an updated copy of this notice available to you as soon as reasonably practicable.

This notice does not form part of any contract of employment or other contract to provide services.

It is important that you read and retain this notice, together with any other privacy notice or statement we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information and what your rights are under data protection legislation.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle personal information, please contact our Data Protection Officer (DPO) who monitors the EA’s data protection procedures to ensure they meet the standards and requirements of the data protection legislation.

The DPO can be contacted at the Education Authority, 40 Academy Street, Belfast, BT1 2NQ, by telephone at 028 9047 5011 or by email at dpo@eani.org.uk.  

If you are unhappy with how EA have processed your personal data or that EA have not complied with your data protection rights, you can raise a Data Protection Complaint. Information of how to do this is available under Data Protection Complaints.

If you’re unhappy with our response, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) or get advice from the ICO. Further details are available on how to contact the ICO via the ICO website.

We collect personal information about employees, former employees, workers and contactors through the application and recruitment process, either directly from you (in person, by telephone, written correspondence, text or email) or sometimes from an employment agency or background check provider. We may also collect personal information through the procurement process when we engage a contractor to provide services to EA.

We might also collect personal information from third parties including:

• former employers,
• credit reference agencies or other background check agencies.

We will collect additional personal information in the course of job-related activities throughout the period of you working with us.

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to comply with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our workforce) or to perform the contract we have entered into with you (such as paying you).

Personal information is information that identifies you and relates to you. We will collect, store and use the following categories of personal information:

• personal information (such as name, title, age, date of birth, employee or teacher number, national insurance number, next of kin details and emergency contact information, marital status and dependants, photographs, bank account details, payroll records and tax status information)
• special categories of personal information such as gender, race, ethnic group, trade union membership, information regarding your health, AccessNI Enhanced Disclosure application and outcome, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and political opinions, genetic information and biometric data)
• recruitment information such as (references, information included in a CV or letter as part of the application process, evidence of eligibility to work information, copy of driving licence)
• contract information (such as start dates, hours worked, post, roles and salary information, benefit information, annual leave, leaving date and your reasons for leaving) 
• performance information (including training information and professional memberships)
• disciplinary and grievance information
• work absence information (such as number of absences and reasons, including in respect of parental leave)
• qualifications (and, where relevant, subjects taught)
• CCTV footage captured on EA premises and other information obtained through electronic means (such as swipe card records)

We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. Where appropriate, we will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the recruitment process or we may be notified of such information directly by you in the course of you working for us. This will usually be where such processing is necessary to carry out our legal obligations or may sometime be where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests and provided we do so in line with our Data Protection Policy and our Appropriate Policy for Special Categories of Personal Data and Criminal Offence Data.

Under data protection law, we can only use your personal information if we have a proper reason to do so.

EA collects and uses your personal information primarily to allow us to perform our contract with you, to comply with our legal obligations, to perform a task in the public interest or exercise our authority as a public body or where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. For example:

• making a decision about your recruitment or appointment
• determining the terms on which you work for us
• checking you are legally entitled to work in the UK
• paying you and, if you are an employee or deemed employee for tax purposes, deducting tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs)
• enrolling you in a pension arrangement in accordance with our statutory automatic enrolment duties
• administering the contract we have entered into with you
• business management and planning, including accounting and auditing
• conducting performance reviews, managing performance and determining performance requirements
• making decisions about salary reviews and compensation
• assessing qualifications for a particular job or task, including decisions about promotions
• gathering evidence for possible grievance or disciplinary hearings
• making decisions about your continued employment or engagement
• making arrangements for the termination of our working relationship
• education, training and development requirements
• dealing with legal disputes involving you, or other employees, workers or contractors, including accidents at work
• ascertaining your fitness to work
• managing sickness absence
• for the prevention of fraud
• complying with health and safety obligations
• to monitor your use of our information and communication systems to ensure compliance with our IT policies
• to ensure network and information security, including preventing unauthorised access to our computer and electronic communications systems and preventing malicious software distribution
• to conduct data analytics studies to review and better understand employee retention and attrition rates
• equal opportunities monitoring and reporting
• managing work placement schemes and/or work experience programmes
• to enable the development of a comprehensive picture of our staff and how it is deployed
• to inform the development of recruitment and retention policies
• to administer EA property
• to maintain our own accounts and records
• to support staff training
• to assess the quality of our operations
• to comply with the law regarding data sharing

Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.

We may also collect and use your personal data in order to meet legal requirements set out in UK law, including:

• Education and Libraries (NI) Order 1986
• Education (NI) Order 1998
• Education Act (NI) 2014

Telephone Call-Recording

We may record incoming and outgoing telephone calls made to or from EA services for the following purposes:

• to promote EA staff welfare and protect staff from abusive or nuisance calls;
• to improve customer service and staff training in relation to the delivery of EA services; and
• to assist in the investigation and resolution of complaints / disputes

Where EA records telephone calls  for the purposes of improving customer service and staff training or to assist in the investigation and resolution of complaints / disputes, the lawful basis for this processing will be public task, as such processing will be for the purposes of ensuring the effective performance of our tasks in the public interest and exercise of our authority as a public body. Where EA records telephone calls for the purposes of promoting EA staff welfare and protecting staff from abusive or nuisance calls, the lawful basis for this processing will be legal obligation as EA has a legal duty of care to its employees. The additional condition for processing any special category data that may be recorded will be that the processing is necessary for a substantial public interest or for carrying out obligations and rights in the field of employment law.

Recordings will normally be retained for a period of 6 months but may be retained for longer if necessary for the purposes referred to above (e.g. to assist in the investigation and resolution of complaints / disputes). All recordings will be stored securely and will be securely disposed when they are no longer required.

Whilst the majority of the personal information provided to the EA is required for us to allow us to perform our contract with you, to comply with our legal obligations, to perform a task in the public interest or exercise our authority as a public body or where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party), some of that information is provided on a voluntary basis by giving us your consent.

When collecting personal information, we will inform you  if your consent is needed for EA to process such personal information. Where consent is required, we will provide you with specific and explicit information with regards to the reasons the data is being collected and how the data will be used.

You have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact the DPO using the contact details above. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your personal information for the purpose you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

We will only keep your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes for which we collected it, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.

We do not store personal information forever; we only hold employee, former employee former employee, worker and contactor information for as long as we are legally able to do so.

Personal information relating to employees, workers and contractors of EA is stored in line with the EA’s Retention and Disposal of Records Schedule, which is available online at Privacy Notices or can be requested by telephone by calling 028 9047 5011 or by emailing dpo@eani.org.uk. This sets out information about how long we keep personal information.

Once you are no longer an employee, worker or contractor of the EA we will retain and securely destroy your personal information in accordance with the EA’s Retention and Disposal of Records Schedule.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to protect personal information and prevent it from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a need to know. They will only process personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We have put in place procedures to deal with a personal data breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator (currently the Information Commissioner’s Office) of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

We may have to share your personal information with third parties, including third-party service providers and other bodies such as:

• The school at which you are engaged, including the Board of Governors
• The Department of Education
• General Teaching Council for Northern Ireland
• Controlled Schools Support Council
• Northern Ireland Social Care Council
• Comhairle na Gaelscolaíochta
• Council for Catholic Maintained Schools
• Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education
• Northern Ireland Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment
• Examination Boards such as AQA, CCEA and Excel
• Equality Commission
• Labour Relations Agency
• Department of Health, Public Health Authority and Health & Social Care Trusts
• Health & Safety Executive
• Trade Unions and their representatives
• PSNI
• Crown Prosecution Service
• Legal representatives
• Social Services
• Employers for Childcare
• Occupational Health Providers
• Northern Ireland Local Government Officers’ Superannuation Committee
• Northern Ireland Substitute Teacher Register Operator (Eteach)
• HR Associates
• Other government departments, non-governmental public bodies and agencies.
• External professional advisors supporting tender competition or contracts (e.g. surveyors, architects, engineers, building surveyors, legal, insurers, or others specialists)
• AccessNI
• PSNI and other law enforcement agencies for the prevention and detection of crime
• Bodies authorised to investigate compliance with law, regulations, codes of practice or similar (e.g. Northern Ireland Audit Office, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), Health & Safety Executive Northern Ireland (HSENI), Driver & Vehicle Agency (DVA), Northern Ireland Public Services Ombudsman (NIPSO), etc.)

We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies where it lawful, necessary and proportionate to do so. 

We will only share your personal information with third parties where there is a lawful basis for doing so.

We may share your personal information where it is necessary for us to perform our contract with you. We may share your personal information where it is necessary for the performance of our statutory functions or because we are legally obliged to do so.

We may also share your personal information where we are satisfied that it is necessary to do so for a legitimate interest purpose pursued by EA or a third party. For example, the EA has a legitimate interest in sharing personal information for the purpose of safeguarding and promoting a child’s welfare. EA may also share your personal information with other public authorities where it is necessary to do so for the purposes of a legitimate interest (such as fraud prevention).

EA may share your personal information with law enforcement authorities (including the PSNI and Northern Ireland Government Departments) where we have a legal obligation to do so or because there is a legitimate interest in doing so for the prevention or detection of crime or for the apprehension or prosecution of offenders.

There may also be some circumstances in which it will only be appropriate to share your personal information if you have consented to us doing so.

We also use data processors, who are third parties that process personal information on EA’s behalf to enable us to provide our services and /or in relation to the management of our workforce. We have contracts in place with our data processors which confirm that they cannot do anything with your personal information unless we have instructed them to do it. To be granted access to EA workforce information, data processors must comply with EA’s strict terms and conditions covering the confidentiality and handling of the personal information, security arrangements and retention and use of the personal information.

We will not transfer the personal information we collect about you to any country outside the UK without telling you in advance that we intend to do so and what steps we have taken to ensure adequate protection for your personal information in those circumstances.

If we intend to make decisions based solely on automated processing (i.e. decisions made by automated means without any human involvement), including profiling, that have legal or similarly significant effects on you, we will make you aware of this, provide meaningful information about the logic involved in the process, explain the significance and envisaged consequences, and explain how you can ask for a review of such decisions.

We are currently trialling the use of Copilot for Microsoft 365 within the EA to evaluate its effectiveness in enhancing staff productivity and efficiency.

It is important to note that this generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool will not be used to make decisions about individuals. Instead, Copilot is being evaluated to understand how it can assist our staff with tasks such as:

• Meetings: Copilot can assist with meetings by taking minutes, producing summaries and actions, and helping staff catch up on missed meetings.
• Drafting: Copilot can help with writing documents and emails, such as suggesting ways to word something, helping to creating drafts and formatting documents.
• Presentations: Copilot can be used to speed up the time it takes to create PowerPoint presentations.
• Data analysis: Copilot can be used to analyse and visualise data, identify trends, and create reports and graphs.

The EA’s data, used with Copilot for Microsoft 365, is stored within our secure Microsoft tenant. The data is under the control of the EA and is not used to train or improve Microsoft, or open / third party, AI models.

Where the EA uses individuals’ personal data with Copilot for Microsoft 365, this is processed for the purposes and on the lawful bases referred to in this Privacy Notice. Any review or monitoring of individual staff usage of Copilot for Microsoft 365 will be in accordance with the provisions of EA’s Acceptable Use of ICT Policy.

We recognise that the potential uses of Copilot may evolve over time. Any new proposed uses will be carefully considered and aligned with our commitment to data privacy and security.

To ensure responsible AI usage, we have established an AI Ethics and Governance Committee.

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us.

Under the data protection legislation, you have certain rights in relation to the personal information that we hold about you.

You have the right to:

• Request access to personal information (commonly known as a "data subject access request"). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
• Request erasure of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information where we are processing for a task in the public interest or exercise of our authority as a public body or relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on these grounds. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

Please contact the EA if you wish to exercise any of the above rights by telephone by calling 028 9047 5011 or by emailing dpo@eani.org.uk.

This privacy notice was published on 25 May 2018 and last updated on 19th August 2025.