Examining Best Practice to Ensure You Meet Your Obligations, Minimise Legal Exposure and Can Defend Your Legal Position
| Date | 15 August 2025 |
| Time | 11.00am-3.45 pm AEST (Syd/Mel/Bris time) |
| Format | Live Online & Recorded. The recording can be viewed until 15 September 2025 |
| Pricing | $440. Prices includes gst. |
| CPD | This PD addresses 7.2.2. of the Standards |
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Program
11.00 LawSense Welcome
11.05 Chairperson’s Introduction
Brenton Harty, Director of ICT and Privacy Officer, Presbyterian Ladies’ College; President, MITIE Inc.
11.10 Privacy and Confidentiality: Examining the Limits of Lawful Disclosure to Staff, Parents and Others
Key Privacy and Confidentiality Laws and Potential Reforms
- Outlining key laws applying to privacy, confidentiality and information sharing in schools
- Examining potential privacy reforms and impacts on schools
Learnings from Recent Privacy Cases, Including Against Schools
- Examining learnings for schools from recent privacy cases
Examining Challenging Scenarios:
Access Within a School to Student or Parent Information
- Examining the elements to consider in deciding what information different staff or departments within the school should be able to access
- Exploring optimum access and sharing within a school of student information, including access to and sharing of:
- medical information, including parent medical information
- disability assessments and reasonable adjustments
- counselling records
- student discipline or investigations
- police information
- parent financial information
Disclosure/Sharing Regarding Staff Issues
- Understanding what you can disclose to staff when you are dealing with complaints they have made against other staff
- Examining what you can disclose to other staff when a staff member is being investigated or has been subject to internal or external disciplinary action
- Examining what information you can disclose to staff about staff mental health issues
- Exploring what information you can provide school staff about disputes with parents
Disclosing to Parents, Including Separated Parents
- Exploring the types of records often required by parents
- Examining obligations to share student information with parents including:
- school internal notes or correspondence – what can be required for disclosure?
- providing student records:
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- sharing and consent from mature minors
- dealing with information sharing with separated parents
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- Complaints of bullying against students – what information can you provide to affected parents about the other student, their family or details of steps taken
- Providing information to parents about action against staff or staff mental health issues
Disclosure to the School Community of Staff Issues, Incidents or Responding to Media/Rumours
- Navigating disclosure to the school community where there has been an incident or issue, including when it has received media coverage
Disclosure to Other Schools, External Suppliers or Experts of Student Information
- Understanding the extent to which you can disclose student related matters to other schools, external suppliers or organisations interacting with the student
- Managing disclosure to external experts dealing with student mental health, disability or behaviour issues
Ben Tallboys, Principal, Russell Kennedy; Legal Counsel, Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA)
12.10 Break
12.20 Case Studies – Note-Taking in Schools: Examining Best Practice to Ensure You Meet Your Obligations and Can Defend Your Legal Position
Legal Obligations and Key Principles
- Outlining note-taking and record keeping obligations and guides affecting schools
- Examining key aspects of note-taking to meet legal risk and avoid criticism by Courts:
- level of detail or clarity
- ensuring you cover key aspects
- “loaded” words from which inferences could be drawn about the writer
- writing what you observe versus what you think is happening
- properly and clearly setting out the basis of any opinions expressed
- accurately recording conversations, including hearsay
- making changes to notes after they were originally written
Avoiding Pitfalls from Digital Note-Taking
- Managing areas of potential legal exposure with electronic notes, including:
- cutting and pasting from previous records
- consistency with hand written notes or other records
Recording Conversations/Meetings
- Examining options and pitfalls in recording conversations or meetings
Case Studies and Examples – Best Practice Notetaking in Different Areas
- Learning from case studies/scenarios in different areas including:
- student disability:
- discipline and expulsions
- conflicts with parents
- performance management
Amy Walsh, Special Counsel, MinterEllison
1.20 Break
1.30 Emerging Options: Using AI to Generate Notes or Other Records
- Exploring the emerging and potential role of AI in schools, including
- using AI for note-taking and record keeping
- risk assessments and plans
- analysing student data and reports
- Identifying key risks:
- privacy and data risks
- accuracy/reliability
- responsibility of the service/software provider versus the school
- obtaining informed consent
- Understanding the application of existing law and regulation and potential reforms, including:
- duty of care in use of AI
- consent, privacy and confidentiality laws, including privacy reforms
- copyright/intellectual property
- contractual requirements in a platform’s terms of service
- understanding proposed AI standards – proposed Mandatory AI Guardrails, Voluntary AI Safety Standard, AI Ethics Principles
- Exploring best practice policies schools should be implementing to manage AI
Leah Mooney, Privacy, Cyber Security and Tech Risk Lead, Willis Tower Watson
2.30 Break
2.40 Record Storage, Retention, Destruction, CCTV: Understanding Obligations and Managing Records to Ensure Legal Compliance
Laws Regarding Document Retention and Destruction
- Outlining laws applying to document storage and retention in schools
CCTV Limits, Policies and Consent
- Understanding the limits of how you can use CCTV in schools
- Providing CCTV to:
- other staff members
- parents
- police or other agencies
- Examining best practice in developing and communicating CCTV policies
- Implementing effective consent forms/clauses for CCTV
Effectively Managing Document Storage, Retention and Destruction
- Managing records in different formats – email, text, social media, paper
- Exploring best practice in how records should be kept, integrated or organised
- Clarifying what types of documents need to be kept and for what period, including:
- student email and laptop data
- behaviour and discipline records
- accident records
- medical and mental health information
- disability and support
- investigations
- job applications and other staff data
- Understanding your obligations to destroy or de-identify particular data. What is effective de-identification?
- Exploring measures to accurately classify or categorise documents to assist compliance with document destruction and retention requirements, including modifying existing archivist templates for your school context
Hayden Delaney, Partner, Thomson Geer
3.40 Chairperson’s Conclusion
3.45 Event Close
Presenters / panelists include:
 | Brenton Harty has four decades of experience in education, spanning roles as a teacher, digital learning manager, and ICT Manager within both government and independent schools. Presently, he holds the dual roles of Director of ICT and Privacy Officer at Presbyterian Ladies’ College Melbourne, while also serving as President of MITIE, a national organization dedicated to representing ICT professionals in the education sector. |
 | Ben Tallboys provides sector-specific, practical legal solutions to schools across Australia. Ben is a passionate and effective advocate for principals dealing with complex matters relating to parents, staff and students, as well as their own employment. |
 | Amy Walsh advises Independent Schools and the NSW Department of Education on matters including enrolment disputes, student issues and wellbeing and safety matters, employment matters, parent disputes, child protection investigations, funding issues and governance. " |
 | Leah Mooney is a cyber security and privacy professional best known for helping organisations to identify and understand cyber risk, data breach management and cyber resilience planning. Her work includes coaching clients affected by data breaches in the strategic management of their legal and regulatory obligations |
 | Hayden Delaney is highly experienced in complex intellectual property and technology transactions, intellectual property management and intellectual property enforcement - both in domestic and international matters. He holds qualifications in Laws and Information Technology (with Honours and Distinction respectively). Hayden is recognised as a Leading Technology, Media and Telecommunications Lawyer, 2015–2023 and a Leading Intellectual Property Lawyer by Doyle’s Guide, 2015, 2018–2022. |