Welcome to EdCentral’s plain English notice of our practice

In compliance with the General Data Protection Regulations (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 (‘GDPR’) this is a plain English notice briefly outlining our practice in relation to:

Links to our legalese policies can be found at the foot of this page.

Who we are and what we do

EdCentral is a not-for-profit social enterprise set up to support the education sector. Our platform (sometimes referred to as our website) is a membership portal and offers a variety of services:

Our privacy ethos

EdCentral has always been committed to safeguarding the personal data of our members, contacts and website visitors. We take your privacy seriously and only use your personal information to administer your account and to provide the services you have requested from us.

How we collect and store information depends on whether you visit EdCentral as a guest (i.e. a non-member just visiting our website) or whether you sign in as a member. As an EdCentral member you can change your privacy settings and update or delete your personal information at any time within the manage my account area of your EdProfile.

Some of our services are available to guests without providing any personal information, although several types of information are automatically collected when you use our services, as outlined below.

How we use cookies and server logs

Every device connected to the Internet is allocated a number called an IP (Internet Protocol) address. The format looks like this: 123.45.67.89

Depending on which Internet service you opt for, your service provider may allocate a different IP address each time you connect. Alternatively, you may have a ‘static’ IP address that never changes.

Some cookies are necessary to enable you to login to the member area. Cookies and server logs use IP addresses to record interactions with websites. This information can subsequently be analysed through Google Analytics.  We use Google Analytics so we can understand which parts of EdCentral are the most popular and which types of devices are being used to access our services. This helps us make decisions about where to invest our development efforts and what sort of devices we need to optimise our services for. We do not monitor individuals’ data specifically, we look at the collective data to help us determine trends. We collect this type of data from our website guests and from our EdCentral members.

We do not have Google's 'User ID' feature enabled. Neither have we enabled Google's 'data collection for display and search remarketing' functionality.

If you would like to know more about how Google uses data when you visit a website that uses Google Analytics, please visit https://www.google.com/policies/privacy/partners/

Other things to be aware of:

When you follow a link from EdCentral to any other site, we have no control over what, if any, tracking technologies those sites may employ or how they may use them. 

Most browsers automatically accept cookies. The browser companies (e.g. Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari) control these settings. However, your browser’s help page will tell you how to limit or decline cookies and you can change your settings to notify you when a cookie is being set or updated, or to block cookies altogether. 

For general information about cookies and how to disable them you may find a visit to  www.allaboutcookies.orguseful. You can also manage the use of Adobe Flash technologies, including Flash cookies, within the Flash Player Help area of the Macromedia website. 

Bear in mind however, that if you do choose to decline cookies, you may not be able to sign in, customise, or use features on some websites. Similarly, disabling Flash technologies my impact on your experience using some websites.

Information we hold about our members:

When signing up to be an EdCentral member, you complete a subscription form which requests either all, or part of, the following information:

Choice of username; choice of password; email address; title; first name; last name; organisation name; city; region; type of organisation; your job role; subject areas of interest e.g. English, maths, history, science, languages, arts etc.; general areas of interest e.g. SEND, leadership, governance, education research etc. 

Your username and (encrypted) password are stored on our system so you can login to our website at any time and so we can authenticate your access to our services and prevent unauthorised parties from accessing your account (please remember that you are responsible for keeping your password and login credentials secure and not disclosing them to any third parties).

We store the other information mentioned above so our members can search for others with the same specialisms and interests and collaborate or share resources. All this information can be updated or deleted within your EdProfile. You have control over your privacy settings and can opt to keep your details private, share them only with your invited EdCentral contacts or allow all EdCentral members to see them.

Our subscription form also asks whether you would be interested in any EdCentral specific activities such as contributing content; joining one of our panels for teaching or research; becoming a partner organisation or sponsor. If you indicated an interest in any of these things we may contact you with further details. 

Sensitive information

No payment or credit card information is stored on our servers. Any chargeable services we offer are processed via PayPal.

Third parties

We have always avoided having advertising on our site, but as a not-for-profit social enterprise, this is something we may be forced to consider in the future in order to generate operating income.  However, if that ever happens we guarantee never to share any identifiable information with advertisers or any other third parties. Any data we may supply would be anonymised aggregate information only to allow advertisers to promote their products or services to the most appropriate audience or to inform or measure the success of an advertising campaign e.g. amongst our members we have 4,000 maths teachers; 750 maths teachers clicked on your advertisement. 

How and where we store your personal data

Our servers use the most up-to-date security and encryption protocols to protect and preserve your data. These are hosted in one of the UK's largest Tier 4 data centres (highest tier) and operate full end-to-end SSL encryption for all data transfers.  Backups are taken regularly which are each fully encrypted and stored in a secure limited-access area within the same data centre.

As you may already be aware, the transmission of any information via the Internet cannot be guaranteed to be completely secure. As such we cannot vouch for the security of the data you transmit to our website, any transmission is at your own risk. However, on receipt of your information, we will use strict procedures and security features to try and prevent unauthorised access.

Emails from us

When you register for an account at EdCentral this automatically adds you to our email lists. These are administered through MailChimp and you can opt-out of receiving any or all of our emails at any time. 

Examples of emails we send you:

Third parties

We have always avoided having advertising on our platform, but as a not-for-profit social enterprise, this is something we may be forced to consider in the future in order to generate operating income.  However, if that ever happens we guarantee never to share any identifiable information with advertisers or any other third parties. Any data we may supply would be aggregate information only to allow advertisers to promote their products or services to the most appropriate audience or to inform or measure the success of an advertising campaign e.g. amongst our members we have 4,000 maths teachers; 750 maths teachers clicked on your advertisement. 

Your rights

The Data Protection Act (DPA) gives you the right to access information held about you, and this right can be exercised at any time in accordance with the DPA. 

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has extended these rights, giving you: the right to be informed; the right to access; the right to rectification; the right to erasure; the right to restrict processing; the right to data portability; the right to object; and the right not to be subject to automated decision-making including profiling.

If you are an EdCentral member, you can control your privacy settings and amend and/or delete the personal information you gave us on registration via the account management area of your EdCentral profile (EdProfile). Should you wish to make a further access request in accordance with the DPA or the GDPR, simply email us via the contact us section of our website using the subject line ‘Access request’ and detailing your request/s in the email.  We aim to comply with such requests within seven days and at the most within 30 days of receiving your request.

Thank you for taking the time to read this notice. We encourage you to also review the legalese versions of our cookie policy, our privacy policy and our terms of service