Resources and learning

This guidance focuses on the unique needs of those working within and on the frontline of the education sector.

Whether you're a teacher, a principal, an administrator, a member of a school board, a speech language therapist, a guidance counsellor, operate an ECE service, or are a service provider providing services to learners, this guidance has been created for you.

In this guidance we use “education provider” to mean any organisation that is on the frontline of the education sector. This includes schools, ECE services and service providers. This guidance may also be useful to other non-education sector agencies working with children and young people.

In this guidance

Download a PDF of the full guidance (PDF, 2.2MB).

How to use this guidance

This guidance has been designed to be easy to navigate and read, and simple to apply in your day-to-day work. While it focuses on the privacy of learners, much of the guidance also applies to other personal information you may hold (e.g. personal information about staff and parents).

This guidance is set out in chapters that focus on specific areas of the Privacy Act 2020 (the Privacy Act). Each chapter identifies relevant information privacy principles (IPPs), or sections of the Privacy Act, then provides guidance on how to apply those provisions in practice. Each chapter also provides links to additional resources and tools to help you embed good privacy practices into your day-to-day work.

This guidance also includes chapters on topics like the rights of children and young people, education technology, and health and learning support information. We recommend that you read through the guidance completely, but if you are short on time, you can navigate directly to the chapter or topic of interest.

This guidance focuses on the Privacy Act, but other legislation such as the Education and Training Act 2020, the Public Records Act 2005, the Oranga Tamariki Act 1989, or the Family Violence Act 2018 also apply to learner information. Where appropriate, the guidance refers to other applicable legislation and how it works with the Privacy Act.

While this guidance aims to help you make good privacy decisions with confidence, it cannot resolve every privacy issue that may arise. Some situations may require a more detailed analysis of the Privacy Act or other legislation. When these situations arise, you should seek legal advice.

This guidance builds on our free online toolkit Poupou Matatapu, which provides a framework for setting up and managing your privacy program.

Acknowledgements

This guidance was developed with the help of our education expert advisory group, who made sure this guidance was practical and useful for the education sector.