Date updated: Tuesday 4th December 2018
In this month's edition:
- New Guidance on Making Significant Changes to an Existing Academy
- Academies directing off-site to improve behaviour: Getting it right
- Social media: Protecting schools and staff from online abuse
- Fiduciary Duties of Governors
- Liability for School buildings
- Data leak by disgruntled employee - Employer liable?
- Brief Alerts December 2018
New Guidance on Making Significant Changes to an Existing Academy
The Department for Education (“DfE”) has updated its guidance on making significant changes to an open academy (“New Guidance”). This article looks at the key amendments in the New Guidance.
Academies directing off-site to improve behaviour: Getting it right
The debate on exclusions and alternative provision continues to rage. Following on from our recent articles on exclusions from a head teacher and governor perspective, we turn now to Alternative Provision (AP).
Social media: Protecting schools and staff from online abuse
The rise in popularity of social media means messages and opinions can be shared and spread at an unprecedented rate. Whilst this is often convenient, allowing us to keep up to date with global events in real time, it also brings with it issues previously unseen: the setting up of fake profiles aimed at harming individuals and businesses and the spread of malicious rumours at the touch of a button. Schools are not immune to these issues which can cause distress and harm to targeted staff members. What should schools do?
Fiduciary Duties of Governors
A maintained school’s use of its delegated budget has recently been considered by the High Court: which ruled that a school’s former headteacher and two governors (the “Defendants”) had breached a fiduciary duty they owed to a local authority (the “Claimant”) under the School Standards and Framework Act (SSFA) 1998 by issuing payments from the delegated budget improperly. This article explores the case (Brent LBC v Davies and others) and comments on whether the ruling may also apply to MATs.
Liability for School buildings
A recent report that school buildings constructed by Western Building Services in Ireland have been forced to close due to maintenance and safety concerns has put back on the agenda the issue of who is responsible for any injuries caused by poorly maintained school buildings.
Data leak by disgruntled employee - Employer liable?
On 12 January 2014, a disgruntled employee at Morrisons Supermarket, Andrew Skelton, posted online the payroll data for 99,998 employees of Morrisons. This included NI numbers, names, addresses, date of birth, gender, bank sort codes, bank account numbers, and salary. The employees affected brought a class action against Morrisons on the basis that Morrisons was ‘vicariously’ liable for the criminal actions of a rogue employee in disclosing personal information. This was despite Morrisons taking preventative steps and the employee concerned being convicted of a criminal offence.
Brief Alerts December 2018
- Exclusions Violence Against Teachers
- Consultation on School Security Guidance
- Consultation on Mandatory Reporting of Forced Marriage
- Curriculum Slides from Ofsted
- Illegal schools
- Fire Risk
- The ‘Little Extra’ Money
- Cyber Problems
- Data
- Bullying
- Uniform Costs
- Vicarious Liability - Staff Parties
- Data 2
- Thoughts for the Christmas Quiz
GDPR Services for Academy Trusts and Maintained Schools
GDPR Support Bank of Hours
The Client can buy a five hour support package at a blended rate of £230 per hour (plus VAT) and can add to in units of 2 hours. Any hours not used after 2 years expire. As this is offered at a reduced hourly rate, the retainer discount does not apply.
This product is designed for:
clients who still need help with implementing the GDPR clients who have not signed up to our retainer service but will need routine GDPR assistance (perhaps to support the DPO) clients who are signed up to the retainer service but are likely to have GDPR support needs going beyond the limit of their legal retainer and who are looking for certainty on costs and a cheaper rate than our standard hourly rates.
The GDPR Guidance Pack Updating Service
This is for existing purchasers of the GDPR Guidance Pack. When you purchased our GDPR Guidance Pack, you received the benefit of updates until 25th May 2018. We are offering the opportunity to renew this for a further year until 25th May 2019.
This further update service costs £300 plus VAT (or 250+ VAT for existing SK Legal Retainer clients) for the further one year period ending 25 May 2019 (no retainer discount applies).
The update service will include monthly updates (except August) and GDPR Guidance Pack updating, when we deem that changes to the Pack are required.
We envisage that there will be lots of new guidance to share over the next year and we will interpret this for the academy trust/school context, making helpful observations and recommendations.
If you would like to renew for a further year, please email EducationGDPR@stoneking.co.uk. If your school or trust has not purchased the GDPR Guidance pack and you are interested in finding out more, please email EducationGDPR@stoneking.co.uk.
Stone King Education Retainer Clients
One of your benefits to the retainer service is access to an area of our website exclusively for retainer clients. A recent survey showed that some of you were not aware of this valuable benefit. The area includes a suite of template school and staff policies, guidance documents, your regional office contact sheets and back copies of our monthly newsletters. We are making improvements and adding to the area all the time. If you do not know your login details please get in touch with our Marketing Team at MarketingWebsiteRequests@stoneking.co.uk who will be able to retrieve them for you. If you have any other queries, please contact your retainer manager. Finally, don’t forget to pick up your free event code from that part of the website to secure your free access to all of our Stone King seminars.
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