Being an online organisation and with digital technology at the heart of everything we do, online safety for our customers is paramount, especially as the majority of our users are students of primary school age. EducationCity complies with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
In-Product Data Collection and Use
EducationCity provides a personalised experience for its users. Account information for EducationCity users including administrators, teachers and students are password-protected so that only the user, account administrators and teachers have access to this personal information. By requiring users to log in, students using EducationCity can access the relevant content and their progress can be monitored.
We recommend that you do not disclose your password to anyone to keep your data secure. EducationCity will never ask you for your password when contacting you by phone or email. EducationCity automatically logs users out after one hour of inactivity if they are logged in as an individual user. When you have finished using EducationCity, we recommend that you log out. This is to ensure that others cannot access your account information if you share a computer with someone else or are using a computer in a public place such as a library.
EducationCity enables teachers and administrators to create and set up their own account. This allows teachers to upload and manage their own classes, set work and monitor progress with added security. To create an account on EducationCity the following information is required.
Teachers and Administrators
We ask teachers and administrators to input the following in order to create an account:
- Title
- First Name
- Last Name
- Email Address
- Username
- Password
- Role (optional)
Students
When creating a new student account, we require a teacher or administrator to enter or upload the following information:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Username
- Password
- Class
- Unique ID (optional)
- Academic Level (optional)
- Date of Birth (optional)
- Gender (optional)
Any work completed by a student (when logged in) is saved and stored against their profile and made available for the student and teachers to review and analyse within the EducationCity product.
For the purposes of a Home Educator’s subscription, we will also require the following details of the main account holder in order to manage the subscription:
- Name
- Email
- Full Address (including postcode and country)
- Contact Number
At all times, within the definition of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the school (or home educator) and its employees retain the status of Data Controller for the data stored on our cloud service. The data obtained from the school’s systems always remains in the ownership of the school, or that of the individual (employed) users. EducationCity shall be the Data Processor for the purposes of the GDPR.
Data Sharing, Retention & Storage
EducationCity has a strict policy of not sharing any information about students with anyone outside the organisation. EducationCity will not share data with third parties and we will never sell user information or data collected from our website.
Sub-Processors
EducationCity uses sub-processors to facilitate communications and support of your subscription. We remain the data processor of your data and these sub-processors only process your data in accordance with our strict instructions. We periodically audit our sub processors to ensure they comply with GDPR and our contract. We currently use the following sub-processors:
- Marketo (www.marketo.com) – provide marketing services that allow us to manage teachers’ and administrators’ communication preferences, including delivery and tracking of email campaigns.
- Click4Assistance (www.click4assistance.co.uk) – provide our in-product instant messaging/assistance service to teachers and administrators. Information regarding how the data is processed and stored when you use the Live Chat service can be viewed here.
- Whatfix (www.whatfix.com) – provide our in-product help and support services to teachers and administrators. We use cookies and anonymised user IDs, no identifiable account information is shared.
Security & Protection of Your Information
All remote access to the EducationCity web application is conducted over HTTPS, an encrypted web link secured using TLS (Transport Layer Security). This is the same method used by banks and commercial entities to secure sensitive data from interception.
Data Deletion
EducationCity stores data for its users. To ensure that EducationCity does not hold user information in perpetuity, it has set criteria for the deletion of unused data. This information will be deleted daily based on the below data types:
- Users – EducationCity holds data for Teacher, Student and Admin user accounts. If these accounts are left inactive for two years they will be deleted. The definition of inactive is if the user has not logged in (via any route) for two years.
- SuccessTracker – Any saved score data will be deleted after five years on a rolling basis. Even if the student is still active, we will only hold five years’ worth of results per child; if more is required, the export data feature should be used. If a student is deleted as a result of being inactive for two years, all score data held for that student is also deleted. Data to be deleted includes Activity, Assessment and PlayLive scores, and Revision Journals.
- MyCity – If a Teacher or Admin user is deleted due to being inactive for two years, or a Teacher or Admin user is deleted via the user interface/front end, then their MyCities become ‘un-owned’. Any MyCities that contain no content will be deleted after two years. No MyCities will be deleted for an active user.
Usage Statistics
Usage statistics of EducationCity at school level will be stored in EducationCity’s subscriber management system and will be kept in perpetuity. No personal/user level information can be extracted from this data.
External Data Storage
EducationCity stores data on our secure database servers. The servers are housed in secure data centres, trusted and used by many of the country’s leading organisations. Physical access to our servers is strictly limited to data centre staff, our own IT staff and accompanied external contractors when needed, in order to maintain the servers. Access to the servers in the data centre requires proof of identity (photo ID) and is controlled by magnetic card readers and keys to both the cages and individual cabinets that surround the server racks, all of which are monitored by the data centre security staff using CCTV. Remote access to the data is limited to the tools needed by the IT support staff to maintain and operate the servers and is restricted to known users (identified by usernames and secure keys) connecting from known locations (IP addresses).
Data Backup
EducationCity’s backup procedure allows for storage for typically up to nine days and includes a full backup at the end of every working day, which is stored securely off-site.
Transfer of Data Outside of the European Economic Area
All data entered and saved on the EducationCity product is stored and backed up on secure database servers within the UK. Any email communication with us will go through our email system (Microsoft Office 365) which is held on Privacy Shield compliant servers held in the USA.
Access to Information
The General Data Protection Regulation gives you the right to access information held about you. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the regulations.
EducationCity Employees
To ensure that the user receives the best customer care, EducationCity’s staff have access to user data (dependent upon their role). Staff access is controlled via documented System Access Requests and is only granted on a need-to-know basis.
Marketing Data Collection & Use
On our website, we request personal information in the following areas:
- Mailing List – Your email address in order to send you relevant news and updates.
- Free Resources – Your first name, last name and email address. We use this information to send you a copy of the free resource you have downloaded.
- Support – Your title, first name, last name, email address, school name, postcode, job role and telephone number. We use this information to link your question to your school account so that we can contact you with a relevant and timely response.
- Free Trial – Your title, first name, last name, email address, school name, postcode, country, job role and telephone number. We use this information to either link you to your school account or set up a new school account in order to provide you with trial access.
When providing us with your information, you will also be given the option to opt into a number of different communications from us, which fall into the following categories: free resources, product updates, education news, events and training, free trials, special offers. However, your chosen action is not dependent on opting into these communications.
You can update your account information by calling the team on +44 (0)1572 725080. This is available to the account administrator or head teacher only. The administrator has control of all users in its school and can add/change/delete on request.
Data kept for marketing purposes can be changed at any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link on any email from us or from within the product. From this link, you will be able to access the marketing preferences linked to your email address, meaning you can limit contact to free resources, product updates, events and training, free trials and/or special offers, or deselect yourself from all non-account based emails entirely. Alternatively, you can email marketing@educationcity.com to update your information.
A cookie (also called a HTTP cookie, web cookie or browser cookie) is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user’s web browser while the user is browsing that website, which is subsequently sent back to the same website by the browser.
To function, a cookie asks permission to be placed on your computer’s hard drive. Once you agree, the file is added and will subsequently recognise you when you return to a particular site and/or help EducationCity analyse its web traffic.
How EducationCity Uses Cookies
EducationCity uses cookies to provide you with the best possible experience on our website and to identify critical details such as account, user and curriculum identification on our product. In addition to this, we use cookies from Google Analytics, Hotjar and Marketo to record your usage of the website anonymously. This helps us analyse data about webpage traffic and improve our service in order to tailor it to customer needs. We use this information for statistical analysis purposes only, to influence our development plans.
Overall, cookies help us provide you with a better product, by enabling us to monitor which pages you find useful and which you do not. A cookie in no way gives us access to your computer or any information about you, other than the data you choose to share with us.
Visiting EducationCity could result in one or several of the following types of cookie being set:
- Session Cookies – Session cookies allow users to be recognised by our website and securely store authentication and subscription information so that you maintain continued access to content and records that are correct for and relevant to you.
- Google Analytics and Hotjar – Each and every time a user navigates around the EducationCity website, Google Analytics and Hotjar set anonymous analytics cookies to record information about the pages he/she has viewed. These cookies give us an insight into how the website is being used, give us information about whether a visitor is a first-time user or not, tell us where they found us from and where they spent their time on the website, all of which can help us improve our site over time.
- Marketo’s Munchkin Cookie – Every time a user visits the EducationCity website from an email, Marketo sets a cookie to record information about the pages that have been viewed. This information gives us an insight into which pages are being accessed and allows us to react with tailored automated marketing campaigns, which meet the information needs of that specific user.
- Whatfix – Every time a teacher or administrator is presented with a Whatfix pop-up, a cookie is set to ensure the appropriate messages are only presented the prescribed amount of times.
- Local Shared Objects (Flash Cookies) – Local Shared Objects, commonly known as Flash cookies, are pieces of data that websites and online products like EducationCity, which use Adobe Flash, may store on a user’s computer. To improve the user experience, Local Shared Objects can be stored or retrieved whenever a user accesses a page containing a Flash application and store their user preferences. Flash cookies are stored on a user’s device much the same as cookies are, however, it is not possible to manage them at browser level in the same way.
How to Control & Delete Cookies
EducationCity relies on cookies to authenticate its users and provide you with the correct content. Should you wish to control the cookies that are set, stop them being used or delete them altogether, you can do but restricting or preventing any cookies may negatively affect your experience of the site.
All the latest browsers allow you to change your cookie settings. This is usually within the Settings section of the browser menu but accurate information for each browser can be found by clicking on the links below:
How to Disable Flash Cookies
For information on how to manage or disable Flash cookies, click here to access Adobe’s website.
To find out more about cookies and their various uses on the Internet, click here.
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 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 Data Protection Officer in writing.
No fee usually required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (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.
Contact Us
You may contact us at any time via email (customerservice@educationcity.com) or post. Our postal address is: EducationCity, 8/9 Saddlers Court, Oakham, Rutland, LE15 7GH, UK.
