What this Notice covers
Kent School of English is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information.
This Privacy Notice describes how we collect and use personal information about you during the recruitment process, in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and data protection legislation.
Identity of the data controller
Kent School of English 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 privacy notice.
What information do we collect?
KSE collects a range of information about you. This includes:
- your name, address and contact details, including email address and telephone number
- characteristics (such as nationality, language spoken, gender, age)
- information about other members of your household
- feedback from students (including complaints)
- visit reports compiled by a member of our Accommodation Team
- information about your suitability to work with under 18s (including details of any criminal convictions)
- photographs of your house
Sources of personal data
KSE may collect this information in a variety of ways. For example, information might be contained in application forms, from your passport or other identity documents, or collected through interviews or other forms of assessment.
We may also collect personal information about you from third parties, such as references supplied by employers. We will seek information from third parties only once we have decided to proceed with your registration as a homestay host and will inform you that we are doing so.
Information will be stored in a range of different places, including on your registration form, in information management systems and other IT systems (including email).
Our lawful bases for processing your data
Collecting information from homestay hosts allows us to assess and confirm an applicant’s suitability for hosting KSE students.
We will use your personal information in the following circumstances:
- Where we need to perform a contract we have entered into with you
- Where we need to comply with a legal obligation
- Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests or those of a third party and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests
Our purposes for processing your personal information
KSE has a legitimate interest in collecting personal information in order to ensure a homestay hosts suitability, for working with children and adults.
Who has access to your information?
Your information may be shared internally for the purposes of accommodating our students. People who may see or use your personal information include members of the Accommodation and Admissions Teams, managers involved in investigations relating to the wellbeing of our students and IT staff.
Limited personal information (name, address and telephone number(s)) will be shared with our Transport Team, arrivals staff, transport companies, our out-of-hours on-call staff and occasionally with teachers and activity assistants organising students’ activities.
Your name may appear on various internal KSE documents.
In addition, we will share limited personal information (name, address and telephone number(s) and occasionally a homestay host profile describing your house, household and the route from your house to KSE) with Educational Tour Operators and Educational Partners responsible for bringing students to KSE.
In addition, we will share your information with an umbrella body who will carry out a Disclosure and Barring Service check on our behalf. This is to assess your suitability to work with under 18s
How does KSE protect personal information?
We take the security of your information seriously. We have internal policies and controls in place to ensure that your information is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by our employees in the proper performance of their duties.
We ensure that computers and servers comply with all relevant legislation and that personal information is protected by anti-virus and firewall software. All data on KSE systems is password protected.
Hard copies of personal information are kept securely and destroyed when no longer required for the performance of duties or the fulfilment of contractual obligations.
Information security policies and measures are regularly reviewed and, where necessary, improved.
How long does KSE keep personal information?
We will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements.
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 the applicable legal requirements.
Your rights
You have the right to:
- Request access to, and a copy of, your personal information
- Request correction of the personal information that we hold about you
- Request erasure of your personal information.
- 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.
If you believe we have not complied with your rights, you can complain to the Information Commissioner.
What if you do not provide personal information?
You are under no statutory or contractual obligation to provide information to KSE. However, if you do not provide the information, we will not be able to work with you because the school depends on the processing of your information to function safely and effectively and to fulfil its own obligations.
Changes to this Privacy Notice
Kent School of English reserves 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 at all about this privacy policy please contact our Accommodation Team: accommodation@kentschool.co.uk