1. Introduction

The Office for Students (“OfS”) is the regulator of the higher education sector in England and has certain statutory functions set out in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. You can find more information about OfS and the work that we do on our website: www.officeforstudents.org.uk

OfS is committed to protecting your personal information and being clear about what information we hold about you and how we use it. This privacy notice tells you what to expect when the OfS collects personal information.

OfS is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Our registration number is ZA309955 and you can check our entry details on the ICO’s website: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/what-we-do/register-of-fee-payers/

2. Data controller and processors

OfS is the “data controller” of any personal information collected within scope of this privacy notice. OfS is employing the Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC), a national careers charity, to conduct these surveys on its behalf and as such CRAC acts as a data processor (as defined in data protection legislation). OFS’s location and contact details are below:

Office for Students
Nicholson House
Lime Kiln Close
Bristol
BS34 8SR

Tel: 0117 931 7317
Email: info@officeforstudents.org.uk 

The OfS’s Data Protection Officer (DPO) is the first point of contact for people whose information is processed. You can contact the DPO by writing to the address above or by emailing: dp@officeforstudents.org.uk 

CRAC are using SurveyMonkey as a sub-processor to administer the surveys – more information about SurveyMonkey is available in section 7 of this notice. 

3. How we will use your information

We can only use your personal information where we have a specific purpose for doing so and have told you what those reasons are. 

These surveys will collect responses to understand students' and graduates’ views about new Masters conversion courses in Engineering / Computing. Results from these and other surveys will be summarised in an evaluation report which will help universities to amend or develop these types of courses in future. You can complete the survey without providing your contact details. 

To achieve the above aims, the specific uses that will be made of your personal information are listed below: 

• Your responses will be used purely to analyse the conversion courses to help amend or develop similar courses in future. 

If we want to use your personal information for a reason other than those purposes set out above, we will tell you before we start that use and provide further information about the new purpose(s). 

Contact details will be collected for those who indicate they wish to enter a related free prize draw, for the purposes of selecting a random winner and contacting that winner and providing them with a prize. Terms and conditions of the free prize draw are available.

4. Legal basis for using your personal information

Under data protection legislation, we require a legal basis to be able to process your personal information for the purposes set out above. 

The collection and use of your personal information will be based on you providing your explicit consent. 

Withdrawal of consent
Consent must be a clear positive action that you have given your agreement to the use of your personal information, and consent can also be withdrawn at any point if you are no longer happy with the use of your personal information for a specific reason. If you to wish to withdraw consent, please do so in writing to the DPO as set out in section 2. 

Once consent is withdrawn, we will destroy all relevant personal information unless we are relying on a different legal basis to justify keeping your personal information. If that is the case, we will tell you in writing. However, withdrawing your consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before you withdrew consent. 

5. What personal information we will collect

The personal information we will collect and use as part of this project is set out below: 

• Name (optional)
• Email address (optional)
• Gender
• Age
• Country of origin
• Qualifications
• Year of graduation
• Details of the course you studied
• Employment/study circumstances
• Your views relating to expectation and experience of the conversion course 

Special category data 

• Ethnicity

Please note, if you do not provide your name and email address your responses will be submitted anonymously. 

6. Who we give your personal information to

The information you submit will be compiled by CRAC and aggregate level results will be passed to OfS for the purposes set out above. You will not be identifiable from any of the published outputs of this research. Beyond this, we will not routinely pass your information to any other organisation except where required to do so as part of our functions or by law. 

7. Where your personal information will be stored

SurveyMonkey is being used to conduct these surveys and record your responses. As such the data will be held in the United States, therefore outside the European Economic Area. SurveyMonkey are signed up to the EU-US Privacy Shield, which provides a level of protection equivalent to that afforded within the European Union. 

SurveyMonkey’s privacy policy is available at: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/mp/policy/privacy-policy/ (see section titled “Privacy for Survey Respondents”) 

If you wish to submit responses to these surveys in another format, please contact: robin.mellors-bourne@crac.org.uk 

8. Your rights over your personal information

Once your personal information has been collected, you have certain rights in relation to that personal information that may be exercised. You have the right to: 

• Ask for a copy of your personal information
• Correct inaccurate personal information held about you
• Ask for your personal information to be deleted (within certain limits)
• Restrict processing of your personal information
• Ask for a copy of your information in a format that allows easy transfer (“data portability”)
• Object to automated decision making or profiling (if these take place) 

All these rights have certain limitations depending on the request and the purpose for which we are holding your personal information. Further information can be found about these rights and the OfS’s processes for handling such requests at:

https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/privacy/individual-rights-under-the-general-data-protection-regulation/ 

9. How do we protect your personal information 

OfS and CRAC both have a number of security measures in place to protect your personal information, listed below: 

• All staff are required to undertake training in data protection and information security on joining the organisation and then on an annual basis;
• Formal information security policies that must be read and understood by all staff;
• Personal information is only available to those members of staff who require access as part of their role;
• CRAC’s information and data systems have enabled it to be accredited through the Cyber Essentials scheme. 

10. How long we will hold your personal information

We are only able to retain a copy of your personal information as long as it is still needed for the purpose(s) for which it was collected. The personal information you have submitted will be removed from the Surveymonkey platform by 31 December 2018 and retained by CRAC until 31 December 2019, one year after the conclusion of the project. 

11. Complaints about the use of your personal information

If you are unhappy with the way in which your personal information has been handled by the OfS, please contact us via our Data Protection Officer (details in section 2) and we will try to resolve your issue informally.

If we have are not able to resolve the issue to your satisfaction, you can also make a complaint to the data protection supervisory authority. In the UK, this is the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and they can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Tel: 0303 123 1113
Email: casework@ico.org.uk

12. Changes to this privacy notice

We keep our privacy notices under regular review and we will inform you of any changes to this notice in writing. 

This privacy notice was last updated on 10 October 2018.