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!

[Bromcom_John]

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?

[maniac]

We do a full backup every night as it is, so we simply keep the end of July tape as an end of year tape, and remove the accounts and work around now. Accounts are disabled as soon as the leave thou. We might also keep a copy on DVD this year for the first time, as it's easy and quick to do, that way the backup becomes just that. We also purge old staff accounts at the end of every year, and do the same thing with their home folders.

 

Mike.

[john]

Burn all to DVD and then put in safe for a good number of years.

[ozydave]

Many thanks for all the replies. You have answered my main concern about any legal issues.

BTW

 

You guys from Australia, I hope to move down there again in 3 years time, just got to wait for my little one to grow up a little. Came back from Perth (November last year) beautiful place but to many English (even though I am one). We love and lived in Coogee Sydney. Hope to get back there.

 

Thanks again

[alan-d]

We tell them all to take a backup of their own work before they leave. We keep the home directory open till the end of the summer break, disable the accounts at the start of the new school year and after Christmas we delete the accounts, home directories and all.

 

We usually have a full backup of everything taken at the start of the summer break which is kept for a year.

[sidewinder]

We tend to leave the previous year 13's and year 11's accounts in a seperate leavers OU, with all their work intact, till about this time of year, when any students that have come back for whatever reason have done so

 

Ive got the last couple of years of leavers work on a hard drive somewhere, will burn to DVD at some point, but I dont specifically keep them for any length of time

[laserblazer]

I've yet to find anything worth keeping. However, it all goes onto a DVD for each year group, which goes to the Head of Year

[antoeknee]

Keep leavers work for 12 months and then delete.

 

User accounts are disabled the day they leave.

[Bromcom_John]

Finally got a response from my "enquiries", hopefully this also helps. Although it is still classically nebulous as this sort of information tends to be.

 

Dear Mr.Condon

 

Thank you for your e-mail message dated 25 October 2007, which was received by the JCQ Office.

 

The JCQ publication Instructions for conducting coursework/portfolios - 1 September 2007 to 31 August 2008 deals with the retention of candidates' coursework. Page 15, Section 25, Return of Work to Centres, paragraph 25.2, states that 'centres are required to retain candidates' marked coursework, whether or not it was part of the moderation sample, under secure conditions until all possibility of enquiries about results has been exhausted. Where retention is a problem, because of the nature of coursework/portfolio work, some form of evidence (e.g. photographic, audio taped or videotaped) must be available. Centres are requested to keep a record of the examination numbers and names of those candidates whose work is included in the sample sent to or seen by moderators. This information may be required if there are enquiries about results at a later date. In the case of e-coursework, protection from corruption should also be taken into account'.

 

I trust that this information may be of some assistance to you.

 

Yours sincerely

Nick Lait

Servicing Officer

JCQ

[srochford]

The daft thing about that is that an extra sentence or two would have made it completely clear!

 

I'm pretty sure that "until all possibility of enquiries about results has been exhausted" is actually defined. For example, if you want to query a GCSE result you have to appeal within a certain time (think it's 2 months but I'm sure there is a deadline). There will then be a time defined after that in which the board must respond and so on. This means that it's possible to add up all those times and get a final date after which "all possibility of enquiries about results has been exhausted" and you no longer need to keep the stuff!

[Disease]

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

 

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

 

I lived in Goodna, with my Family, we came back to England though My Grandad used to run Parkhaven.