Information (assessment papers, referral forms, data-gathering questionnaires) relating to

assessments which are performed directly with Edinburgh Dyslexia Services will be retained, in secure storage, for no more than one school term after issuing the report, after which it will be shredded. The report will be kept until the child is 24 years of age or in the case of as assessments, for 6 years after assessment takes place.

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When assessments are carried out through other providers (for example xxx etc), the reports and papers are passed to that provider for management within their own policies. In these cases, Edinburgh Dyslexia Services will not retain any data relating to the assessment for more than 1 school term after issuing the report.

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Our primary communication with our clients is performed through electronic means. We will only use methods of electronic communication which are appropriate for the data being exchanged.  
Most communication occurs through email, which is stored securely on our email provider’s servers, and accessed through a number of client applications on several devices.  In general (unless covered by other parts of this policy) email is deleted 3 months after receipt.  
Other communications, for example over messaging applications or SMS, are deleted after the conclusion of the work undertaken.
Records of opt-outs from communications will be retained indefinitely, in order to maintain our ability to conform to our legal obligations.

 

 

In this section, live data refers to data that is relating to work which is ongoing or completed within the last school-term.  After this time it is either destroyed (in accordance with the policies above) or becomes ‘non-live’ data.
While live, electronic records are kept on computers with encrypted hard disks. Live data are backed up both to a cloud service (hosted by Sync.com using zero-knowledge encryption - https://www.sync.com/privacy/) and to physical backup media.  
Non-live data may be moved to encrypted containers within Microsoft’s cloud service Onedrive and also physically backed up.  
Cloud providers are not able to access any Education Access data.
Physical backups are encrypted using industry standard methods and are stored in a locked cabinet. Due to technical considerations, physical backups are not purged on a predictable basis.