A father has called for a police investigation after a school pupil allegedly hacked into the personal information of his son and other students.

The Year 11 boy, who attends Ormiston Rivers Academy in Southminster Road, Burnham, called his parents asking them if he had learning difficulties after a leaked file showed his previous school had considered offering him special needs support.

The father, who wants his son to remain anonymous, said: “Our son phoned up his mum and asked have I got something wrong with me?

“His mum said obviously not.

“He told us a child has gone into school and downloaded all Year 11’s students’ records from junior school to now – everything in terms of their personal details and they have spread that information about people they do not like.

“One boy has autism and this has given him a lot of problems.

“He does not deserve it as he is a really nice lad.”

The father said that three or four children have been affected by the breach, which the child is believed to carried out simply by logging into a teacher’s computer and downloading the information on to a memory stick.

Following the leak of information, the Standard contacted the Ormiston Academies Trust, which runs the academy. A spokesman for the trust, said: “We place the highest premium on data security and, although information about only three Year 11 students was shared, we are treating this incident with the utmost seriousness.

“As soon as the academy became aware it took immediate action in line with academy policy, containing the breach quickly and recovering the data.

“We immediately launched an investigation into the incident and have since implemented a number of additional internal procedures to further strengthen our existing policies and processes in order to prevent this from happening again.”

“We would like to apologise for this incident and have spoken with parents whose children’s data was shared.”

But the father of one of the children affected feels the academy trust has not treated the issue seriously enough.

He added: “It is against the law and if the police are not involved we want to know why.

“The school has to report this but they will not.”

He also said he had not been contacted by the school directly to apologise for what happened and no letter was released to parents to warn them of the issue.

He said: “If somebody had done this out of school they would be prosecuted.

“My son did not know the information that was spread was on his record.”

The Ormiston Academies Trust said there was no need for a police investigation after it carried out its own probe.

The spokesman added: “We have conducted a thorough investigation into the incident following government guidelines.

“After completing our investigation, we have now contacted all parents and carers of children in Year 11 to update them.”