Privacy Notice for Students

Study Group Notice

NOTICE STATEMENT

Study Group is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This privacy notice (“this Notice”) describes how we collect and use personal information about you during and after your relationship with us, in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018, which implements the General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and other privacy legislation within the applicable jurisdiction. It applies to all students.

Study Group is a “data controller”. This means that we are responsible for deciding how we hold and use personal information about you. We are required under data protection legislation to notify you of the information contained in this Notice. Where you apply for- or study on a course Study Group is running in partnership with a higher education institution, including at its study centre, Study Group may be joint data controller with that institution. In that case, you may exercise your data protection rights against that institution without your rights towards Study Group being affected. Joint controller status would be limited to the data processed in relation to that joint course.

This Notice applies to students and any reference to “students” in this Notice includes current, former or prospective students. This Notice does not form part of any offer made by Study Group to you. We may update this Notice at any time and shall inform you if we make any amendment that will significantly affect your rights.

It is important that you read this Notice, together with any other policies we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal information about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information. 

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.

THE KIND OF INFORMATION WE HOLD ABOUT YOU

Personal data, or personal information, means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).

There are “special categories” of more sensitive personal data which require a higher level of protection.

We will collect, store, and use the following categories of personal information about you:

• Personal contact details such as name, title, addresses, telephone numbers, and personal email addresses;
• Date of birth;
• Gender;
• Next of kin and emergency contact information;
• Parent/Guardian contact Information;
• Visa, Nationality, Police Registration and Identification Documents;
• Bank account details;
• Course Information (duration, location and Study Plans);
• Educational information (including copies of right to study documentation, certificates and other information included as part of the application process);
• Grades and Progression Information, including exam papers written by you; 
• Behavioural and Attendance information;
• CCTV footage and other information obtained through electronic means such as swipecard records – see CCTV Policy;
• Information about your use of our information and communications systems;
• Photographs and videos, including social posts and testimonials; 
• Feepayer Information;
• Cookies and Data Analytics Information from our Web Pages;
• Correspondence and messages; 
• Recordings of online classes/presentations.

We may also collect, store and use the following “special categories” of more sensitive personal information:

• Information about your race, ethnicity and religious beliefs
• Information about your health, including any medical condition, health and sickness records.
• Information about criminal convictions and offences.

HOW IS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COLLECTED?  

We collect personal information about students through the application process, either directly from students or on occasions from Agents or Sponsors. We may sometimes collect additional information from third parties including former educational institutions and Study Group’s University Partners that you have applied to.

We will collect additional personal information in the course of your period of study with us.

ON WHAT BASIS WILL WE USE INFORMATION ABOUT YOU  

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

• Where we need to enter into the agreement with you to provide the study programme according to Study Group Terms and Conditions, and to perform such an agreement once we have entered into it with you.
• Where we need to comply with a legal obligation.
• Where it is necessary for Study Group’s legitimate interests (or those of a third party) and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests. Such instances may include the management of the study-, application- and enrolment process, the prevention of fraud, error, harassment or child abuse.

We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:

• Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests).
• Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.

PURPOSES FOR WHICH WE WILL USE STUDENT PERSONAL INFORMATION 

The situations in which we may process your personal information are listed below.

• Making a decision about your application or appointment to an educational establishment;
• Determining the terms on which you study with us;
• Checking you are legally entitled to study within an educational establishment;
• Providing you with the necessary study material required;
• Administering the agreement we have entered into with you;
• Business management and planning, including accounting and auditing;
• Conducting performance reviews, managing performance and determining performance requirements;
• Making decisions about course content and curriculum;
• Assessing qualifications for a particular study centre;
• Making arrangements for the termination of Study Group’s relationship with you;
• Making arrangements for travel between your home and the educational establishment;
• Education, training and development requirements;
• Dealing with legal disputes involving you, or other students including accidents;
• Managing sickness absence;
• Ensuring a healthy and safe study environment and complying with health and safety obligations; 
• To prevent fraud;
• To monitor your use of our information and communication systems to ensure compliance with our IT policies;
• To ensure network and information security, including preventing unauthorised access to our computer and electronic communications systems and preventing malicious software distribution;
• To conduct data analytics studies to review and better understand student progression rates;
• Equal opportunities monitoring;
• Subject to further safeguards such as you signing a model release form or our legitimate interest assessment, to promote our courses and to inform the students, the public, alumni, and prospective students about our activities, including using our website and social media profiles; 
• Communications and marketing purposes
• Assistance to law enforcement where required by law or justified based on legitimate or public interests of protecting actual or potential crime victims. 

Some of the above grounds for processing will overlap and there may be several grounds which justify our use of your personal information.

IF YOU FAIL TO PROVIDE PERSONAL INFORMATION

If you fail to provide certain information when requested, we may not be able to perform the agreement we have entered into with you (such as providing a place at an educational establishment, or we may be prevented from complying with our legal obligations (such as to ensure the health and safety of our students).

CHANGE OF PURPOSE

We will only use your personal information for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal information for an unrelated purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may process your personal information without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with the above rules, where this is required or permitted by law.

HOW WE USE PARTICULARLY SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION  

”Special categories” of particularly sensitive personal information require higher levels of protection. We need to have further justification for collecting, storing and using this type of personal information. We may process special categories of personal information in the following circumstances, in most cases based on your explicit consent or where there is a specific basis in the law:

• We will use information about your physical or mental health, or disability status, to ensure your health and safety in the educational establishment and to assess your fitness to study, to provide appropriate adjustments and to monitor and manage sickness absence. 
• Where it is needed in the public interest, such as for equal opportunities monitoring and in line with our data protection policy. 
• Where it is needed to assess your studying capacity on health grounds and to act with a duty of care, subject to appropriate confidentiality safeguards. 

Less commonly, we may process this type of information where it is needed in relation to legal claims or where it is needed to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent.  

INFORMATION ABOUT CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS  

We may only use information relating to criminal convictions where the law allows us to do so. This data is generally processed for the purposes of safeguarding of children and of individuals at risk based on substantial public interest.     

Data is only accessible to Study Group staff on a need to know basis and therefore cannot be accessed by all the staff who generally have access to student data. Absent specific circumstances in individual cases, the data shall be deleted when the student leaves the programme.

Less commonly, we may use information relating to criminal convictions in relation to legal claims, where it is necessary to protect your interests (or someone else’s interests) and you are not capable of giving your consent, or where you have already made the information public. We may also process such information about students or former students in the course of legitimate business activities with the appropriate safeguards.

We will only collect information about criminal convictions if it is appropriate given the nature of your place of study and where we are legally able to do so. Where appropriate, we will collect information about criminal convictions as part of the Application process or we may be notified of such information directly by you in the course of you studying with us.

We will use information about criminal convictions and offences to provide the educational establishment you have applied to with the relevant information requested.

DATA SHARING  

We may have to share your data with third parties, including third-party cloud service providers, such as data storage, online learning tools, information management, analytics, or communications services providers, and other entities in the group for Study Group administrative purposes. Similarly, your university results in pseudonymised or anonymised form, including basic demographics, may be processed by Study Group in order to evaluate the impact of its courses. We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law. We may transfer your personal information outside the country in which you reside. If we do share your data, we will aim to ensure a similar degree of protection in respect of your personal information based on a lawful arrangement we have in place to transfer your data.

We will share your personal information with third parties where required by law, where it is necessary to administer the working relationship with you or where we have another legitimate interest in doing so.

The following third-party service providers process personal information about you for the following purposes:  

•  United Kingdom Visa and Immigration (UKVI) – Legal requirement to share information on attendance, immigration status and police registration   
• National Health Service – Legal requirements to share information
• Child Protection Services - Legal requirements to share information
• College Guardians (UK) and Godsil Education Dublin – Under 18s Guardian services providers
• Homestay Families – Accommodation providers to manage your accommodation during studies
• Landlords – Accommodation providers to manage your accommodation during studies
• The Universities and Colleges Admissions (UCAS) – for use in applications to UCAS on behalf of the student.

Third-party service providers perform functions in connection with the operation of Study Group’s business including IT service providers, system administrators, workflow automation providers, technical support providers and those who host/manage Study Group data.  

All our third-party service providers and other entities in the group are required to take appropriate security measures to protect your personal information in line with our policies. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes. We only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.

We will share your personal information with other entities in our group as part of our regular reporting activities on company performance, in the context of a business reorganisation or group restructuring exercise, for system maintenance support and hosting of data. 

In other circumstances we may share your personal information with Agents who process your application, Parents/Guardians, Sponsors and educational establishments you have applied for. This is particularly the case with your performance information and fee status.

SHARING OF DATA WITH SPONSORS, AGENTS AND PARENTS/GUARDIANS 

Data regarding your enrolment, fee status and payments, attendance and marks may be shared with your parents or another holder of parental responsibility and/or your designated sponsors, in order to perform the contract with you and to comply with their legitimate interest to be informed about your progress. The same information may also be shared via your designated agent in order to enter into and perform the contract with us. The data mentioned is not an exhaustive list and there may be other types of data that are shared for the purpose of performing the contract with you or for a legitimate interest of managing application, enrolment, and study processes. 

TRANSFERRING INFORMATION OUTSIDE YOUR COUNTRY

As well as within the UK, we may transfer the personal information we collect about you to the following countries in order to enter into and perform our contract with you or for our legitimate interest of corporate group administrative purposes:

• Australia
• Brazil 
• Canada 
• China 
• Dubai, UAE  
• Hong Kong, China 
• India 
• Indonesia 
• Malaysia 
• Netherlands 
• New Zealand 
• Republic of Ireland 
• Singapore 
• South Korea 
• Taiwan 
• Thailand 
• USA 
• Vietnam

We may transfer data out of the UK to the countries covered by the UK adequacy listed here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-approach-to-international-data-transfers/international-data-transfers-building-trust-delivering-growth-and-firing-up-innovation 

Data may be transferred out of the EU/EEA based on the list available here:

https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-protection/international-dimension-data-protection/adequacy-decisions_en 

In addition, we may rely on EU-US Data Privacy Framework and its UK extension in relation to companies that have been self-certified under it: https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/list

Where we cannot rely on the above mechanisms, we rely on standard contractual clauses and data transfer impact assessments both within our group of companies and in relation to its outside partners.  

DATA SECURITY

We have put in place measures to protect the security of your information.

Third parties will only process your personal information on our instructions and where they have agreed to treat the information confidentially and to keep it secure.

We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed. In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality. Details of these measures may be obtained from the.

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. 

DATA RETENTION  

How long will you use my information for?

We will only retain your personal information for as long as is necessary either to fulfil the purposes we collected it for or for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. We will retain data after completion of your course where we have obtained your consent, where required by law e.g. for tax purposes, or where required to protect our legitimate interests. 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 any applicable legal requirements. After this period we will use our best endeavours to securely destroy your personal information.

The data on your final results and course completion is generally stored indefinitely to enable any future references. Most student data categories are held for approximately 6 years. Most data categories pertaining to unsuccessful applicants is held for approximately 18 months.

In some circumstances we may anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we may use such information without further notice to you.

RIGHTS OF ACCESS, CORRECTION, ERASURE, AND RESTRICTION  

Your duty to inform us of changes

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 study with us.

Your rights in connection with personal information

Under certain circumstances, by law you have the right to:

• Request access to your personal information (commonly known as a “data subject access request”). This enables you to receive a copy of the personal information we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it.
• Request correction of the personal information 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 information. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal information 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 information where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).
• Object to processing of your personal information 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 human intervention where an important decision affecting you has been made using automated means. 
• Request the restriction of processing of your personal information. This enables you to ask us to suspend the processing of personal information about you, for example if you want us to establish its accuracy or the reason for processing it.
• Request the transfer of your personal information to another party.

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

No fee usually required

You will normally not have to pay a fee to access your personal information or to exercise any of the other rights. 

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.

SHOULD YOU HAVE A COMPLAINT 

If you wish to submit a complaint about out handling of your data, you can email us at privacy@studygroup.com, with the subject “Data protection complaint". Please make sure you include: 

• your full name, 
• name of the institution/study centre 
• a clear description of the event that led to your complaint with any details that you deem relevant, and                                                   
• attach any relevant documentation,  

We will acknowledge receipt of your complaint within 30 days. We will take appropriate steps to investigate and respond to your complaint, keeping you informed of the progress and outcome. 

Regardless of the above right, you have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). 

DATA PROTECTION OFFICER (DPO)

We have appointed an external DPO to oversee compliance with this privacy notice. If you have any questions about this Notice or how we handle your personal information, please contact the DPO, Aphaia at dpo@aphaia.co.uk. You have the right to make a complaint at any time to your relevant Information Commissioner for data protection issues. For any general data protection related queries, you can contact privacy@studygroup.com.

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.

If you have any questions about this privacy notice, please contact the DPO at dpo@aphaia.co.uk.