Resources for Privacy Act 2020 changes available

Privacy Act changes may affect schools and early learning services.

On 1 December 2020, the new Privacy Act came into effect.

Schools and early learning providers will need to make change to comply with the new privacy protections for individuals and obligations for organisations.

Key changes that may impact schools and early learning services are:

  1. a new requirement to report notifiable privacy breaches to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and affected individuals;
  2. the clarification of privacy principle 4 to require agencies to ensure the way they collect information from children and young people is fair; 
  3. new powers for the Privacy Commissioner to issue compliance notices for interfering with an individual’s privacy, and binding access directions for failure to give individuals access to their personal information, and; 
  4. a new provision about how personal information can be disclosed overseas—do so only where there are equivalent privacy protections under law or by contract, or without these, with the consent of the individual concerned.

More information

To understand how these changes might affect your school or early learning service, you can visit our page: 

Privacy Act 2020 – resources for schools and early learning services

You can also visit the Office of the Privacy Commissioner website for useful resources.

Resources – Privacy website(external link)

Schools can contact NZSTA.(external link)

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