Privacy Notice: Ark Sixth Form and Destinations team

Contact details

What is Ark’s Sixth Form and Destinations team?  

Ark’s Sixth Form and Destinations team exists to help students select, secure and succeed in their future destinations once they leave school. This includes work to introduce students to universities, apprenticeships, different career paths, while also helping them achieve the best academic results that they can to support their applications.

Supporting students to make decisions about their best fit destination when leaving school starts early, so the Sixth Form and Destinations team works across Ark’s primary and secondary schools, as well as Ark’s sixth forms.
The Sixth Form and Destinations team also delivers Professional Pathways in collaboration with Ark sixth forms across London and Birmingham.

Professional Pathways is Ark’s unique approach to delivering vocational qualifications (such as BTECs and T Levels). This includes both an academic curriculum and a wrap-around programme to help students develop the habits, skills and mindsets to thrive while at school and afterwards.
This document explains how we use information about you and what we do with it. We call this information about you ‘personal data’ or ‘personal information’. This document tells you more about: 

• The information we collect 
• What we use the information for 
• How your information is stored and how long we keep it 
• What rights you have to the information 

Why do we need your information? 

We have the legal requirement, a contractual obligation, and a legitimate interest to collect and process your personal data. We use your personal data for some, or all, of the reasons below: 

• Supporting your learning through a combination of online and in-person events and access to network-approved digital platforms such as Unifrog, Turnitin, Zero Gravity and UpLearn.
• Delivering careers guidance meetings
• Monitoring and reporting on your progress 
• Providing appropriate care for you 
• Assessing the quality of our services 
• Keeping children safe (food allergies, or emergency contact details) 
• Complying with the statutory duties placed on us by Department for Education (DfE) data collections 
• Promoting the work of Ark and the successes of our schools and students

We have lawful reasons for having this information which means we do not usually need your consent (permission) to use this information. Sometimes we may want to use your data differently and, in these cases, we may need to gain your consent. You can change your mind at any time. 

Information that we collect, process, hold and share 

This includes: 

• Personal identifiers and contacts (such as name, unique pupil number and reference numbers, contact details and address) 
• Characteristics (such as ethnicity, language, and free school meal eligibility) 
• Special educational needs
• Medical and dietary requirements
• Attendance (such as sessions attended, number of absences and absence reasons)
• Academic and destinations outcomes
• We may also collect photographs and video footage of you but only when it is appropriate to do so 
• For University Bursary recipients, in addition to the above we collect bank details, university enrolment documentation and next of kin contact details

The lawful basis on which we process this information 

• Article 6 1(a) of the GDPR which allows processing with your consent 
• Article 6 1(b) of the GDPR which allows processing that is necessary for the performance of a contract 
• Article 6 1(c) of the GDPR which allows processing that is necessary to comply with a legal obligation 
• Article 6 1(d) of the GDPR which allows processing that is necessary to protect vital interests 
• Article 6 1(e) of the GDPR which allows processing that is necessary in order for the school to function 
• Article 6 1(f) of the GDPR which allows processing that is in our legitimate interests 
• Article 9 2(b) of the GDPR which allows the processing of special category data that is necessary for carrying out obligations in the fields of employment and social security and social protection law 
• Article 9 2(g) of the GDPR which allows the processing of special category data that is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest 
• Article 9 2(j) of the GDPR which allows the processing of special category data when it is necessary for archiving purposes in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes 

The processing of personal data and identifying the relevant lawful basis of processing this data is reviewed as part of our efforts to adhere to the principles of data protection. 

Storing your data 

Your personal data is securely stored and backed up by Ark’s Microsoft 365 cloud-based storage drive.

The Sixth Form and Destinations team will keep the images and footage for five years and after this time, the data will be permanently deleted from Ark’s Microsoft 365 cloud-based storage drive and cannot be retrieved.

For students in receipt of an Ark University Bursary, personal data will be kept for ten years so impact can be reported to bursary donors. Bank details will be kept for six years to comply with financial audit requirements.

If you or your child no longer attend an Ark school, images and footage taken whilst you/they did attend an Ark school will still be used, retained, and deleted in the same way as explained above.

 We have a policy which explains how long we keep information and is called the Data Retention and Disposal policy and you can ask for a copy by emailing dataprotection@arkonline.org. 

Transfer outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) 

We do not normally transfer your information to a different country outside the United Kingdom or EU (these countries together are called the EEA). However, some of our external third-party support partners are based outside the EEA so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the EEA. 

Whenever we transfer your personal data out of the EEA, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented, including:  

• We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data by the European Commission 
• Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contractual clauses approved by the European Commission which give personal data the same protection it has in Europe 

Who we share your data with 

At times your school will share information about you with us and we will share your personal data with external organisations that support our work. We will only do this where we are legally required to do so, when our policies allow us to do so or when you have given your consent. Your personal information may be shared with the following: 

Ark Central

As part of our work, you may be invited to online or in-person events. We will collect information from your school required to keep you safe at these events and to support your learning. This information will include (name, email address, school you attend, contact number, medical requirements and any additional needs). This information may be shared with venue event teams when the event is taking place in-person. Images and footage may also be taken at these events to use for promotional purposes to a variety of stakeholders, including school leadership, students, funders and employer partners to ensure they continue to support our students. For these purposes, the images and footage may be used in presentations to stakeholders, recruitment resources for schools and students and on Ark’s webpages.

Your school will also share your intended and final destinations choices. This information is used as a measure to evaluate the effectiveness of Careers and Destinations programmes in schools.

Local Authorities 

We are sometimes required, by law (under regulation 5 of the Education (Information about Individual Pupils) (England) Regulations 2013), to pass some information about your destination to the Local Authority. This personal information may, in turn, then be made available for use by the Department for Education (the part of government that looks after schools). The DfE may also share this information that we give to them with other people or organisations. This will only take place where the law, including the law about data protection, allows it.   

External organisations  

There are a number of external organisations that support our work and we may also share your personal information with them. This information is shared to demonstrate the impact of our work and to retain support from external organisations. We will only do this where we are legally required to do so, when our policies allow us to do so or when you have given your consent. We may not need consent to share your information. However, if at any time it appears to us that we would need permission, then we will ask before sharing. 

The Sixth Form and Destinations team has network-wide contracts with the external organisations below. To become a network approved provider, all of the organisations below have gone through a rigorous Data Protection Impact Assessment and have been approved by Ark’s Data Protection Officer to ensure they meet data protection requirements. Links to the organisations’ Privacy Policies and how they use your data are below:

Unifrog careers and destinations platform used in secondaries and sixth forms

• Zero Gravity mentoring platform used in sixth forms
• UpLearn used in sixth forms
• Turnitin used in sixth forms

What are your rights? 

You have the right to do the following:  

• You can ask us for a copy of the information we have about you. This is called a ‘Subject Access Request’ 
• You can ask us to correct any information we have about you if you think it is wrong  
• You can ask us to erase information about you (however, we will provide you an explanation where this is not possible) 
• You can ask us to limit what we are doing with your information 
• You can object to what we are doing with your information  
• You can ask us to transfer your information to another organisation in a format that makes it easy for them to use 

You are not required to pay any charge for exercising your rights. If you make a request, we have one month to respond to you.

If you wish to exercise any of your above rights, please contact us using any of the methods below.

Address:
Sixth Form and Destinations, Ark, 1 EdCity, EdCity Walk, London, W12 7TF

Telephone:
+44 (0)20 3116 0800

Email:
SFD@arkonline.org

Parents or carers also have the right to make a subject access request on your behalf with respect to any personal data the school holds about you or them. If we receive a request for your personal information, we will seek your permission to provide this information to your parent/carer or guardian. 

Ark Schools aims to comply fully with its obligations under the UK GDPR. If you have any questions or concerns regarding Ark’s management of personal data, please contact Ark’s Data Protection Officer using dataprotection@arkonline.org who is responsible for ensuring Ark Schools is compliant with the UK GDPR. 

If you feel that your questions or concerns have not been dealt with adequately on any data protection matter, please get in touch with us and the matter will be escalated to our Director of Governance. If you remain unhappy with our response or if you need any advice, you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Please visit their website (www.ico.org.uk/concerns) for information on how to make a data protection complaint.