Tutors United (“Tutors United”, “TU”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) is committed to protecting your information and acting by your rights under data protection laws. This Data Protection Policy sets out how we will use your information.
This Data Protection Policy shall apply to any individual, including applicants, pupils, parents, tutors, employees, trustees, volunteers, agents and independent contractors, who provide us with personal information for the purposes of registering for or attending programmes, applying for employment, or supporting Tutors United’s work as a funder, partner or volunteer. This policy is supplementary to other contracts that TU might have with any individual or organisation listed above.
Collection of your information
Tutors United may collect the following information about you:
- Personal details such as your name, date of birth, e-mail address, home address, country of residence, and other information provided by you in your programme application, course registration, employment application, contract or any other registration provided by us and completed by you;
- Information you provide to help us monitor equal opportunities. This includes special categories of personal data (or “sensitive data”) such as information concerning your gender, nationality and racial or ethnic origin, disability information, sexual orientation, faith, educational attainment and carer responsibilities;
- Details of any organisations you work for or have interests in, including information obtained through reference checks;
- Your bank details if you are paid a salary as an employee of Tutors United, as a contractor, or incur expenses as a volunteer for Tutors United
- Other information about you that is otherwise lawfully obtained including images from Tutors United events, quotes, and social impact information.
How we will protect your personal and sensitive data
We take steps to store your data securely including ensuring that only certain personnel with password protected authentication can access personal data for the purposes set our below (please see the section on ‘How we will use your information’).
Employees are advised to keep all sensitive information on our online secure systems, but where downloading is required for offline access, employees are asked to anonymise where possible and delete files as soon as no longer needed.
Some sensitive data is captured to enable Tutors United to monitor equal opportunities and to ensure our programmes are accessible as possible to those with additional needs. You are not required to provide this information and it will not affect your placement on a programme or your application to work for Tutors United.
How we will use your information
When submitting an application or registration, entering into a contract with Tutors United, or agreeing to participate or support Tutors United and our programmes, you may be asked to provide us with your personal information. We will process that information:
- To administer your application or contract (including to contact you about your application or contract);
- For the application selection process (either as an employee, contractor or a student);
- For the performance of our contract with you;
- For your participation in, and our delivery and monitoring of, your programme or course;
- For making our services available to you;
- To carry out our other legitimate business interests and activities; and
- For any other purposes, we may notify you of from time to time.
We may also use your information to communicate with you about programmes, courses, and services we believe may be of interest to you by your communicated preferences. This might include sending you our newsletter on programmes or offering you other opportunities such as PR, business introductions, invitations to events or introductions to supporters.
On occasion, we may also use the information you provide such as quotes, questionnaire and interview feedback, photographic images and video footage (where TU owns the copyright to such materials), case studies and social impact information for marketing or fundraising purposes. This includes social media, website and on printed material. We will seek explicit permission for all photographic and video footage prior to filming/photography.
We will use employee information to maintain the records of your employment and basic personnel files. We will use contractor and volunteer information to maintain records about your engagement with Tutors United and to keep records accordingly. We may also use your information for the monitoring or equal opportunities. This includes making reasonable adjustments to your place of work or, if you are a student of ours, your place in education, in line with the Equalities Act 2010, and providing other additional support that may be required by staff, students, volunteers or any other individual supporting TU’s work.
If you wish to update the purposes for which we process your data, you can do so by contacting us at info@tutorsunited.org
Purpose and legal basis of processing your information
The law in the UK allows us to process personal information, so long as we have ground under the law to do so. It also requires us to tell you what those grounds are. As a result, when we process your personal information, we will rely on one of the following processing conditions:
- Performance of a contract: this is when the processing of your personal information is necessary to perform our obligations under a contract, for example when we deliver tutoring for pupils
- Legal obligation: particularly for employees and contractors, this is when we are required to process your personal information to comply with a legal obligation, such as keeping records for tax purposes or providing information to a public body or law enforcement agency
- Legitimate interests: we may process your personal information where it is in our legitimate interest in running a lawful business to do so, to further that business, and so long as our processing doesn’t outweigh your interests
- Consent: we may process your personal information with your consent, which we obtain from you from time to time, such as when parents/guardians complete tutoring registration forms with us or when a student completes an application to tutor.
Disclosure of your information
i. Parents and guardians
We may share your information with:
- Our tutors and volunteers on a need-to-know basis (e.g. pupil first and last name, parent/carer contact details, emergency contact details, allergy and health information and any details of pupil special educational needs). The sharing of this information will take place on a secure, password-protect portal where tutors are only able to access information on their relevant pupils. Access will be revoked following the end of their participation.
- The leading Housing Association partner or grant funder for the programme to verify eligibility and to complete monitoring requirements as per our contract with them (eg. name and address). Any sensitive personal information (eg. racial/ethnic identity, benefits status, migrant status, or income status) will always be anonymized when shared.
- Third party suppliers (data is stored on a secure GDPR compliant database, which employees/tutors have access to)
ii. Employees, Tutors, and Volunteers
We may share your information with:
- Programme participants such as parents/guardians (name and Tutors United phone number and email). We will never share your personal contact information without your permission.
- The leading Housing Association partner or grant funder for the programme (for child protection purposes to ensure enhanced DBS checks have been completed and to ensure detailed records are kept of those around children). We may also share your first name, university degree, university name, and year of study in our external reports as part of our impact reporting.
- Third party suppliers (eg, text messaging services, name, and number will be shared securely).
- Other to confirm your identity for money laundering purposes and fraud prevention.
We make the disclosures of your information described above in order to process your application, to determine whether you are a suitable candidate, or (if your application is successful) to facilitate your engagement with Tutors United as a student, staff member, contractors, volunteer, etc. including offering you other opportunities such as business introductions, invitations to events or introductions to potential clients.
We may also provide your information to our professional advisors and grant managers for services they provide to us (including third party data processors for evaluation purposes) and may need to disclose your information if compelled to do so by law, a regulator or in the course of legal proceedings.
Retention of your information
We will hold your information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity unless a longer retention period is required by law, in which case we will hold your information for the period required by law. We will regularly review the data we have stored and anonymise wherever possible. Personal data that has not been utilized in the last five years will be deleted.
Your rights
Under data protection laws, you have the right to:
- Obtain a copy of your information;
- Correct or complete your information;
- Require us to stop marketing to you;
- Procure that we delete your information; and
- Withdraw consent to our use of information (to the extent such use is based on consent) or otherwise object to the way in which we use your information.
Providing us with your information is necessary for us to consider your application and enter a contract with you. Failure to provide your information may mean we cannot consider your application. If you wish to exercise any of these rights, or if you have any questions about our use of your information, please email us at info@tutorsunited.org
You also have a right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office or other appropriate regulatory authority about your information held by us, and how we use it (contact details can be found here www.ico.org.uk)
Status of Data Protection Notice
This Data Protection Notice is a way of providing information to you and is not an agreement between us. Because of that, we reserve the right to change this notice from time to time. Any such changes will be posted to the website and, where appropriate, notified to you via email. Unless otherwise specified all such changes will take effect immediately upon posting to the website.