Communicating with Parents and Carers
Worthing College
Communicating with parents Worthing College attaches great value to the support parents and carers provide for our students. As part of our obligations to protect your son or daughter’s data, we ask all new students for express permission to share information with their parents or carers. We emphasise to students how much we value this permission and we are delighted that almost 100% of students regularly give us their permission to share information about them with their parents or carers. We believe this is a heartening reflection of the value the students attach to the support they receive, and it enables us to build a successful three-way partnership. We share information with parents and carers in many ways: • Through our website www.worthing.ac.uk: parents and carers have a PIN giving secure access to a range of records such as attendance, progress reports, grades achieved and individual timetables. • By post to the home address: we send alerts about new information for parents and carers on the website and invitations to parents’ consultation evenings. • By telephone: we call when there are attendance concerns. • Face to face meetings by appointment. • We may also use contacts by email, text or fax where appropriate.
Feedback from parents indicates nearly 100% of parents are satisfied with the level of communication they receive and we are keen to maintain this high level of service. A small number of students withhold their consent for us to share information about them with their parents or carers. If they do this we ask them to let their parents or carers know about their decision. If permission is withheld we need parents and carers to be aware we cannot share the personal information listed above. This does not include generic information such as the dates of college events which is always available on the College website. The procedures we adopt apply to all students irrespective of their age to comply with the requirements of the Information Commissioner’s Office, published in: “The Framework Code of Practice for Sharing Personal Information” issued by the information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) October 2007.
Opportunity, Achievement, Success and Progression
Worthing College, Bolsover Road, Worthing, BN13 1NS Tel: 01903 243389 Fax: 01903 243390 Email: info@worthing.ac.uk
www.worthing.ac.uk