How long do you keep staff / student data for?

[Qas]

Hi All,

 

I am wondering if anybody can help me.

 

How long do you keep Staff or Student data for after a person leaves the school?

 

In particular, I am talking about the users Home Drive which would contain any work that they have done since they were at the school. Does anyone know if there is a legal requirement to keep this kind of data or is that down to the individual school?

 

Secondly, is there a legal requirement to keep data which is in Sims etc? If so, for how many years?

 

Thank you very much

[Oaktech]

In my old post, which included a senior school, staff accounts were moved to an archive area in AD and homedrives to an archive area on a NAS, then removed the following academic year. Year11 and Year 13 homedrive data was kept for 6 months. At my new primary, student homedrives are removed at the end of the holidays, so a retention of 6 weeks. Staff AD acounts and home drives are kept for 6 months.

 

As far as I know this is down to individual school preference.

 

There is however a definite legal requirement to keep MIS data. I think it is a minimum of 7 years from departure except in special cases where it can need to be kept indefinitely. There is advice on this from the Records Management Society, and you should probably read that guidance.

 

I have been asked to resurrect a long-term archived MIS system at the request of the police asking for data that was almost 20 years old.

[jtoland]

I have an archive folder on a nas for staff that leave and i keep the data for 5 years just in case lol

[Pete10141748]

As far as profile/homedrive data goes I don't think I've ever deleted any leavers' off of our Archive area, so at least 9 years in our case!

 

While I've got plenty of storage space I don't see the need, and there's nothing I'm aware of that says you have to delete it after a certain time, and anything created by an employee while employed is considered property of the school that employs them.

 

MIS data your Personnel staff should know the answer (if they don't, maybe they should find out?).

[mrforgetful]

I have CDs in my drawer from 2006 leavers!

 

Infact you can see data storage progression, it goes from CDs, to DVDs, to 3.5" HDDs and then 2.5" HDDs which I still use for archiving.

 

There are more encrypted sets offsite.

[Disease]

We keep staff user areas for 30 days and Students until the end of November the year they leave in case of exam queries.

[mjk]

I recall the DfE GDPR advise was 30 days/ 1 month for this sort of thing.

[forkies]

Your HR team should be able to tell you how long you need to keep the staff data in Sims. Student data in Sims should be kept for dob +25 years unless it is SEN/medical which is longer I believe.

Home areas do not constitute personal data so can be kept as long as needed, we keep ours for 7 years, if it is key staff ie am ex head teacher then it is kept longer.

You are best to refer to your DPO, legal team or the IRMS toolkit.