Managing data retention for your MIS data

Your school is responsible for defining and managing appropriate data retention policies for student and staff records. All data in Arbor is ultimately controlled by the school.

Arbor will flag student and staff records red in your retention dashboard when they have surpassed the time period suggested by the Limitation Act 1980. Your school may have reason to hold records for different periods of time. The Department for Education has released a data protection toolkit that includes retention guidance.

Arbor will automatically flag records that have passed the automatically calculated system-set data retention period. It is not possible to change this period in Arbor.

To prevent accidental deletions, this dashboard can only be used to delete records highlighted red. If your school’s policy requires any records to be deleted sooner, this dashboard cannot be used - please see below for what to do in this scenario.

Data that can be deleted using the dashboard

Student data

Go to School > Users & Security > Data Retention > Student records.

Records will be highlighted red and can be deleted using this dashboard when whichever the greatest of these is true:

• it is 6 years after the student’s leaving date from the school
• it is on or after the 24th birthday of the child
• if relating to more than one child, it is on or after the 24th birthday of the youngest child

By the Limitation Act 1980, once a child reaches 18, they have a further 6 years in which they may make a legal claim.

Any students it is possible to delete in bulk will flag in red.

Tick the students to delete, and use the Bulk action button to select Permanently Delete Selected Students.

Students that will be deleted will be marked with a red cross.

Students that won't be deleted will be marked with an yellow flag - this is because the data retention period has not yet been reached. You'd need to use the alternate method outlined below to delete them.

Click the Delete students button to permanently delete all records of the person on Arbor.

Please note, guardians will be deleted if all the students linked to a guardian are deleted. To delete guardians not linked to a student, take a look at this article.

As the deletion of a student may take a little while, they might still show in the grid after you click the delete button.  In this case, you'll see they're being deleted in the Deletion in Progress column.

Staff data

Go to School > Users & Security > Data Retention > Staff records.

Records will be highlighted red and can be deleted using this dashboard 6 years after the employee’s contract end date.

Tick the staff to delete, and use the Bulk action button to select Permanently Delete Selected Staff.

Staff that will be deleted will be marked with a red cross.

Staff that won't be deleted will be marked with an yellow flag - this is because the data retention period has not yet been reached. You'd need to use the alternate method outlined below to delete them.

Click the Delete staff button to permanently delete all records of the person on Arbor.

Deleting data outside of the retention period

You may wish to delete profiles before the retention period has been reached. You can't do this in bulk using the retention dashboard.

Guardian data

You can see how to do this here: Deleting a single guardian

Staff data

You can see how to do this here: Deleting a single staff member

Student data

You can see how to do this here: Deleting a student who is not a duplicate