Information Commissioner's Office

Department for Education

26 May 2016, Central government

The complainant has requested from the Department for Education (DfE) copies of communications relating to an emergency inspection of a school carried out by the Independent Schools Inspectorate (ISI). The DfE considered that it was not obliged to disclose the information caught by the scope of the request under the ‘information reasonably accessible to an applicant’ (section 21) and ‘prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs’ (sections 36(2)(b)(i) and (ii) and section 36(2)(c)) exemptions to disclosure in FOIA. The complainant has asked the Commissioner to consider whether the DfE was entitled to withhold the items of information to which it had applied the exemptions in section 36(2). On inspection, some of the information was found to be the complainant’s personal data and therefore the Commissioner has instructed the DfE to consider this under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) rather than FOIA. For the remaining material that did not fall under this description, the Commissioner has decided that the cited exemptions in section 36(2) are engaged and that in all the circumstances the public interest favours withholding the information. He does not therefore require the DfE to take any steps as a result of this notice.

FOI 36: Not upheld