Records Retention Guidelines

Retention of Off-Campus Records

Definition

Off-campus Education courses and programs include: Work Study, Workplace Readiness / Practicum, Work Experience, the Registered Apprenticeship Program (RAP), the Green Certificate Program, and Career Internship.  Some Special Project programs may also be considered as an Off-campus course.

Retention Requirements

All off-campus student records, including: program agreements, learning plans, time sheets and evaluations, and coordinator records (including: worksite inspections / farm tours, injury reports and student monitoring forms), shall be retained for a period of 10 years upon completion of the course.  Student orientation assignments and other local, school specific assignments, are optional for inclusion.

Rationale

Following the advice of the Chinook’s Edge Records Management Consultant, we are asking that all records pertaining to off-campus experiences involving students, be retained at school for a period of 10 years.  This requirement is in line with the statute of limitations regulations, and thus may provide some measure of protection to the school administration and Off-campus Coordinator.  Following the 10 year period, the records are to be submitted to Central Office for destruction.  A signed Destruction Notice and Inventory Form must accompany the records.

These records will also assist schools in a CEU audit from Alberta Education.  Please note that audit requirements require other documents (attendance / record of hours, timetables) that should be kept in a separate file.  Although a 10 year retention requirement would seem to create a storage issue, it is anticipated that most schools would only need one box per year or less to store the records.

Procedures

Upon completion or termination of an off-campus course, the student records shall be stored in a box organized alphabetically by student name, by term and program type.  The coordinator’s worksite inspections and monitoring forms should form one file within this collection.  This collection of records should represent one school year.  By definition, the school year runs from September to August and the collected records would be comprised of semester one, semester two, full year programs, and the following summer off-campus course records.  Boxes shall be labeled by the school year with the 10 year retention requirement indicated.  Each box shall contain an inventory form.  For most purposes, printed marks records (lists of students and marks for each course available from Power Teacher) shall suffice as inventory sheets.  Any files of note should be highlighted on the inventory sheet with a brief explanation and a coloured label placed on the file.  These files may be selectively retained for longer time periods.  Files of note may be ones where students were injured, came to some form of harm, where there was a suspicion of maleficence during the course of their off-campus experience or the potential for litigation.  

Guidelines

Student records of a continuous nature, like Green Certificate and RAP programming, should not be filed for retention until the entire program is completed or terminated.  This is not to say that individual courses should not be reported until all are done.  Courses should be reported as completed in a timely manner, but the student record, in its entirety, should be filed as one master file for ease of location.

These files are to be considered confidential student files in much the same category as a cumulative record file.  The off-campus records should be kept in a locked location and access to them should be limited to off-campus personnel, school administration and office personnel.

Digitizing of Records

Some schools may have storage space concerns and prefer to convert their records to digital format.  If a school is interested in digitizing records for retention, please consult the Technology Department to decide the best way of doing this.