A HEADTEACHER has issued a heartfelt apology after confidential documents about pupils were found blown across the school’s field.

Documents profiling seven students with special educational needs (SEN) from Kinver High School and Sixth Form were discovered by village resident Ian Macey while he was out walking his dog.

The Individual Learning Profiles (ILPs) included the name of the child, their date of birth, why they are on the SEN register and what the school is doing to help them.

To highlight the data protection issue, Mr Macey recorded a video of the papers he found and uploaded it onto Facebook. However, parents were quick to identify the pupils.

Mr Macey removed the video soon after he realised that students could be identified and handed the ILPs over to the local police.

Speaking to the News, headteacher Chris Rogers said the school was made aware of the incident the day after Mr Macey found the documents.

Mr Rogers said: “We are at fault and we are very upset, because it is something that should never have happened.

“We already have procedures in place to stop this from happening and those procedures have been reviewed with all our members of staff.

“It appeared to have been done accidentally by an individual staff member who had thrown away a lot of stuff at the end of the school year, and the ILPs were part of a larger bunch of papers.

“The individual shouldn’t have done what they did, as our procedure is to have all private documents shredded.

“As soon as we found out what had happened, we investigated. We wrote to the parents of the children involved and explained the situation to them.

“We also reported ourselves to the ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) for a data protection breach.

“We haven’t heard back from the ICO since, but we are in the view that we will be fined and if we are, we will accept it as we made a mistake.

“I apologised for what happened, and it is sad as we are known as a school for children with SEN and for that to happen will have a big effect on us.”

Due to an interview with Mr Macey being uploaded on the Youtube channel ‘The Modern Idiot’ a few days after the incident, other parents were made aware of the situation.

Mr Rogers said he has now written to all parents in a bid to explain what has happened and how the school has attempted to rectify the mistake.

He added: “We made sure that no more documents were out, because as soon as we were told about what happened we searched the school field and also the woods behind the school.

“I now have the seven ILPs in the school so I could use them to show the parents of the children concerned what information was found.

“We have tried to put a mistake we made right in the best way we can. I believe we did all we could do.”