Images Policy

[CheeseDog]

Within a VLE does anyone have a policy/guidelines for what images can be stored within it? For things such as individual/group photographs of children.

We have 4 main areas

All areas are on a secure site not open to the public.

Staff - accesesed only by employees of the school
Pupils - accessed only by pupils/staff (I'm guessing parents will see images too)
Parents - accessed only by parents/carers/staff of a child.
My Site - area where you can store personal/public documents add a picture of yourself with some contact details. Public area can be accessed by anyone on the VLE (numerous schools within lea, and even further)

Parents do not have a My Site area

[Geoff]

There's general (DfES?) guidelines for what you can publish on the web. My basic understanding is that you can post images of children providing you get parental consent and you do not identify them by name.

I expect that the actual documents are on teachernet someplace.

Edit: Found it on safty.ngfl.gov.uk

http://safety.ngfl.gov.uk/schools/pdf/d27.pdf

[CheeseDog]

Yeah the problem is this is a secure site current DFES guidlines seem only to cater for public web pages.

At first my personal opinion is the Pupil, Parent and My Site systems should be treated as a public web page. As you can't vet every parent

Then you get into issues such as linking it in with pupil data (ePortal) for parents to check. A parent logged in with a secure username and password will eventually be able to access ePortal and pull up a picture/details of their child such as address, doctors notes, merits, behaviour, results of tests, attendance etc.

To access such info does require the re-inputting of the password

[Geoff]

I don't think there are any guidelines that cater for what your doing. Seek legal advice from your LEA/DfES.

[CheeseDog]

Will do bit of a headache this one.

Any thoughts about things yourself?

We seem to be going down the line that the staff area will have a different policy.

[danIT]

Students are given a letter to copmplete to either agree or disagree to there picture being taken at any point within school or on school trips, there is also one for parents, student may not mind his picture being included for instance on the school website but parents may do. we currently have around 5 students who are not allowed to have there picture taken or published in anyway.

Also some child protection issues may restrict what photos can be published or taken. We usually run any publication including photos past the head of child protection.

I also know of one school with a similar system where there personla area had "personl" photos in it, not nudity but showed him smoking and drinking arms around girls that kind of thing a student saw them on his area while logged on in a classroom, went back to parents and rest of the school blah blah - can get complicated.

[Geoff]

The main concern is the Data Protection Act. in particular the requirements that might trip you up are:
[*]The data is accurate.[*]I's secure[*]It stays in the country

[Ric_]

Why have two separate rules? If you follow the general rules for external publishing of information, you can't go wrong, surely?

[CheeseDog]

External rules seems much too restrictive for the staff area is used as a resource area for many things.

As for the parent/pupil areas I have to agree with you personally. That it should be treated as public. A draft copy is being made at the moment of the letter we're sending to parents.

My main concern is the access to ePortal which strictly speaking is a different panel's problem to the one that I'm involved with.

[NetworkGeezer]

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