Cameras in a school: where recording is allowed and where it is not

The first question is what the school needs each camera for

Not every area of a school can be monitored in the same way. A camera pointed at the main entrance, the car park or the perimeter raises very different questions from one installed in a corridor, a playground or a classroom. And there are spaces, such as toilets or changing rooms, where the protection of privacy rules out CCTV altogether. That is why a good project does not start by scattering cameras across a floor plan: it starts by defining the purpose of each one.

The reasons a school installs CCTV tend to be fairly specific: preventing theft or vandalism when the building is empty, controlling certain entrances, protecting the perimeter, keeping watch over a car park or having footage available if there is a security incident.

Article 22(1) of Organic Law 3/2018 on the Protection of Personal Data and the Guarantee of Digital Rights (LOPDGDD), Spain's data protection act, provides for the processing of images ‘for the purpose of preserving the safety of persons and property, as well as of their facilities’ (our translation). But that purpose has to be justifiable. It is not enough to install cameras across the board simply by claiming they are ‘for security’.

The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) also stresses that the measure must be proportionate. In an educational setting, where many of the people caught on camera are minors, you have to assess whether the camera is really necessary to deal with the problem you want to prevent and whether there is another, less intrusive measure that could achieve the same result.

This principle shapes the whole design that follows. A camera that makes sense for protecting an entrance at night and at weekends can be hard to justify if it is permanently pointed at an area where pupils and teachers go about their normal activities.

The perimeter and the inside of the school cannot be treated the same way

At entrances, façades and perimeter areas, particular attention must be paid to the public highway. Article 22(2) of the same law permits only the capture of the part strictly necessary to fulfil the security purpose. A camera installed at the school entrance may need to see the gate and a small area outside, but it should not be used for general monitoring of the pavement, the street or nearby buildings.

As we move into the building, the justification needs to be even more careful. There are particularly sensitive areas where people's privacy clearly takes precedence. The AEPD's ‘Guía sobre el uso de videocámaras’ (guide on the use of video cameras), published in February 2025, points to spaces such as toilets and changing rooms, and others where recording could affect people's image or private life, and Article 89(2) of the LOPDGDD prohibits CCTV in all cases ‘in places intended for the rest or recreation of workers’ (our translation), expressly citing changing rooms, toilets, canteens and similar spaces.

This means, for example, that the staff room should not be treated as a CCTV area simply because there is material or equipment inside it. In these cases, other security measures will be needed, such as access control, locks or alarm systems.

Can cameras be installed inside classrooms?

As a general rule, permanently recording a classroom during lessons is very hard to justify. Pupils are there to learn and, at the same time, the camera would be continuously recording the teacher's work. The AEPD's ‘Guía para centros educativos’ (guide for schools) considers this type of recording disproportionate, both because of pupils' privacy and because of the workplace monitoring it would mean for teachers.

This does not mean that a camera can never physically be present in a classroom. There may be very specific situations in which the aim is to protect facilities or equipment outside school hours, with the classroom empty. Technically, for example, a system can be configured so that certain cameras only record at times when there should be no activity.

The difference matters: protecting an empty classroom at night is not the same as permanently recording pupils and teachers during lessons.

Playgrounds and dining halls need a different analysis

Playgrounds and dining halls are not governed by the same rules as classrooms. The AEPD's sector guide for schools expressly provides for the possibility of installing cameras in playgrounds and dining halls when the measure serves to protect the best interests of the child and there is adequate justification. This can make sense in areas where situations that put pupils' safety at risk have occurred or could occur.

But the fact that a camera can be installed in a playground does not mean that any kind of monitoring is automatically justified. You have to decide which area it should cover, what the purpose is, what recording hours are needed and who will be able to view the footage afterwards.

The dining hall also calls for a distinction between uses. The law may allow certain measures in a school dining hall used by pupils, but a space set aside for staff breaks or staff meals has different protection under employment law. It is precisely these kinds of differences that make it inadvisable to design an installation from a floor plan alone without knowing how each area is actually used.

In a school, most of the people recorded are minors

Recital 38 of the EU GDPR establishes specific protection for children's personal data because they may be less aware of the risks and consequences of its processing. In a school this is not an exceptional circumstance: it is the normal situation.

Cameras can also capture teachers and other staff. Article 89(1) of the LOPDGDD allows the employer to process those images for the monitoring functions granted to it by Article 20(3) of Spain's Workers' Statute (Estatuto de los Trabajadores), but requires it to inform employees, and where applicable their representatives, in advance and in an express, clear and concise manner. This applies even if nobody installed the camera with staff in mind: the one at reception films a member of staff for their entire working day.

Video and audio should also be considered separately. The fact that a system can record video does not mean that recording audio is equally justifiable. Sound recording is subject to tighter restrictions, and Article 89(3) only allows it when the risks to the safety of facilities, property and people are significant. So it should not be switched on simply because the camera has a built-in microphone.

Installing the cameras is just one part of the project

A CCTV installation also creates management obligations. Article 22(4) requires a visible information notice at the entrances to monitored areas, identifying at least the existence of the processing and the controller, and enabling the people affected to exercise their rights. If a monitored area has several separate entrances, you need to consider what signage is required at each of them.

The school remains the controller even if the installation and maintenance are carried out by an outside company. CCTV must be included in the record of processing activities, with its purpose, its lawful basis and its deletion period, and where a third party may access the footage to provide a service, there must be a data processing agreement as provided for in Article 28 of the GDPR. You should also consider whether a data protection impact assessment is needed, which the AEPD points to particularly when facial recognition or fingerprints are added to access control.

Educational institutions also have a data protection officer (DPO), a role that Article 34(1)(b) of the LOPDGDD makes mandatory for institutions teaching any of the levels covered by education legislation and for public and private universities. The DPO must be involved in decisions affecting this type of processing. In our experience, it is much easier to plan the project properly when locations and purposes are reviewed with the DPO before installation, and not once the cameras are already in place.

Footage cannot be kept indefinitely

Article 22(3) of the LOPDGDD sets, as a general rule, a maximum period of one month for deleting CCTV footage. When recordings need to be kept as evidence of acts against the integrity of people, property or facilities, they can be extracted from the system and made available to the competent authority within seventy-two hours of becoming aware that the recording exists.

This has an important practical consequence when configuring the video recorder. There is little point in installing drives to hold six months of video if the purpose and the law do not justify that period. Storage should be designed around the applicable retention period and around the number of cameras, the resolution and the actual recording time.

You also need to define who can access the footage. The recommended approach is to work with individual user accounts and credentials, so that permissions are limited to the people who really need them and there is an audit trail of access. A shared password for school leadership, reception, maintenance and the supplier makes it extremely difficult to know who has viewed a recording and why.

What happens when a family asks to see a recording

This is one of the issues that raises the most questions in schools. If a family requests access to footage in which their child appears, the existence of a right of access does not necessarily mean that the school can simply go into the video recorder and show them the video.

The right does exist, under Article 15 of the GDPR; for children under fourteen, Article 12(6) of the LOPDGDD allows it to be exercised by those with parental authority. The deadline for a response is one month, extendable by a further two if the person is told within the first. But responding to the request does not mean handing over the video: a recording made in a playground, a corridor or a dining hall will normally show other pupils, teachers or staff whose rights must also be protected, and Article 15(4) states precisely that the right to obtain a copy must not adversely affect the rights and freedoms of others.

That is why these requests should be handled with the data protection officer and by following the proper procedure. Depending on the circumstances, it may be necessary to provide the information in another way without directly showing images of third parties, for example through a written statement describing as precisely as possible what the recordings show.

There is also a particularly important practical point, which is that the two deadlines coincide: the response period is one month and so is the deletion period. If a request relates to footage that the system will delete automatically when the retention period ends, the first step is to make sure that footage is not overwritten while the request is being handled. Replying comes afterwards.

Where there are signs of a possible criminal offence, the process is different and the footage can be made available to the police, the public prosecutor or the courts under Articles 259, 262 and 264 of Spain's Criminal Procedure Act (Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal).

Facial recognition: not just another camera feature

The evolution of CCTV systems allows more and more analytics to be built in: motion detection, line crossing, number plate recognition and, in some systems, facial recognition. But the fact that a technology is available does not mean it can be used freely in a school.

Facial recognition intended to identify a person uniquely involves processing biometric data, which Article 9(1) of the GDPR includes among the special categories of data, with a general prohibition and a closed list of exceptions. On top of this come the limits introduced by the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, whose Article 5 prohibitions began to apply in February 2025 and directly affect certain uses in educational institutions: point (f) prohibits systems intended to infer emotions in workplaces and educational institutions, except for medical or safety reasons, and point (e) prohibits creating or expanding facial recognition databases by scraping images from the internet or from CCTV footage.

So when a platform offers biometric or advanced analytics features, they should not be switched on simply because they are included in the licence. Using them requires a specific legal analysis and, in a school with minors, even greater caution.

What to ask an installer who knows schools

A CCTV quote usually arrives as a list of equipment and a total, which gives you no way of knowing whether the school will end up covered or exposed. These questions test the judgement of whoever is installing the equipment.

• What specific purpose justifies each camera, written down one by one and with more than a generic ‘security’?
• Does any camera point at a toilet, a changing room, a gym or a staff rest area, even at the edge of the frame?
• How many days is the footage kept for, and can the system record only outside school hours?
• Who has access to the footage, with what individual credentials, and is each access logged?
• Was the data protection officer consulted before the locations were decided, and not afterwards?

How we approach a CCTV project at PenwinEdu

At PenwinEdu we use Hikvision cameras for CCTV projects in schools. But our work does not start with choosing a camera model. First we walk around the school and identify which areas need protection, what problem needs solving in each one and what conditions there are for installing the equipment.

From there we look at issues such as the location and angle of the cameras, the type of lens required, the lighting in the area, recording schedules, the capacity of the video recorder, the planned retention period, remote access and user profiles. We also review the network and power infrastructure needed for the whole system to work properly.

Legal decisions on whether each processing activity is legitimate are for the school and its data protection officer, but our experience in schools allows us to plan the installation technically with those limits in mind from the outset.

This avoids situations that are fairly common in other settings: cameras that later have to be repositioned because they capture areas they should not, video recorders configured with unsuitable retention periods, or installations that work very well technically but do not properly serve the purpose for which they were bought.

A good installation is not the one with the most cameras

A school's CCTV should not be measured by the number of cameras installed, but by whether each of them serves a specific purpose and is in the right place. There are areas where a camera can be an excellent tool for protecting facilities, entrances or pupils, and others where the same camera would be unnecessary or disproportionate.