Data Protection and Privacy

Who are we?

We’re ICS Learn, the world's most experienced distance learning organisation.  Our aim is to make learning as accessible as possible in a way that lets you decide when, where and how you learn. 

International Correspondence Schools Limited trading as ICS Learn is a company incorporated under the laws of Scotland (registered number SC434382) having its registered office and address for service at ICS Learn, 7 West Nile St, Glasgow G1 2PR. We are registered as a data controller with the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) under registration number Z3410565.
 

How do we collect information about you?

Information is provided to ICS Learn by:

1. Filling out an enquiry form on the ICS Learn website
2. Filling out an enquiry form for one of our courses on a third-party website, such as an awarding body, online job noticeboard website, or a generic course enquiry website, which is then automatically sent to us
3. Correspondence by phone, email or chat
4. Requests to join our social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter
5. Information provided when contact is made with the Student Service team to report a problem, resolve a query or provide general system advice and support
6. Surveys to support continuous improvements in the student experience
7. Career development tools to support your continued learning
8. Completion of an Apprenticeship enrolment form
9. Any pre-enrolment diagnostic test that may be required
    

What information do you provide?

When you submit your details to us through an enquiry on our website [or a trusted third party], we’ll collect the following information:

1. Your full name
2. Your email address
3. Your telephone number

When you speak to our course advisors or enrol on a course, we may ask for the following information:

1. Your full name
2. Your email address
3. Your telephone number
4. Your education and work experience, where relevant to the course
5. Your postal address
6. Your date of birth
7. Payment information including credit card number and bank account details
8. Company Name and Address
9. Copy of your identification, either passport or driving license.

If a third party is paying for your course then we will ask them for the following information:

1. Full name
2. Email address
3. Postal address
4. Date of Birth
5. Payment information including credit card number and bank details

When you are studying, we may collect the following information about you:

1. Service queries or problems
2. Academic tutor queries
3. Coursework or assessments submissions
4. Student event or survey
5. Career development plans

When you enrol as a student, we’ll ask if you have any special educational requirements that might require us to make adjustments to the course or assessments. We ask this so that we can take reasonable steps to accommodate your needs and give you the best student experience possible. Any such health information is known as special category personal data under data protection laws. We may share this with our Awarding bodies so that they can take your requirements into consideration when setting assignments or exams.

This information will only be used to help you.

As with all your data, you can ask us to delete or modify this information at any time. Please see further information about your privacy rights below.

How and why we use your personal information

Under data protection law, we can only use your personal information if we have a proper reason for doing so, e.g.:
to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;

1. for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
2. for our legitimate interests or those of a third party; or where you have given consent.

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.

The list below explains what we use (process) your personal information for and our legal basis for doing so:

Students: If you are a student, our processing of your personal data is necessary for the performance of our contract with you, i.e. to provide you with the course you have enrolled on. If you do not provide us with certain personal information that we request when you apply for one of our courses, then we may not be able to offer this course to you. We will seek your consent to process any special categories of personal data (such as health information) that we may request when you apply for one of our courses.

Enquiries and Feedback: We use personal information submitted to us when you make an enquiry or when you provide feedback to us for our legitimate interests of engaging with potential students and identifying how we can improve our services.

Job Applications: We collect personal information in the context of processing job applications as necessary to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations to ensure that our application processes comply with applicable laws, and also for our legitimate interests to ensure that candidates are appropriately qualified and suitable for working with us. Such processing may also be necessary for us to take steps before entering into an employment contract with a candidate.

Business Contacts: We use personal contact details of business contacts (including agents, contractors and individuals that represent our suppliers and business partners) for our own legitimate interests of running our business.
Website: The technical information gathered from the use of our website (including through our use of cookies) which may include personal data, is used for our legitimate interest of ensuring that our website is functioning properly and to help us make business decisions about the information to be provided on our website.

Marketing: We may use your personal information to send you updates about our services, including exclusive offers, promotions or new courses. We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information for marketing purposes. This means we do not usually need your consent to send you marketing communications. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately. You have the right to opt out of receiving marketing communications at any time (please see "How to unsubscribe from marketing communications" below). We will always treat your personal information with utmost respect and never share it with other organisations for marketing purposes.

How long do we keep your data?

If you submit your details as a prospective student, we’ll store this data for 3 years.

If you enrol as a student, we’ll store your data for 7 years after the completion of your course in line with regulatory and governing body requirements, where there may be a requirement to hold your data to evidence the completion of your studies or for audit purposes.

Technical information about your visit to our website may be kept for the following retention periods:

1. Google unique visitor tracking - 2 years.
2. Google analytics session - 30 minutes.
3. Google referral - 6 months.

For more information about how long we keep your data, please contact us at the details above.

How do we keep your data secure?

We take your privacy and security very seriously and take appropriate measures to ensure that your data is protected from misuse.

We have an ongoing programme of improvement and development in order to protect your personal data from unauthorised access, accidental loss and/or destruction.

We use the following security measures to protect your data:

1. Industry standard secure sockets layer (SSL) technology, to protect personal information, as well as the use of specific logins and secure passwords
2. Our web servers and database servers are held in a securely managed data centre and are further protected with a personal firewall and inherent security layers
3. firewalls, anti-virus, secure file transfers as used where required
4. encryption of emails is used where required
5. office security
6. access to personal data is granted on an "as-needed" basis
7. an incident and disaster recovery protocol framework is in place to help us manage any data security breaches

Please be aware that communications over the internet, such as e-mails/instant messaging, are not secure unless they have been encrypted. We cannot accept responsibility for any unauthorised access or loss of personal information that is beyond our control.

How and when we may change this policy

We will keep this policy under review and any changes made from time to time will be posted on this page.

Please check back regularly to keep informed of updates or changes to this privacy statement. We will notify any significant changes via an announcement on our website.