Use of surnames

[TeenMinusTests]

On another thread about muddling up students with same name (& surname), a poster has written:

^GDPR limits the use teachers can make of surnames. You can’t use them on any register planner or notes that are being used at home, for example. Therefore teachers are much less familiar with them
Than they would have been a few years ago.^

Is that true? it sounds unreasonable to me.

Not in any school I know. Surnames still used on everything.

Some schools have very strict rules about the data you are allowed to take off site.

I'm a trainee and I was told by my uni that I'm not allowed to take books home to mark because they have names on so it's breaking GDPR rules.

Seems a pain really. Eg. I wanted to make some cute drawer labels over the summer for my new class, but can't do it if I'm not allowed to take a class list home.

I'm a trainee and I was told by my uni that I'm not allowed to take books home to mark because they have names on so it's breaking GDPR rules.
Nonsense.

Thank you. I became a SAHM before GDPR came in under its current format, but before then I worked in a policy/process/procedures role (including ISO9000 for those that know of it.)

The conclusion I came to is that people/organisations often tie themselves up unnecessarily in complete knots by making up rules that aren't needed to meet regulations/standards without thinking of the cost/benefit/practicalities of situations. I used to spend a lot of effort getting people to remove restrictions they had put on themselves (and then often not followed).

I'm not a teacher but I can't really think of any good reason not to let staff take books home to mark, provided they don't leave them out on their coffee table for visitors to flick through.

I travel by train to work. If I'm marking on the train, I make sure anyone wandering past can't see what I'm writing. We checked this with the data controller at school and it was fine.
I am absolutely not permitted to mark exams for the board anywhere public but that's a different matter.

In one training session I was in someone mentioned that the threshold was 3 pieces of data. Someone jokingly pointed out that exercise books had first name, last name, class, year group, assessment scores, target grades, therefore the existence of exercise books was a GDPR concern. SLT clarified that exercise books were fine, but some schools are much tighter on what leaves site.

As long as you aren't leaving everything at a bus stop in Kent...

Depends on the school! My previous school didn’t allow surnames apart from Tom E and Tom H when there was name repetition in the class. Lots say no names on classroom displays of pictures eg I could label Freya’s work on the wall but couldn’t say a pic of her was Freya. My current school has surnames on books and weirdly my KS1 class have got very into surnames recently finding it hilarious if I call them Lucy Smith and wanting me to remember all 30 middle names. Some of the teachers in my school have successfully argued they won’t have work email on their phone as a potential GDPR risk

@Rachellow I'm intrigued by staff needing to argue GDPR is a reason for not having school email on their personal phones. Why wouldn't they just point out that it's a personal phone?