By Dave McKay | July 30, 2020
ICO Exemptions on Exam Scripts
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, most school and university exams have been abandoned. Teachers and lecturers will be conducting and submitting pupil assessments. These will form the basis of grades.
We’re getting a lot of questions regarding the rights of the pupils and students, under the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).
What people want to know is, can you use the GDPR to find out what has been submitted by the institution about a student or pupil?
The answer is “Yes, but”.
Yes, but the ICO’s ’exam scripts exemption’ applies to the information used to award students’ grades. Institutions don’t have to provide a response to data subject access requests from students for information about provisional grades, teacher assessments, and/or rank orders, until after the results are published.
The institution must respond within:
- Five months of receiving the request; or
- 40 days of announcing the exam results
whichever comes sooner.
Source: ICO - Exam Script Exemptions