Teacher hand delivered certificate usually given out in class.

[howmanycorners]

I don’t know what to make of this, dc is in primary school and every week someone gets a certificate.
Suddenly I saw my child’s teacher walk past the lounge window at about 8 pm and post a certificate through the door.
Aibu to find it a bit strange and wonder why she did this having had to look up our address and purposely drive to our house when all certificates are handed out in school and she would see my child in the morning?

For those going on about GDPR, whilst I haven't seen the consent forms for the school I'm pretty sure that an address would be covered for communication from the school. I can't imagine it specifies that documents must only be sent by royal mail and that hand delivery is explicitly excluded.

It doesn't give them carte blanche to use all data however they see fit within one of those points by any communication means. They wouldn't write to the child's GP without parental permission to provide progress updates and care about little Johnny's cough. They wouldn't use Angela's SATs data to promote the school without asking the parents.

I've been thinking about this as I am quite surprised how bothered people are.
My kids went to a large primary with a small catchment and pretty much any teacher would know where a lot of pupils lived as they would walk past their houses on the way to their cars. I also knew where a few teachers lived (but most live out of catchment).

I would have no problem with this as it's a lovely supportive school and I wouldn't question the motive for a second. On reading this thread though, I would discourage any teacher from doing this, as they are opening themselves to all kinds of gossip and allegations.

Even if OP child said "Miss came to my house last night", that could spiral around the playground into rumours.
Poor teachers but this is the way of the world now.

That's right, it's a 3 part test in which need to be passed in order.

Purpose - this fails because hand delivering a non urgent certificate is a personal errand, not a legitimate school function

Necessity - this fails because handing it out in school achieves the same goal without needing to access the address

Balance - fails because the OP's right to privacy outweighs a non urgent certificate.

I mean the school could argue this but the ICO would shut it down fast 😂 hand delivering a star of the week certificate to a pupil's home address without precedent or agreement, that's a stretch to fit that under monitoring and reporting on progress, come on 🤣

Well the OP can raise it with the ICO and let us know what penalty the school gets. I mean this is a person who couldn’t even say “could I ask why you dropped it off rather than just gave it to little Annie”, but maybe this is just the crusade that will finally rouse her.

Precisely. Or start by making a formal complaint to the school.

This isn't about whether it should be taken to the ICO or not. Personally myself I would ask the teacher.

The point I'm making is, it is a clear breach of GDPR and on that basis, the OP has every right to feel that it was intrusive. Her posts have been very measured and she doesn't deserve the responses she's got here.

I expect the school would be asked about their GDPR training and told to improve it everything doesn't have to be a penalty - education ironically is the fix.

I expect the OP is getting the responses she is getting because she posted “Aibu to find it a bit strange and wonder why she did this having had to look up our address and purposely drive to our house when all certificates are handed out in school and she would see my child in the morning?”, but didn’t apparently ‘wonder’ enough just to ask the teacher.

Yes.

Alternatively, as I said in a previous post, since this has made the OP uncomfortable she can contact the school office and say that she'd rather not have school communications hand delivered.

AIBU would be a barren wasteland if people just asked things, took action, ignored things or got over themselves.

So you took the trouble to bring this to Mumsnet, yet you didn't take the obvious opportunity to ask the teacher why the certificate was hand delivered?

Well seeings as posters have presented all kinds of scenarios as to why the teacher did it, there are also all kinds of reasons why the OP didn't raise it yesterday.

Perhaps she was in a rush to get somewhere after pick up
Perhaps somebody was already talking to the teacher or there were a line of people waiting to do so and she decided to wait until next week
Perhaps she internalised all the comments on this thread and thought she'd be unreasonable to even ask

OP, as she could give it to your child the following morning I find this very strange.
Even if she couldn't give it in the morning, i would find it very strange.

I would think it is an invasion of your privacy for her to call like this.

I wouldn't dream of calling to a teachers door, for the same reason.

You could ask the Principal is this normal as you found it strange.

I wouldn't like it, so you are not alone.

Those are the lawful basis for processing the data - the school processes data under several of those.

The teacher DID have a legitimate reason to access the data - to deliver relevant materials to the child.

We all do GDPR training and delivering school relevant items by hand or post is acceptable and allowed under GDPR legislation.

This teacher did not make an unannounced “visit” (I do have to do these and they too are allowed under the correct circumstances), she simply put something through the door.

I wouldn’t like it.

But teachers did call at our house to drop things off. One knocked on the door at lunch time to say that my child needed antihistamines, and took them in for them!

But they went to a village school and most staff lived in the village. When one of the teachers was off ill, the parents from the class took flowers round to her house! She didn’t like it either (she was a friend of mine and I was there when they turned up!)

And what if a member of staff happened to be leafletting an area with, say, advertising flyers (which my school does regularly). Does that mean that they have “visited” those homes including some which may be homes of pupils?

Of course not! Putting something through the letterbox is NOT a visit!

Filling in forms is the main reason. Loads of medical forms ask for the child's DOB, address etc. in primary, these are generally filled in by class teachers.

As I've already pointed out, this situation fails under the 3 part test of purpose, necessity and balance required for it to be classed as a legitimate interest. "To deliver relevant materials to the child" isn't automatically a legitimate interest in itself unless it satisfies each of the 3 parts. It satisfies none. And there's no way you could even begin to argue the data was accessed under any of the other 5 bases.

It's really quite concerning how people are claiming to be GDPR trained but in actuality have a very poor understanding of it.

No. What’s quite concerning is that people have turned into such petty jobsworth’s that they can’t just see something as ‘teacher just dropped certificate off’. Or that adult women can’t just ask why something was done. That’s wayyyyy more ‘concerning’.

As a teacher I do think it was an odd thing to do. Why not wait till the child is back in school? Only reason to do something like this would be if it was the last day before they left the school and the teacher had let them know they were coming.

Definitely. Our Y6 teacher is currently filling in loads of these for transition. She gets google forms from the secondary schools and transfers data from our MIS including addresses, assessments, attendance etc.

Well I passed my data controller exam with flying colours and our GDPR audit last Autumn flagged zero issues….

No, because the two situations are not comparable.

The first is an individual pupil's data is accessed with the purpose of going to that single address to deliver something. The word visit is entirely appropriate here, meaning to go to a place.

The second is that a wider number of houses are being leafletted. The data being used in order to leaflet these isn't personal data which has been accessed; it is based solely on location. If pupils' homes are included it is merely incidental. This would therefore not be classed as visiting a pupil's home.