We want to protect the rights and freedoms of our students by safely and securely collecting, processing and storing their personal information (data). We have created this information with our students in mind, so that it is easy to understand for a 13-16 year old.
We hold personal data about our employees, partners, suppliers, and other individuals to help us to carry out our work. We have a different privacy policy for adults which you can read in full here. This statement focuses on how we collect and store student data for children aged 13-16.
How we created this
The UN Convention on the rights of the child, Article 12, says that: “every child has the right to express their views, feelings and wishes in all matters affecting them, and to have their views considered and taken seriously.”
Taking this on board, we co-created this with our student community. One of our core values is collaboration so we believe that involving our users (students) in the design of our services is very important. We will continue to gather feedback from our students to help us improve our privacy and data protection practices.
If you have any feedback or suggestions on how we can improve this, please email us on [email protected].
Why do we need your personal data?
There are some things we need to do to make sure our learning environment stays safe.
1. You must be over 13 to consent to access our online learning service, this is the law in the UK. So we ask you to confirm this when you sign up. If you are under the age of 13, you will need parental consent to access our platform. Please get in touch with [email protected] to do this.
2. When we run live events, we will ask for your parents or legal guardians permission for you to attend. This is because you will be in a live environment where you can talk to other people using chat functions.
3. We will only collect the information we absolutely need to help us design better services for you.
For example, it helps us to know how many of our students identify as non-binary because we could change the language we use to be less gendered. Or it may be helpful to us to know how many of our students live in the North West if we were going to organise for work experience placements at a company in that area.
4. We will never ‘sell’ your data to anyone else or use it to sell you products or services.
Social media such as Instagram and search engines like Google do this type of advertising.
That’s not the business we are in.
We will only email you with learning opportunities and related information and you can choose to opt out of that email at any time.
What do we do with your information?
When you register for an account with us, we will ask you for your permission to safely store and handle your personal information. You can change your mind at any time and decide to delete your account if you wish. We will store your personal information as securely as possible and we regularly review our security and delete old information.
We will never share any identifying information about you with anyone. By ‘identifying information’ we mean things like your name.
We will share information with our funding partners because this is how we can keep our educational programmes free for you. When we do this, it will be information like ‘50 of our students lived in Liverpool’. We will never share anything that means that you as an individual can be identified. We will never publicly share your name or images of you without asking for your permission first.
How long we will keep it for
We will keep your ‘user’ account until you decide to delete it. Once a year we will email you to check that you still want to be in our community. We will remind you regularly that you can opt out and delete your account at any time.
Please do not share your personal contact information with anyone on our platform
We consider personal contact details to include things like:
email address,
postal address,
telephone number,
direct communication tools such as WhatsApp, Skype or Snapchat.
This is for safety and privacy reasons: you don’t know who might be reading your comment and who may contact you other than the person you thought you were sharing your details with.
It is fine to provide links to a social network such as Twitter or Instagram, but please make sure you are happy with your privacy settings before you do.
Your rights
Our students have rights to their personal information which we respect. Here are your main rights:
1. Right to be communicated with
● We will give you privacy notices which are easy to understand, easy to view and free of charge.
● We will keep a record of how we use and store your personal data.
2. Right to see your personal data
● If you ask us, we can give you details of the personal data and information we hold about you.
● We will tell you about how we share your data and who with.
3. Right to update or change
● We will change or update your personal data if you ask us to. This will be done within one month.
4. Right to delete or remove your data
● We will delete or remove your data if you ask us to. As a child, you have the right to ‘erasure’ of your personal information at any time. You can also choose to withdraw your consent or opt out of our emails.
5. Right to not have your data processed
● We can store your personal data, but not process it, if you don’t want us to. This means we can’t share it with anyone or include it when we make decisions about the design of future services.
6. Right to raise a concern
● We will respect your right to raise a concern about any activities we use your data for, including marketing.
What to do if you’re unhappy with how we are using your personal information
You can let us know by emailing us on [email protected]. We care about your privacy and want to make sure that you are happy with how we use your information. We always welcome feedback and comments on this, especially from our student community. If you’d like to suggest a change or update to this information we’ve shared with you, do let us know.
Policy created: April 2021
Next review: October 2022