This is the privacy notice for The National College (nationalcollege.com). Please read this privacy notice carefully so that you can understand how we may use your personal information.

We are committed to respecting your privacy. This notice is to explain how we may use personal information we collect when you:

  • browse our website;
  • register for a free account;
  • access our content or services; or
  • communicate with us, for example by email.

Our Professional Development service and our AI service are operated by National Education Group Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 10738856 and its registered office is located at Isaacs Building, Floor 4, 4 Charles Street, Sheffield, S1 2HS.

Our Compliance Management service (formerly known as TheSchoolBus) is operated by Hub4Leaders Limited, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 8368437 and its registered office is located at Isaacs Building Floor 4, Isaacs Building, 4 Charles Street, Sheffield, S1 2HS.

Our People Development service (formerly known as BlueSky) is operated by Atkey Solutions Limited, a company registered in England and Wales with company number 3927663 and its registered office is located at Howard Buildings 69 Burpham Lane, Guildford, Surrey, GU4 7NB.

Any reference to we, us, or our in these terms and conditions is to National Education Group Ltd, except where you are using our Compliance Management service (where it refers to Hub4Leaders Limited) or where you are using our People Development service (where it refers to Atkey Solutions Limited).

1. PERSONAL INFORMATION

If you register for an account, you will be required to provide us with certain information about you, such as your name, email address, telephone number, education setting or organisation you are associated with and role in relation to that education setting or organisation.

If you are accessing our content and using our services through an account provided to you by the education setting or organisation, the education setting or organisation may also provide us with information about you.

Your use of our services may generate some personal information about you, for example details of the content that you search for and access, answers that you may submit to tests, reviews that you submit of our content and external CPD that you may log through our system.

In common with most sites, our site logs various information about visitors, including internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP) information, referring / exit pages and date / time stamp.

Depending on the nature of our interactions with you, there may be certain essential personal information that we have to collect so that we can provide you with access to the content and our services. This includes the information that we collect on registration.

In other cases, it is optional whether or not you provide us with personal information about you. For example, it is optional whether or not you submit reviews of our content and, if you do, what personal information you choose to include within those reviews.

We will always aim to make it clear which personal information it is necessary for you to provide and which personal information is optional. However, if you are unsure as to whether you are required to provide any particular piece of personal information please ask.

2. HANDLING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION ON BEHALF OF AN EDUCATION SETTING OR ORGANISATION

If you are associated with an education setting or organisation which has a membership of our site or which has purchased services or content on a "pay as you go basis" that education setting or organisation will generally be in control of your personal information and we will handle it only in accordance with the that education setting or organisation’s instructions.

This means that the education setting or organisation is responsible for deciding how your personal information is used and for providing you with a privacy notice informing you about the use of your personal information.

However, there are still some limited circumstances in which we may exercise control of your personal information, as follows:

  • if you submit a review of our content;
  • monitoring your use of our site to help ensure that we are providing a positive user experience and to understand content usage patterns; and
  • analysing usage data for statistical and analytical purposes and disclosing this information (in an anonymised form) to third parties in connection with our or their businesses.

If you are associated with an education setting or organisation which has a membership of our site or which has purchased services or content on a “pay as you go basis” you should therefore read the applicable parts of this privacy notice which apply to you.

3. USES MADE OF THE INFORMATION

We are committed to protecting your privacy, and will only use your personal information in accordance with applicable data protection legislation, including the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Specifically, we may use your personal information as follows:

  • where you have registered for a free account, to perform our obligations to you under the terms of use, including validating your log-in and providing you with access to free services and content;
  • where you have expressly consented to us doing so, including:
    • where you submit a review of our content, to publish that review (alongside your name and education setting or organisation) to other users and/or publicly; and
    • where you make an enquiry or request any particular information, to respond to that enquiry and provide the requested information;
  • where it is necessary for compliance with legal obligations, including:
    • for record keeping and compliance purposes; and
    • where we are required to disclose your personal information in accordance with any legally binding request or order;
  • where we otherwise have a legitimate interest in doing so, including:
    • monitoring use of our site to analyse trends, administer the site, track your movement around the site and gather broad demographic information, to help ensure that we are providing a positive user experience and to understand content usage patterns; and
    • if you have a free account, providing the education setting or organisation with which you are associated anonymised reports of registration and usage of our free services and content by individuals associated with that education setting or organisation to enable the education setting or organisation to understand the demand for services and content of this nature and to enable us to market our services.

Where you have given us your consent to use your personal information in a particular manner, you have the right to withdraw this consent at any time, which you may do by contacting us as described in paragraph 11. Please note however that the withdrawal of your consent will not affect any use of your personal information made before you withdrew your consent.

4. SHARING OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION WITH AN EDUCATION SETTING OR ORGANISATION

If you have a free account, we may share certain personal information about you with the education setting or organisation on an anonymised basis.

If you have an account associated with an education setting or organisation which has a membership or has otherwise purchased paid services and content, that organisation will have access to your personal information as the “controller” of that personal information.

In either case, the education setting or organisation is directly responsible for any use it makes of your personal information, and you should contact the education setting or organisation directly if you require any further information in this regard.

5. OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH WE MAY SHARE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We may share your personal information within our group (between the companies listed at the top of this privacy notice) where necessary for the purposes of internal administration, to enable cross-promotion of our various services and to enable us to utilise learnings from the usage of one service to facilitate improvements across our other services.

We may share your personal information with:

  • providers of outsourced services, such as hosting and IT support or maintenance services (to the extent necessary for the provider to provide those outsourced services to us); and
  • the prospective seller or buyer of any business or assets in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets.

We may also share your personal information with third parties if we are under a duty to share your personal information in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply such other terms as apply to our relationship, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of our customers, ourselves or others.

We may publish any review that you submit of our content, together with your name and education setting or organisation, both to other users and publicly.

6. TRANSFERRING YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION INTERNATIONALLY

In certain cases the sharing of your personal information to a third party (for example our IT service providers) as described above may involve your personal information being transferred outside of the United Kingdom. This may be to:

  • a country in the European Economic Area or that is otherwise considered to have data protection rules that are equivalent to those in the United Kingdom; or
  • a country which is not considered to have the same standards of protection for personal information as those in the United Kingdom, in which case we will take all steps required by law to ensure sufficient protections are in place to safeguard your personal information, including where appropriate putting in place contractual terms approved by the relevant regulatory authorities.

7. RETENTION, UPDATING AND REMOVAL OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

Where you provide us with personal information we may retain this information for future use, including:

  • maintaining your user account with us;
  • reviewing usage of our services and content;
  • publicising our content and services by publishing reviews that you may submit; and
  • record keeping purposes.

The duration for which we retain your personal information will differ depending on the type of information and the reason why we collected it from you. However, in some cases personal information may be retained on a long term basis: for example, personal information that we need to retain for legal purposes will normally be retained for at least six years in accordance with usual commercial practice and regulatory requirements.

It is important to ensure that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and up-to-date, and you should let us know if anything changes, for example if you move home or change your phone number or email address. If you need to do this, please contact us using the details in paragraph 11.

In certain circumstances you may be entitled to request the erasure of personal information that we hold about you. To make a request of this nature, please contact us, providing full details of the personal information you want to be erased and the reason(s) for your request. We will consider all requests upon receipt and confirm to you whether we are able to agree to your request.

8. SECURITY

The protection of your personal information is very important to us and we have in place various security measures to ensure that your personal information is kept secure.

However, you should be aware that the method you use to get in contact with us, such as email or post, may not be entirely secure and your personal information may be susceptible to being intercepted in transit. Equally, your personal information is at risk if a malicious third party gains access to your account or to any other place where your personal information is stored, such as your email account.

You should therefore take all reasonable steps to keep your personal information secure, including choosing a secure password for your account and your email account and not disclosing your passwords to anybody else. You should use a unique password for every account.

11. ENQUIRIES, ISSUES AND COMPLAINTS

You are entitled by law to ask for a copy of your personal information at any time. Please contact us using the details in paragraph 11.

In the unlikely event that you have any concerns about how we use your personal information, please contact us as described in paragraph 11. This includes situations where you want to request the rectification or erasure of your personal information, restrictions to be placed around how we use your personal information, or to object to a particular use.

If you make a complaint about our handling of your personal information, it will be dealt with in accordance with our complaints handling procedure. In the first instance it will be reviewed by our customer care team who will respond to you within one month. If you are dissatisfied with this response you may request that your complaint be escalated, in which case it will be passed to a senior person in our business who will review your complaint and the initial response and provide a further response within a month of your request to escalate the matter.

If we are unable to resolve your complaint, you may make a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Please see https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/ for more information.

10. CHANGES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE

We reserve the right to alter this privacy notice at any time. Such alterations will be posted on our site. You can also obtain an up-to-date copy of our privacy notice by contacting us as described in paragraph 11. Should you object to any alteration, please contact us.

11. CONTACTING US

If you need to contact us about this notice or any matters relating to the personal information we hold on you, please email dpo@nationaleducationgroup.com

12. FURTHER INFORMATION

We hope that the contents of this privacy notice address any queries that you may have about the personal information we may hold about you and what we may do with it. However, if you do have any further queries, comments or requests, please contact us as described in paragraph 11 above.

Whilst this privacy notice sets out a general summary of your legal rights in respect of personal information, this is a very complex area of law. More information about your legal rights can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website at https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/.