Children’s data protection in an education setting - Guidelines (2021)

Children's digital footprint: guidelines to support organisations and individuals in the educational context to respect, protect and fulfil children's rights in the digital environment

The digital environment shapes children’s lives in many ways, creating opportunities and risks to their well-being and enjoyment of Human Rights.

This applies in the everyday life but also increasingly in education settings where tools designed for teaching, supervision, assessment of children are deployed without the various actors always being aware of the challenges to children’s private life and personal data protection.

The introduction of digital tools to the classroom in effect opens up the school gates to a wide range and high volume of stakeholders who interact with children’s everyday activities. The majority of the devices and applications, software and learning platforms, adopted in educational settings are developed by private, commercial actors.

The Guidelines on Children’s Data Protection in an Educational Setting aim at supporting organisations and individuals in the context of education to respect, protect and fulfil the data protection rights of the child in the digital environment, within the scope of Article 3 of the modernised Convention 108 (more commonly referred to as “Convention 108+”), and in accordance with the CoE instruments including the Guidelines on Children in the Digital Environment Recommendation CM/Rec(2018)7.