LawSense School ICT Law 2025

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Program

12.00    LawSense Welcome

12.05    Chairperson’s Remarks

Brenton Harty, Director of ICT and Privacy Officer, Presbyterian Ladies’ College, Melbourne; President, MITIE

Myles Carrick, Chief Information Officer, Knox Grammar School, Sydney

Anthony England, Director of Innovative Learning Technologies, Pymble Ladies’ College

12.10    Privacy, Confidentiality Update: Navigating Obligations, Reform, AI and Implementing Protocols, Checks and Limits to Ensure Compliance

Rights, Obligations, Reform, AI

• Outlining key privacy and confidentiality rights and obligations applying in schools
• Examining the implications of recent changes and proposed reform
• Personal data collected by external platforms or apps used by students – understanding the extent of the school’s obligations to assess and monitor legal compliance
• Understanding the impacts and considerations regarding privacy arising from AI

Information Access within a School

• Examining different access considerations that can apply within schools – access to:
  • student records
  • staff records
  • wellbeing/counselling/psychology records
  • medical records
  • other school records

Access By Students and Parents

• Examining what information should be accessible by students and parents
• Navigating information access and separated parents – key pitfalls to consider
• Exploring protocols, checks and limits in managing parent access

Implementing Protocols, Checks & Supports for Compliance

• Exploring protocols, checks and supports to ensure legal compliance, including for managing IT staff access to records
• Examining the role of the privacy officer in schools

Hayden Delaney, Partner, Thomson Geer Lawyers

1.10      Break

1.20      Consent Update: Ensuring You Obtain Valid Consent for Data Collection, Use and Destruction

Student and Parent Consent – Requirements for a Valid Consent

• Examining the key elements of informed consent
• Evaluating express versus implied and oral versus written consent
• How is age considered in assessing consent in different circumstances? When can a student provide consent
• Challenges with consent:
  • what level of information and detail is required to make it “informed” consent?
  • when is a “blanket” consent adequate?

Managing Consent in Practice

Consent in Enrolment Contracts versus Specific Consent

• Exploring the extent to which you can cover consent in your enrolment contracts, including for:
  • collection of parent data
  • use of images, including photos/videos or school marketing
  • collection and sharing of medical or mental health information
  • collection and use of biometric data
• Exploring when you should obtain specific consents to collect and use data

Consent from Parents, Including Separated Parents

• When should you also get consent of parents, even where a student has capacity to consent?
• Separated parents -when is consent from only one parent adequate

Consent Required by External Platforms or Saas Providers

• Exploring and managing consent requirements of external platforms / Saas used by schools

Online Forms, Tick Boxes & Digital Signatures

• Examining online consent:
  • What are the challenges in establishing and proving valid online consent?
  • Exploring matters to consider, including:
    • exploring the extent to which the information needs to be reviewed by the person consenting
    • the extent of measures you should implement to check the identity of the person giving consent
    • electronic signatures, tick boxes or logins – exploring how to optimise consent

Leah Mooney, Privacy, Cyber Security and Tech Risk Consulting Lead, Willis Tower Watson

2.20      Break

2.30      Student Monitoring: Navigating Rights and Obligations in Monitoring Online Activity, CCTV and Mobile Phone Searches

Outlining Key Laws

• Outlining key laws applying to monitoring of students during and outside school

Supervision/Monitoring and Managing Devices, Including Student Activity Outside School Hours

• Exploring the boundaries of a school’s duty of care and obligations to monitor and respond to student online activity outside school hours on their private device, a BOYD device or school device
• Using monitoring software (“spyware”) on student managed devices:
  • what can you legally monitor and ensuring you have adequate consent
  • to what extent should you have human monitoring/ escalation to humans?
  • what is your legal exposure for an incident where a greater degree or availability of human monitoring could have prevented harm?
  • what are your responsibilities to act where the information you collect indicates a student may be at risk, including when the information arrives outside school hours

Searches of Student Devices

• Examining the implication of the new social media age limit laws – should a school investigate and access student data if it suspects a student is breaching the new laws?
• Understanding rights of schools to search a student’s devices, including:
  • personal phone/
  • school-provided laptop
  • cloud storage (such as email and files)
  • or firewall logs for accessed content

Students Using External Platforms

• Dealing with personal data collected by external platforms or apps used by students – understanding the extent of the school’s obligations to assess and monitor legal compliance]

Optimising CCTV Policies

• 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

Dalvin Chien, Partner, Mills Oakley Lawyers

3.30      Closing Remarks

3.40      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.
	With over 15 years of experience in technology leadership and software engineering, Myles Carrick has a passion for leveraging cloud-native architecture, agile methodologies, and user-centric design to create impactful and scalable products and services for the education sector. Prior to joining Knox Grammar School in January 2023, Myles was the Head of Engineering at Intellischool, a fast-growing edtech startup that provides K12 education analytics and insights. Before that, Myles was the Head of Technology for Enterprise and Operations at Domain Group, where he managed the business technology teams across sales, marketing, finance, HR, and IT.
	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.
	For more than 20 years, Leah Mooney has provided legal, regulatory, risk and governance services to corporate and government entities. She is best known for helping organisations to understand data privacy, cyber security and technology risk and compliance, with a particular focus on responding to complex data breaches, security of critical infrastructure, countering foreign interference, and high-risk AI technologies. Leah has worked as a director of a Big Four consulting firm and a special counsel in a top tier international law firm; and worked in senior in-house roles with a university and Australia's leading provider of identity theft and cyber incident counselling and remediation services.
	Dalvin Chien is a leading technology and digital lawyer with over 20 years’ experience. Dalvin has deep expertise in technology contracting, privacy, cybersecurity, security of critical infrastructure, data sharing, e-commerce and emerging technology including Artificial Intelligence. He has led deal teams for significant technology transactions and advised on novel and complex cybersecurity and technology issues for clients in the banking, government, technology, logistics and health sectors. He is renowned for his industry knowledge, understanding of technology, and pragmatism. Client feedback in Legal 500 Australia (2023) commended Dalvin for this.

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