Certificate in Data Protection & GDPR for Senior Leaders (2021-22)

Course Duration: 135 minutes (approx.)

Senior leaders should be sufficiently aware of the content of GDPR and the Data Protection Act in order to ensure schools have the right things in place to be compliant. As per the Data Protection Act 2018, it is your legal duty to protect the personal data of your students, staff, and visitors. Any establishment that collects personal data (e.g. names, addresses, dates of births, etc) has a legal responsibility to ensure that information is gathered, processed, and stored securely. If your school is found to breach GDPR rules, you may face a hefty fine and a visit from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Our essential CPD course in data protection provides you with the core content you need to ensure you are complying with your legal responsibilities in protecting personal data. Delivered in high-quality video CPD format that has been skilfully organised for busy workloads and is accessible on any device, anytime, anywhere, our training has been designed to provide maximum learning potential in the leanest, most cost-effective and most time-efficient manner. 

Delivered by retired police officer and associate lecturer, Dr. Kai Adegbembo, this course has been divided into six easy-to-digest modules. The course consists of learning through video modules, completion of tasks, further reading and viewing external resources. Please consider this when planning and allocating your time. To successfully understand and achieve the objectives from the course, learners are expected to engage in all aspects of the learning process and complete all relevant activities to ensure they can successfully apply the knowledge and skills they have gained in their own setting.

This course has been designed in line with the following policies: 

• Data Protection Act 2018
• Data Protection: Toolkit for Schools (Department for Education)

Learning outcomes:

• Understanding your role and responsibilities as a senior leader regarding data protection and the legislative framework within which you must work.
• Recognising what data protection is, why it is important, and how to effectively manage the data protection process.
• Identifying the various types of data breaches and how to respond in order to minimise exposure and reduce impact.
• Recognising subject access requests (SARs) and how to proceed if a parent requests to see the data you have on their child.
• Understanding how DfE guidance can assist in developing the process required to ensure you are compliant with the Data Protection Act 2018.

Course modules:

Module 1: Roles and responsibilities as senior leaders

Module 1 will cover the responsibilities of senior leaders regarding data protection. You will learn of which legalities and frameworks you must be aware.

Module 2: Defining data protection

Module 2 will teach you what we mean by data protection. It will focus on the roles that data protection plays in your school as well as the rights of the subjects.

Module 3: Accountability

Module 3 will focus on the data protection officer (DPO), senior information risk owner (SIRO), and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and what their roles are.

Module 4: Information loss and data breaches

Module 4 will inform you about the various types of information breaches as well as how to appropriately respond to one. It will cover the relevant actions and reporting mechanisms by which you must abide.

Module 5: Subject access requests

Module 5 will teach you about subject access requests (SARs) and how to appropriately respond to one. You will also learn best practices for handling SARs and why they may be beneficial to your school.

Module 6: Managing the process

Module 6 incorporates the Data Protection: Toolkit for Schools guidance from the Department for Education and demonstrates how it can be used to help you develop a successful data protection process.