Information Commissioner's Office

Highgate Primary School

8 March 2017, Education (School)

The complainant requested various categories of data relating to pay progression for eligible teachers from various schools in the Haringey area. The public authority (Highgate Primary School) in this case considered that to disclose the requested information would breach the ‘third party personal data’ (section 40(2)) exemption in FOIA. With the agreement of some of the other schools to which the request was directed though, it was considered appropriate to pool the data for these schools together in order to provide an aggregated response. The complainant, however, considers that the aggregated information does not satisfactorily answer her requests and has asked the Commissioner to consider the application of section 40(2) to the discrete set of data for the public authority. The Commissioner has decided that section 40(2) of FOIA is engaged and therefore does not require any steps to be taken as a result of this notice.

FOI 40: Not upheld