ABOUT US
The Northern Ireland Council for Integrated Education develops new integrated schools by working with groups of parents. We also support existing integrated schools to expand and the transformation of other schools to integrated status.
The process for this work is called a Development Proposal and the background information which supports this document is called a Case for Change. These are developed by NICIE, working with school or school group, consulted upon by the Education Authority and eventually decided upon by the Department of Education.
NICIE is the data controller of the personal information we hold about potential pupils for integrated schools and their parents/families/carers/legal guardians. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use the personal information which we collect.
We are required under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to notify you of the information contained in this privacy notice.
We collect and use potential pupil information under the Education Act (NI) 2014 and other legislation such as the Education Reform Order (NI) 1989. You may find the specific legislation at https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/publications/de-primary-legislation
The potential pupil information you provide to us is information which is provided to us on a voluntary basis. When collecting information from you we will let you have a choice in this.
This notice applies to prospective, current and former pupils and their families/carers/legal guardians and those applying for a place at the new integrated school and their families/carers/legal guardians. We may update this notice at any time but if we do so, we will inform you as soon as reasonably practicable.
It is important that you read and retain this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information and what your rights are under the GDPR.
If you have any questions about this privacy notice or how we handle personal information, please contact the Data Controller who will deal with your query. The Data Controller can be contacted on admin@nicie.org.uk, 25 College Gardens, Belfast, BT9 6BS or by telephone on 028 9097 2910.
Our Data Protection Officer monitors the NICIE’s data protection procedures to ensure they meet the standards and requirements of the GDPR. Please contact Data Protection Officer on admin@nicie.org.uk, 25 College Gardens, Belfast, BT9 6BS or by telephone on 028 9097 2910.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues. The ICO’s details are as follows:
The Information Commissioner’s Office – Northern Ireland
3rd Floor
14 Cromac Place,
Belfast
BT7 2JB
Telephone: 028 9027 8757 / 0303 123 1114
Email: ni@ico.org.uk
HOW DO WE COLLECT AND HOLD PERSONAL INFORMATION?
We collect some personal information about prospective pupils and their families/carers/legal guardians when we are assessing the parental demand for Integrated Education in an area through the use of Expression of Interest forms or other surveys.
We will sometimes collect additional information from third parties such as the Education Authority, Department of Education, examination board or the previous school or pre-school facility attended by a pupil.
WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT, STORE AND USE ABOUT OUR POTENTIAL PUPILS?
Personal information is information that identifies you and relates to you. We will collect, store and use the following categories of personal information about our potential pupils:
WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT, STORE AND USE ABOUT OUR PUPILS’/ PARENTS/FAMILIES/CARERS/LEGAL GUARDIANS?
We will collect, store and use the following categories of personal information about our prospective pupils’/parents/families/carers/legal guardians:
We will only use personal information when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use personal information relating to our potential pupils and their parents/families/carers/legal guardians where we need to comply with our legal obligations and where it is needed in the public interest for us to exercise our authority as a non-departmental public body (NDPB) and arm’s length body of the Department of Education.
In some cases we may use personal information where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
We may also use your personal information, less frequently to protect a pupil’s or their family’s interests (or someone else’s interests). For example, when investigating a complaint made by another pupil or parent.
We keep personal information electronically on NICIE’s information management systems, or manually in indexed filing systems.
We will use personal data, including special category data, to develop and support a Case for Change to open a new integrated school, expand an existing integrated school or transform an existing school to integrated status.
CONSENT
Whilst the majority of the personal data provided to NICIE is required for us to comply with our legal obligations, some of that information is provided on a voluntary basis through parental consent (namely, a parent’s/carer’s/legal guardian’s express agreement). A pupil aged 13 or over is considered capable of giving consent themselves and will not require express agreement from a parent/carer/legal guardian. However, if a child is not considered capable of giving consent themselves for example, due to an identified special educational need, an adult with parental responsibility may exercise the child’s data protection rights on their behalf.
If we ask for your consent to use personal information, you can take back this consent at any time. Please contact NICIE if you would like to withdraw any consent you have given.
HOW LONG IS THE INFORMATION STORED FOR?
We will only keep personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it (for example, to develop new integrated schools or transform existing schools) and including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
We do not store personal data forever; we only hold pupil and family data for as long as we are legally able to do so. However, sometimes we will keep personal information for historical reasons (e.g. founding pupils’ names, founding parents’ details or group photographs) but you will always have a right to ask for your data to be destroyed.
This is a link to the Department of Education Document Retention and Disposal Policy which can be found at https://www.education-ni.gov.uk/publications/disposal-records-schedule.This will give you more information about how long we keep personal information.
In determining the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.
DATA SECURITY
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a need to know. They will only process personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator (currently the Information Commissioner’s Office) of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.
We may have to share potential pupil and their family’s data with third parties, including third-party service providers and other bodies such as:
We do not share information about our potential pupils with anyone without consent unless the law and our policies allow us to do so. We only permit access to personal data for specified purpose and in accordance with our instructions.
We are required to share pupils’ data with the Department of Education and/or the Education Authority on a statutory basis. This data sharing underpins achieving funding for a new integrated school, expansion of an existing integrated school or the transformation to integrated status of an existing school. We may also share information with the NHS.
YOUR RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE AND RESTRICTION
Under GDPR, pupils/parents/families and carers have the right to request access to information about them that we hold. To make a request for your personal information, or be given access to your child’s educational record, contact the Data Controller who will deal with your query. The Data Controller can be contacted via email on admin@nicie.org.uk, by writing to NICIE 1st Floor, James House, 2-4 Cromac Avenue, Belfast, BT7 2JA and by telephone on 028 9694 4200.
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.
Under certain circumstances, by law a parent/carer/legal guardian or a child over the age of 13 (who is considered competent to do so) has the right to:
NI Council for Integrated Education
1st Floor, James House
2-4 Cromac Avenue
Belfast
BT7 2JA
Company Registered number: NI022427
Charity registered number: 100310
Telephone – Office: 02896 944 200
Telephone – Office Manager: 07732496434
Email: admin@nicie.org.uk
© 2025 NI Council for Integrated Education. | Privacy Policy | Cookie Policy
NI Council for Integrated Education
1st Floor, James House
2-4 Cromac Avenue
Belfast
BT7 2JA
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