Confidentiality Statement

Student Services will create and maintain records of our interactions with students including key points discussed, agreed outcomes and any information which staff are obliged to record.  In most circumstances, we will not discuss or share these with anyone else without a student’s prior knowledge or consent. There are some exceptions to this which are important for you to understand.

The University’s Data Protection Code for Students, states that information will be shared between academic schools, service Units and the Principal’s Office in order to: 

  • Provide support services such as student welfare; 
  • Inform academic staff, in for example making decisions about academic progression, complaints, appeals and /or student misconduct;
  • Comply with legislation e.g. information about attendance required by UK Visa and Immigration; 
  • Where there is a reasonable belief of significant harm, the University may also share information with any party as necessary to protect your vital interests or the vital interests of another; this could include sharing details with healthcare professionals, 
    the police and / or your emergency contact. Additionally, where circumstances arise, the University might be required to share personal data for the purposes of crime prevention and detection. Where such arises, students will not be alerted to that fact. 

The University will be unable to maintain strict confidentiality where there is an over-riding duty of care. For example, if a student were to disclose that they have been or are a risk to others, the University may be compelled to act on that information to meet a duty of care obligation.

If you have any concerns about the practice of information sharing or storage of records, please discuss this with the member of staff you are seeing in Student Services or the University’s Data Protection officer who can be contacted by emailing dataprot@st-andrews.ac.uk. 

 

Records 

Typically records held by Student Services will be kept for a period of up to ten years after you have left the University before being destroyed.  You have a range of rights regarding information the University holds about you, including the right to request access to your records. If you wish to do so, please complete the Subject Access Request Form and return this to dataprot@st-andrews.ac.uk. For further information about your rights, please see information available on-line. 

 

Information for Parents and Supporters

There are many reasons why parents and supporters contact Student Services to ask about a student. Due to Data Protection legislation and the University’s confidentiality code we have a lawful duty to protect the privacy of all students. This means the University is unable to disclose personal data (even to parents), other than in the most exceptional circumstances.

Exceptional circumstances are very serious and rarely occur. In such cases the requirement to obtain consent before disclosing personal data might be waived if a student is at immediate risk.

All students provide the University with an emergency contact.  In situations where Student Services does share information with emergency contacts/families and with medical professionals, it is intended to be for the urgent support of the student. These situations are carefully considered and whenever possible the consent of the student is sought, if it has not already been obtained at an earlier stage. 

What does this mean in practice?

This means that we cannot, without a student’s permission, let parents or supporters know if they are attending lectures, their grades, what club/societies they are members of, their current address etc. It also means that we are unable to confirm to parents or supporters whether someone is a student.

If you have concerns, what can you do?

We welcome calls from parents or supporters who want to raise concerns with us. All concerns will be recorded and we will ensure this is followed up appropriately. This might mean that if you leave contact details with us, we will endeavour to pass them on and encourage the student (assuming the individual is a student at the University) to make contact. If the individual is not a student at the University the details will be destroyed. We won’t be able to tell you the outcome of this contact. You might also want to support the student to contact us directly as this allows us to respond more effectively.

If you have any questions or need to discuss this please contact us using the details below.

Our contact details are:

Advice and Support Centre
79 North Street
St Andrews
Fife
KY16 9AL
Scotland, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 (0)1334 46 2020
Fax:+44 (0)1334 46 1716

Email: theasc@st-andrews.ac.uk