Throughout the year, there are a number of special occasions when we invite you into school to share special moments with the children. This may be a nativity play, a performance, sports day or any other open event. On these occasions, we are not able to prevent parents or carers from taking photographs. Obviously you will want to take photographs for the family album and we would encourage this. At open events, we will not prevent anyone from taking photographs as we do not have the power to do this. Occasionally we might ask that parents do not take photographs during a performance as the flashes can put the children off and at the end we would provide an opportunity to do this.

We have to trust that parents will not use images which feature other children for any purposes other than for the family album without the consent of their parents.

There are a number of things that schools need to consider when using images of people, especially children, including:

The Data Protection Act 1998:

• We must get the consent of all parents of children appearing in the photograph, video, DVD or web cam image before it is created
• Applies where images are clearly identifiable
• We must be clear why and what we will be using the image for and who will see it
• If we use images from another agency, we need to check that the agency has obtained informed consent

Safeguarding Issues:

• We don’t use full names or personal contact details of the subject of any image we use
• Children and families fleeing domestic abuse may be recognised via photos/images and whereabouts revealed to an abusive partner
• No images of a looked after child should be created or used without prior consent from Children’s Specialist Services, Social Care
• We don’t use images of children in swimming costumes or other revealing dress – this reduces the risk of inappropriate use
• We always destroy images once consent has expired