Privacy & Cookies Policies

Last updated: 30 June 2020 

This Privacy Policy describes how your personal information is collected, used, and shared when you visit https://topgradeslearning.co.uk/ (the “Site”); it also describes how we use any personal data you share offline. This policy should be read in conjunction with our Cookies Policy and Terms and Conditions.

In this policy, “we”, “our” or “us” refers to Top Grades Learning Centre Ltd. The legal information for which is: Top Grades Learning Centre Ltd, website at https://www.topgradeslearning.co.uk, registered in England and Wales under company number 11065311, registered office 66-68 Stanhope Road, St Albans, Herts, AL1 5BL.

We provide tuition services as a principal (i.e. using our own employees) to certain clients through our education consultancy and we provide tuition services as an agent (i.e. using self-employed tutors) to certain clients through our tuition agency. We also provide exam services to private candidates.

When we talk about “Personal Information” in this Privacy Policy, we are talking about Device Information and Personal Data. Device Information is collected through our website (see our Cookies Policy). Personal Data refers to the information we collect about students, exam candidates, their parents, legal guardians or other persons that arrange for tuition or other services on their behalf (i.e. clients), tutors that wish to provide tuition on our behalf, and our other staff. 

Note that the GPDR Regulations have additional requirements in place that must be met in order to store personal data relating to criminal records background checks (specifically in our case, an Enhanced Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) Certificate).  We are entitled to request and store this personal data as we are supplying tuition services to children and, in certain cases, to vulnerable adults with special educational needs (SEN).  

The information collected may include:

  We use your Personal Information to:

• Communicate with you;
• When in line with the preferences you have shared with us, provide you with information or advertising relating to our products or services.
• We use the Device Information that we collect to help us screen for potential risk and fraud (in particular, your IP address), and more generally to improve and optimise our Site (for example, by generating analytics about how our customers browse and interact with the Site, and to assess the success of our marketing and advertising campaigns).
• We use the Personal Data we collect to help us tailor our services to the needs of the client/ student/ exam candidate.
• Where applicable, we use the Personal Data to communicate with Examining Bodies or other relevant third parties (e.g. where a consortium arrangement is in place between two centres) and arrange for exam services to be conducted.

 We may share your Personal Information with third parties to help us use your Personal Information, as described above. For example, we use Wave to power our invoicing system --you can read more about how Wave uses Personal Information here: https://my.waveapps.com/privacy/. We communicate with AQA (https://www.aqa.org.uk/about-us/privacy-notice) and Pearson Edexcel (https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/about-us/qualification-brands/gdpr.html) to process exam entries and other exam-related services.

For staff and tutors, we may share your Personal Information with third parties such as employment agencies subject your permission being granted.

Finally, we may also share your Personal Information to comply with applicable laws and regulations, to respond to a subpoena, search warrant or other lawful request for information we receive, or to otherwise protect our rights.

Where we provide links to websites of other organisations, this privacy notice does not cover how that organisation processes personal information. We encourage you to read the privacy notices on the other websites you visit.  We also encourage you to consult the guides provided on the ICO’s website with respect to protecting your privacy when using popular social media sites i.e.

https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/be-data-aware/social-media-privacy-settings/

If you are a European resident, you have the right to access personal information we hold about you and to ask that your personal information be corrected, updated, or deleted. If you would like to exercise this right, please contact us through the contact information below.

Additionally, if you are a European resident we note that we are processing your information in order to fulfil contracts we might have with you or otherwise to pursue our legitimate business interests listed above. Additionally, please note that your information may be transferred outside of Europe, including to Canada and the United States.

When/if you place an order through the Site, we will maintain your Order Information for our records unless and until you ask us to delete this information.

When you enlist our tuition or exam services, or apply for employment, we will retain your Personal Data for the length of the contract plus one to several years following the end of the contract. You can consult the IRMS Schools Toolkit as a general guideline for the length of retention for different records https://irms.org.uk/page/SchoolsToolkit.

We may update this privacy policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.

For more information about our privacy practices, if you have questions, or if you would like to make a complaint, please contact us by e-mail at info@topgradeslearning.co.ukor by mail using the details provided below:

66-68 Stanhope Road, St. Albans, Herts, AL1 5BL, United Kingdom

Last updated: 30 June 2020

This policy should be read alongside our Privacy Policy, which explains how we use personal information. If you have any queries about the way we use your personal information or cookies, please email us at: info@topgradeslearning.co.uk or write to us at our registered office address: Top Grades Learning Centre, 66-68 Stanhope Rd, St Albans, Herts, AL1 5BL

We may automatically collect information on how our website https://topgradeslearning.co.uk/ (the “Site”) is accessed and used. When you visit the Site, we automatically collect certain information about your device, including information about your web browser, IP address, time zone, and some of the cookies that are installed on your device. Additionally, as you browse the Site, we collect information about the individual web pages or products that you view, what websites or search terms referred you to the Site, and information about how you interact with the Site. We refer to this automatically-collected information as “Device Information.”

We use cookies and similar tracking technologies to track the activity on our website and hold certain information.

Cookies are files with small amounts of data which may include an anonymous unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device. Tracking technologies also used are beacons, tags, and scripts to collect and track information and to improve and analyse our website.

You can instruct your browser to refuse all cookies or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. However, if you do not accept cookies, you may not be able to use some portions of our website.

Examples of cookies we use:

• Session cookies to operate our website.
• Preference cookies to remember your preferences and various settings.
• Security cookies for security purposes.

We may use your Personal Information to provide you with targeted advertisements or marketing communications we believe may be of interest to you. For more information about how targeted advertising works, you can visit the Network Advertising Initiative’s (“NAI”) educational page at http://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising/how-does-it-work.

You can opt out of targeted advertising by visiting:

FACEBOOK - https://www.facebook.com/settings/?tab=ads 

GOOGLE - https://www.google.com/settings/ads/anonymous 

BING - https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/policies/personalized-ads

Additionally, you can opt out of some of these services by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out portal at: http://optout.aboutads.info/.

Please note that we do not alter our Site’s data collection and use practices when we see a Do Not Track signal from your browser.

We may use third-party website providers to monitor and analyse the use of our website, including Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a web analytics website offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. Google uses the data collected to track and monitor the use of our website. This data is shared with other Google websites. Google may use the collected data to contextualize and personalize the ads of its own advertising network.

You can opt-out of having made your activity on the website available to Google Analytics by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on. The add-on prevents the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js, analytics.js, and dc.js) from sharing information with Google Analytics about visits activity.

For more information on the privacy practices of Google, please visit the Google Privacy & Terms web page: https://policies.google.com/privacy?hl=en 

For more information about cookies and how to manage them, please visit:  http://www.allaboutcookies.org/.