Unit 7 of 12
Seeing your own personal information
People have a right to see the information the school holds about them, with limited grounds to withhold.
Meet a former staff member
The Privacy Act gives people the right to ask for the personal information an organisation holds about them. A former teacher who left after fifteen years is now in a dispute over unpaid relief hours. To take it further, they need copies of their own timesheets as evidence.
They can ask in any way they like — a phone call, an email, a letter, in person, or through the OPC's AboutMe tool. There is no special form. Note that the right is the individual's own: a parent of an adult or near-adult student does not automatically have the right to that student's information.
Responding to a request
Once a request is made, the school has up to 20 working days to decide whether it can be granted and to tell the requester the decision. If the school declines, it must give a reason. Valid reasons include:
- The information doesn't exist or can't be found.
- Releasing it would unreasonably reveal another person's personal information.
- There is another specific ground in the Act for withholding it.
Decide whether the school must provide the timesheets in each case.
The timesheets must be printed from a system, and the only staff member who can do it works on Fridays. Must the school provide them?
The hours sit on a master roster that also shows every other staff member's hours and pay. Must the school provide it?
Decide whether the reason for withholding is reasonable.
Timesheets are routinely deleted after seven years, and some of the requested ones were destroyed in that normal cycle. Reasonable?
The timesheets were deleted by a manager once the dispute looked likely, to avoid having to hand them over. Reasonable?