Privacy Policy

Introduction

The Community Schools is committed to maintaining the privacy and security of your personal data. This Privacy Notice explains how we collect, use, share and protect your personal data.
It is important that you read this Privacy Notice so that you are aware of how and why we are using your personal data.

1. Who we are

The Community Schools is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. Where we act as a data controller, we are required under data protection legislation to notify anyone who provides personal data to us, either directly or through a third party, of the information contained in this Privacy Notice.

The Community Schools CIC is the trading name for Your Community Schools Limited (company number 03911174 registered address at The Enterprise Centre, PO BOX 656, Bury St Edmunds, United Kingdom, IP30 9WR. When we mention “The Community Schools ”, “we”, “us” or “our” in this Privacy Notice, we are referring to this company which is responsible for processing your data.

2. Data Protection Officer

We have appointed a Data Protection Officer (DPO) who is responsible for overseeing questions in relation to this Privacy Notice. If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights, please contact the DPO using the details set out below:

Contact details

Name of DPO: Claire Meadows-Smith
Email address: claire@thecommunityschools.co.uk
Postal address: The Enterprise Centre, PO BOX 656, Bury St Edmunds, United Kingdom, IP309WR.
You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

3. What is personal data?

Personal data is any information about an individual from which that individual can be identified. Your name, address, phone number and bank account number are examples of personal data. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

4. Data protection principles

We will comply with data protection law. This says that the personal information we hold about you must be:

Used lawfully, fairly and in a transparent way.
Collected only for valid purposes that we have clearly explained to you and not used in any way that is incompatible with those purposes.
Relevant to the purposes we have told you about and limited only to those purposes.
Accurate and kept up to date.
Kept only as long as necessary for the purposes we have told you about.
Kept securely

5. How we use your personal data

We will only use your personal data when the law allows us to. Most commonly, we will use your personal data in the following circumstances:

Where we need to perform a contract we have entered into with you.
Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. We may also use your personal data in the following situations, which are likely to be less common:
Where we need to protect your vital interests (or someone else’s interests).
Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.

Generally we do not rely on consent as a legal basis for processing your personal data other than in relation to sending direct marketing communications to you via email. You have the right to withdraw consent to marketing at any time by contacting us.

6. The personal data we collect from you

Enquiries

When you request information or make enquiries about any of our services or programmes, we may use the personal data you provide in order to fulfil your request or respond to your enquiry. It is in our legitimate interests to use your personal data in this way so that you receive the information you have requested.

Applications

If you make an application to study on one of our programmes we may collect the following categories of personal data about you:

Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses.
Date of birth.
Education History
Medical information

It is in our legitimate interests to collect and use the above information in order to consider and process your application.

Registration

During your studies we will collect information about your academic experience and progression. This is in order to fulfil our contract with you but it is also in our legitimate interests to use this personal data in order to monitor the provision of our service to you. We may also collect personal data about your health in order to make appropriate arrangements and reasonable adjustments for you regarding your welfare, attendance or accommodation. We use this information in order to perform our contract with you but it also may be in your vital interests for us to do so.

Marketing Communications

At The Community Schools, we take your privacy seriously. As part of our registration process, parents are given the option to opt in to receive marketing communications.

These communications may include updates via email or text about upcoming tutoring courses, workshops, and other educational opportunities that may be of interest to you.

We use MailerLite, a secure and GDPR-compliant email marketing platform, to send our newsletters. These may contain helpful tips, important updates, and information about new or upcoming courses.

You can withdraw your consent at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any email, or by contacting us directly. Once unsubscribed, you will no longer receive marketing communications from us.

Your contact details are stored securely and are never shared with third parties for marketing purposes.

Marketing

There is an opt in option on our Registration form I am happy to receive communications by email or text with details of appropriate courses.
Only parents who have responded positively receive information about possible courses of
interest.

Brevo

There is an opt in option on our Registration form

We send updates regularly about our courses, resources and term dates etc through our current parent mailing list. Please could you confirm that you are happy to be added to this email mailing list.

Each email news letter has the option to Unsubscribe.

Automated technologies or interactions. As you interact with our website, we may automatically collect technical data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal data by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our cookie policy on our website for further details.

If you fail to provide personal data

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the contract we have entered into with you or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations.

7. When and how we share your personal data with others

We may share your personal data with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to perform our contract with you or where we have a legitimate interest in doing so.

Regulators: We may need to share your personal data if required by a regulator, government department, examination body or to otherwise comply with UK law.

8. The security of your personal data

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected data security breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected breach where we are legally required to do so.

9. Our storage and retention of your personal data

We will only retain your personal data for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting or reporting requirements. To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. Please contact us using the contact details in this Privacy Notice if you would like more information.
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your working relationship with us.
In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal data so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.

10. Your rights as a data subject

There are specific exemptions for schools and we are required to hold key information about your studies to comply with safeguarding, welfare and government reporting. Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

Request access to your personal data (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal data we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
Request correction of the personal that we hold about you. This enables you to have any incomplete or inaccurate information we hold about you corrected.
Request erasure of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us continuing to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
Object to processing of your personal data where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to object to processing on this ground. You also have the right to object where we are processing your personal information for direct marketing purposes.
Request the restriction of processing of your personal data. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal data about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
Request the transfer of your personal data to another party.

If you want to review, verify, correct or request erasure of your personal data, object to the processing of your personal data, or request that we transfer a copy of your personal information to another party, please contact us in writing using the contact details in this Privacy Notice.

No fee usually required

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request for access is clearly unfounded or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with the request in such circumstances.

What we may need from you

We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to access the information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is another appropriate security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to any person who has no right to receive it.

Your right to withdraw consent

In circumstances where you may have provided your consent to the collection, processing and transfer of your personal data for a specific purpose, you have the right to withdraw your consent for that specific processing at any time. To withdraw your consent, please contact us using the contact details in this Privacy Notice. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law.

11. Changes to this Privacy Notice

We reserve the right to update this Privacy Notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new Privacy Notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal information.