Who are we?
We are the Education Authority (‘EA’). EA are in charge of delivering education in Northern Ireland and help with all aspects of your education and journey through school.
EA are the ‘Controller’ of any Personal Data we collect from or about you.
Why have we asked you to complete a Survey?
If you are reading this Privacy Notice, we have invited you to take part in a Survey to help us to find out how we can improve our services for children and young people.
By answering the questions in our Surveys, you can help us to find new and better ways to help and support children and young people in education in Northern Ireland.
Law
We can only use your personal data if we have a legal reason to do so. We will use the information we collect from this Survey to carry out our role which is set out in law.
The proper name for this lawful basis is ‘public task’ and “substantial public interest’.
What information about you do we use?
We do not collect the name or contact information of children and young people who participate in our Surveys and we ask you not to include any other information in the Survey that might tell us who you are.
Depending on the nature of the Survey, some of the things we may ask you about are your gender, biological sex or health. This is special information about who you are which may help us to understand the completed Surveys that we receive, but you do not have to answer those questions if you don’t want to.
Who will see your information?
We sometimes call the information we collect, ‘Data’.
If the information we collect from you is about you and you can also be identified from it, it is ‘Personal Data’.
When we collect or use Personal Data we follow the rules of Data Protection Law. This means that we will keep your Personal Data, safe and protected so that only the EA staff responsible for carrying out the Survey will be able to see it.
Only the people from EA who are responsible for carrying out the Survey that you are completing will see your Survey Response. They will take out any information from your Survey Response that might tell us who you are. This means that even if you do include information that might tell us who you are, no one outside of the people from EA who are carrying out the Survey you have completed, will know who you are from the information.
How we will use the information and will we share it with anyone?
After we have taken out any information that might tell us who you are and after we have received everyone’s survey, we will put all of that information together and share those results with other people inside and outside of EA, who are helping us to come up with ideas of how we can improve our services to children and young people.
The results of the survey will not use your name or identify you. The people who are helping us with this will not know who you are from the data.
The survey data will be stored safely for future research without names or other information that might tell someone who you are.
A summary of all the data collected from everyone that takes part in our Survey may be shared in presentations and in reports which can sometimes be read by people on the internet. These summaries will not show your survey answers or give any clue about who you are.
We sometimes use data processors who are third parties who provide elements of services for us, including survey providers such as Microsoft Forms and Citizen Space. We have contracts in place with our data processors. This means that they cannot do anything with any personal information we share with them unless we have instructed them to do it. They will not share personal information with any organisation apart from us. They will keep your personal data safe and protected and will only hold it for the length of time we instruct.
We will not transfer any personal information we receive about you to any country outside the UK without telling you first. We will not transfer personal information to a country outside the UK unless we are satisfied that they will protect that personal information in the same way as it would be if it remained in the UK.
Questions & Further Information
If you have any questions about the Privacy Notice or want to complain, then our Data Protection Officer can be contacted:
Post: Data Protection Officer, Education Authority, 40 Academy Street, Belfast, BT1 2NQ,
Telephone: 028 8241 1300
Email: dpo@eani.org.uk
If you are concerned about how we use your information, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office. They ensure organisations comply with data protection law. For full details relating to how we use your personal data please see our Parents & Children’s privacy notice.