Isn't this a pretty blatant GDPR breech?

[ThreeGlasses]

Applying for DD's primary school place on the council website

It asks if they have a sibling at the school, I said yes. They it asks for siblings name and DOB. I put them in and it pops up with the name of her school and asks if this is correct...I tried it with my friends child's name and DOB and it came up with her school.

So if you had a name and a DOB you could find the name of the primary school of any child in the county. And further than that, there is nothing stopping you from registering a non existent child just to get into the admissions application!

It's not great. It's also a safeguarding concern I would think.

Wow, that doesn't sound good at all. We quite often get "fishing" calls from an estranged parent or grandparent trying to establish if a child is in our school. I had no idea it was so easy via the LA site.

Thats slight worrying, especially from a safeguarding pov.

That’s terrible! Hugely risky for some children too. Can you raise it with the council?

I'm sending them an email now

Ours doesn't do that so it's not all LAs. It does seem like an absolutely massive safeguarding risk though and I wouldn't be impressed.

In mine you can add sibling details but you have to put them all in (including school) and then it just shows you what you've put in and asks if it is correct. I assume they check them on a database but as a person registering you cannot see any information you don't input yourself.

That's really not good and definitely not what all LAs do

Huge safeguarding risk for looked after children.

That's really shocking.

I presume that you have to be logged in already to get to that point in the process. It’s a small layer ofnlrotection, so not ideal, but it will at least stop everyone being able to access it. Definitely worth raising though.