To flame the school for sending kiddo home with someone else's report & they got hers

[GallopingHeffalumps]

What the title says. It's not ok, right, if the school sends your child home with another kids report & they get your child's report?

We have shared pics of them over messenger & kids will swap them back at school on Monday. But wondering how much of a fuss to make to the school about the mess-up. Thoughts?

Actually, school are in breech of data protection. Im a teacher, so usually defensive of schools, but this us a no no.

When did you actually discover you had the wrong report?

Like most governance issues, data protection seems like overkill unless you look at the very rare scenarios where everything lines up and something awful happens. So the wrong report is sent out and it contains sensitive information and it ends up in the hands of someone malicious and serious harm is done. At a previous job, a very simple error in data protection was made and someone's neighbour (who was randomly in the building) found out very sensitive information about them. We couldn't make it better.

As an organisation you follow the correct process every time so you follow it when it really matters. You want to know when it goes wrong but hasn't caused any harm so you can learn from it.

So in OPs shoes I'd be nice about it, but I would mention it.

In general, even if you have to make a complaint, you'll be taken more seriously if nice.

The ICO fined Greenwich University 120k for a data breach though...

I wouldn't care that the reports were swapped as long as I got to see our correct one. I would tell them for their info but not complain otherwise. Saying Kiddo is no problem to me, either.

The school need to be informed, they have 72 hours from being made aware to report the breech. They are unlikely to be fined but must put protocols in place to ensure it doesnt happen again. My dds school sent home data collection sheets with the wrong children. They reported the breech and followed protocol. They were not fined. The member of staff who had given them to the wrong children was spoken to. Heads will not roll if you report this, but you absolutely should report it.

Loving the fact that when the OP doesn’t get the response they wanted, we’re suddenly all drunken bitches

In schools the PSA/TAs put the reports into the envelops. So the poor woman/man was probably asked to do this by management on top of all their other jobs. And told to do it quickly. So if your aim in emailing the headteacher (come on, really?) was to get someone in trouble then I hope you're pleased it was a poorly paid and overworked TA who you took fire at. 

Tell them that this happened, yes. They need to know because it is important they review the process for checking envelopes / names so that it doesn’t happpen again.

‘Flame’, no.

It is possibly to communicate important things keyboard warrior prat-dom.

In general the ICO would attempt to improve practice anywhere before fining. I'm not saying that one little breach like the OP's would result in a fine. And yes, it is likely schools would receive more leniency. But there would have to come a point where the severity of a breach would have to lead to more than 'improving best practice.'..and that is more likely to happen somewhere where staff are already not completely careful with personal data.

All I'm saying is that the worst case ramifications are a little bit more potentially severe than 'fgs we all make mistakes, get a grip'.

This happened to me. We swapped them. Teacher apologised. Nobody got flamed.

It's not like it's all your medical history that the GPs have got mixed up. It's a school report. Meh.

Shit happens. It's annoying but I wouldn't even give it a second thought.
You could get all 'confidentiality breach' about it... or not.
Why tilt at windmills?

Did you read the other child's report, OP?

I find it interesting the the parents of kids with SEN seem to think their kids report is particularly sensitive or private. One poster said her daughter would be horrified if it happened to her due to SEN. It seems that it's the parents that are ashamed or embarrassed by their kids needs. Quite shocking really.

YANBU
This was a breach of the Data Protection Act
The school are required to report it

shocking how so many on here are minimising this and turning on the OP for daring to complain when a school breaks the law

Is it a breach of gdpr ? - probably. Would I care ? Definitely not.

Why is it that just because someone has invented a new law - that all of the sudden the balance of employing some common sense and simply swapping the reports without any kind of drama - just disappears out the door. ! Utterly bizarre. Especially the bit about emailing the headteacher. Why do that ?

Another one who in receiving the wrong appraisal would simply stop reading and return it. Edwinbear why so uptight about simple human frailties?

edwinbear wow! you are so perfect, I pity the poor teachers and other people that have to cross your path who are nearly human and make mistakes, you are unrelenting in your perfectionism. There is a big difference between friends acidently reading each other's Childs report and insider trading
Also being so ashamed of your child's SEN status is sad

No one will get fired or unfairly told off. The school absolutely will not get fined as long as they report it. The person who put the reports into the wrong envelope will be spoken to, then management will look at the reporting procedure and seek to close the gap. Some of the comments on her about an 'unfortunate person on a low wage being shouted at/blamed' are OTT. There are some pupils who need a higher level of protection than others. We've had pupils who we have to deny the existence of, should anyone phone and enquire about them. Sending home the wrong report, for 99% of pupils is nothing more than an inconvenience and irritation. For some pupils it could expose them to danger. These are the pupils we protect by having a strong data protection system. Report it, dont worry about it, let the school take steps to avoid it happening again.

Calm down, no one has been flamed. Mistake spotted straight away yesterday & politely pointed out to head as something to be aware of. Head is only email point of contact for (a fairly small) school so am on first name terms with them already. Really not a big deal as I do know the other parent of but would be good if they can try not to make the same mistake again, which is only possible if they know it has happened. Clearly this is a data breach esp now with GDPR so something they do need to be mindful of.

No more drama, flame in title was clearly the wrong word to use; I was genuinely not sure how much fuss to make. I won't be back posting again, thanks for the helpful replies.

Kiddo -- just a word I use, my girls are girls. For the record other kiddo did not have anywhere close to the same name. Never realized how contentious kiddo would be and confess I am now saying kiddo as many times as possible just for giggles!

Yes I am wondering did you read the other childs report. They are fairly standard DD has HFA and other SEN, these are never ever highlighted in her class school report.

I have only ever heard the expression 'kiddo' used by an elderly relative about their grown up child.

Whilst this is a data breach and it did need reporting to the head teacher (they need to keep a note of these breaches to fix how they do things) it is not serious enough to report to the ICO.

Most data breaches are not reported to the ICO or nothing would ever get done! Imagine if a school reported every little breach X by however many schools there are in the UK! They should have a data protection officer (or have bought into a company that does it) and they will be the ones to decide what is reportable and what isn't.

Galloping - you did the right thing. You then vented on here because you were (understandably) annoyed. That is where it always goes a bit wrong on AIBU! People love to tell you YABU. Ive even seen people tell posters that they ABU because in their OP they are clearly not BU. Therefore, shouldn't have posted!

We once went to parents evening and had a teacher telling us in exact detail about all of our ds’s failings and shortcomings. We nodded and agreed and it was almost over when she mentioned some coursework.

Eh, I said, surely there is no coursework? Then she realised she’d confused two boys with the same first name and our ds was a star . She felt absolutely terrible, we thought it was pretty funny.

Human error. Haven’t RTFT but possibly emailing the head was a bit spiteful and resolving it with the teacher would have been nicer. Forget that if you’ve since detailed other terrible shortcomings.