Every educational institution holds a large amount of digital and physical records, which can be difficult to manage and keep confidential. With this in mind, it’s important to get the student records management process right.
There are many retention rules for schools and other educational establishments making things confusing for staff to know when they should be disposing records or keeping them. Managing records can be tough for any business but especially for large institutions and organisations.
Having a set of rules and guidelines for employees to follow when it comes to records management can make it easier to manage confidential information and keep it secure.
Here are our top five student record management tips:
Organising files
Set time aside as often as you need to sort through and review your electronic and paper records against your retention schedule. Then dispose of any records that can be securely destroyed. This will make things easier when looking for documents and answering Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
Securely shred records
The best way to dispose of any unwanted records is to use secure shredding consoles and a shredding provider to come and empty paper records that are no longer needed.
A shredding provider like Shredall SDS Group has the equipment to take care of the full disposal process from start to finish with a Certificate of Destruction on completion. We have the capabilities and specialist equipment to collect and shred or destroy a wide variety of items, in virtually any volume from multiple buildings and locations.
Delete emails when no longer needed
Email is a popular method of communication within most organisations as it can document conversations and serve as a searchable source of information. This means it’s imperative to safeguard the data and not just delete unnecessarily.
A good practice to manage your emails efficiently is to create folders for the various categories of emails you receive. As emails come in, drag them to the appropriate folder so they can easily be found later.
As you would for physical documents, ensure you delete any emails that are no longer required but only if they’re not the only version of a record that needs to be retained in line with the retention schedule.
Destroy any duplicates
When organising your files, identify and destroy and duplicate records or information you no longer require. There is no need to keep records if there’s no use to them or if you already have the information recorded elsewhere.
Before making a record of something, think whether the information can already be found on a website or in a book. This will reduce clutter and save paper.
Use off-site storage
Sometimes records need to be kept long-term due to GDPR and retention regulations. If a record needs to be kept but is not used very often, it can be stored off-site in a secure storage facility. This creates space at your premises and ensures the records can’t be accessed by anyone.
Any record kept off-site can be retrieved and delivered to any business next day or it can be scanned straight to your desktop.
Student records management software
Our SDS Box management system is a secure cloud-based document management platform that makes it easy to create, access and share your protected student records from any device while working anywhere.
Discover more about our document management system and the features and benefits it can have to your school or university.
How we can help
If you require any assistance with storing and shredding your confidential student records, get in touch today. Alternatively, visit our document management for schools and education page to learn more about how we can help.
