How long to keep ex pupil work

[ozydave]

Not sure what forum to post this in

Is there any law or could anybody recommend how long schools need to keep the work of ex students.
I only refereeing to the work that students have in their user areas held on the servers. I not interested in any work that has been given to teachers (paper copies). The reason is that our backup space is running low.

Any ideas or suggestions
Ozydave

[Disease]

We hold the old year 11's work for 12 months then delete it. I am not sure if there is any specific legislation and would be interested in sources if there is.

[webman]

We keep their accounts on the network until around October, archive their work onto DVD, then delete from network.

[enjay]

We archive leavers onto DVD. There's no set policy as to how long we keep them, but I've been doing it for the last 4 years and still have the discs - I've never been required to go back further than the previous year's students though.

[pallen]

We keep our until after the date the pupil can request work for resits (around oct-nov so I am told). I will be deleting their work after half term.

[daveyboy]

At the end of term we move them all to a portable drive & a copy goes onto a spare hard drive that we put in the school safe.

We will keep these hard drives for as long as we can, but after 4-5 years we tend to get rid of them.

[jcollings]

I delete the user accounts in the summer hol (at the end) and archive all work to DVD stored in our safe. Think I've got 7 years worth and I can't recall being asked for anything in all that time - still it's there if they need it!

[JohnCondon]

The Data Protection Act only applies to Personal Data and I cannot find any definition of Personal Data that covers coursework, so there's nothing from that particular hotbed of policy that I can suggest would apply here.
Regulations on "attendance" data state that records are to be retained on electronic media (if using an electronic registration system) for 5 years and then on paper archive beyond that. Thats a reasonable policy to adhere to?
In the absence of anything else more appropriate anyway.

I'm making some "enquiries" to see if I can't get some more definite answers.

[rrichmond]

Firstly, I'm in Australia, so this is a little different. But we do a full 6 monthly backup cyle, and can go back to the students work anywhere within this time frame. we generally remove the student files in January. ready for the new students accounts.

[Disease]

cool, Off Topic but I lived in Brisbane for 12 years.

[PEO]

We keep their accounts on the network until around October, archive their work onto DVD, then delete from network.

dito!

except we disable their accounts as soon as we show them the door, and only enable the ones that come back to finish a little bit of work or print the cv.

[rrichmond]

cool, Off Topic but I lived in Brisbane for 12 years.

That where I am. I work at Redlands College. Where were you from?

[kylewilliamson]

My understanding of attendance data is that it should be kept until the child's 25th birthday and then destroyed.

[Sylv3r]

I generally backup all leavers to DVD then delete their work. Any students leaving year 11 and then rejoining our sixth form get brand new accounts with nothing in them. Occasionnally they request some work from Year 11 and I copy from the DVD into their new account.

[daveyboy]

Is This of any help?