Privacy Policy

Privacy Notice for Students

Rapid Advance College is an entity that determines how and why personal data is collected from individuals. As the Data Controller, we are legally responsible for the personal data we hold about you. To comply with the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which came into force on 25 May 2018, it is the responsibility of RAC to ensure that you have greater choice and control over how your personal data is used.

What information do we collect?

1. RAC collects personal information (such as your name, address, email address, telephone number, employment status, education, nationality) about you when you fill in our application form or when you enquire about our programmes face to face or online and leave your personal contact details (name, address, email address, telephone number) as part of the admission process.
2. We will also collect information about your previous qualifications, bank statements, next of kin contact details, passport details/ driving licence details, criminal records check (Disclosure and Barring Services), bank statements, student finance application or details of your personal sponsor including their bank statements and medical records if you have any medical conditions that may affect the terms of your contract with us. You are also required to fill out an equal opportunities form which will collect sensitive personal information on your gender, ethnicity and race, religion and sexual orientation.
3. When you become a student with us, we will continue to hold information about your progress and attendance, meetings with your teachers or College committee, reference letters and your personal feedback on the provision or any survey you take part in for research purpose. There are many events in the College for which your photographs would have been captured. Any audio and video files of your class presentations as part of your assignment will also be kept for the intended duration of that assessment.
4. The information you post on the Facebook page or twitter, emails you have sent and how you use the website will also be available to us.
5. We will also collect personal information about website usage through cookies. Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of the website. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that is stored on your device. The cookies set may obtain information about, your computer, your use of our website and your general internet usage. For more information about our use of cookies visit the cookie page.

Why do we collect this information?   

We use your personal information for the purpose of:

1. Administration of our admission process, the effective provision of academic and welfare services, to record academic progress, to operate the payroll and to enable correspondence and communications, including the provision of references, certificates and for equal opportunities monitoring purpose.
2. Management of the web system and troubleshoot problems. This may include information collected via the College’s server logs including users’ IP addresses and the web pages visited.
3. Helping you with your enquiry about our courses.
4. Complying with our legal or regulatory obligations.
5. Enabling us to provide you with a product, facility or service we offer, for example, a programme of study.
6. We also use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”) to understand how visitors engage with our website and so we can improve it. You can view Google’s Privacy Policy and find out how you can opt out of Google Analytics via your browser.

How do we process and protect information stored about you?

We collect and use personal information fairly and transparently. We do our very best to protect your privacy. We follow security procedures regarding the storage and disclosure of personal information in order to avoid unauthorised loss or access.

As such we have implemented industry-standard security systems and procedures to protect information from unauthorised disclosure, misuse or destruction.

We have established procedures to deal with any suspected personal data breach and will notify you and ICO of a breach where we are legally required to do so.

Personal information is only collected for the specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and we ensure that they are not processed in a manner that is not compatible with the intended purpose. Information we collect and just adequate for the intended purpose.

Sharing personal information about you

We may have to share your personal data with the parties set out below for the purposes outlined above:

• External third party service providers: there may be times when external organisations use your personal information as part of providing a service to us or as part of checking the quality of our service, such as our awarding organisations, validation partners, external quality reviewers (QAA) and other regulators.
• Law enforcement or other government and regulatory agencies: we may be required by law to disclose certain information to the police or another relevant authority in circumstances e.g. where we think you or someone else is at serious risk of harm.
• We are required by law to submit your data to the Higher Education Statistical Agency (HESA) and to Office for Students (OfS). Data may also be required by the Student Loans Company and the Council for Council Tax reasons.
• We may also receive requests from third parties with authority to obtain disclosure of personal data. We will only fulfil such requests where we are permitted to do so in accordance with applicable law or regulation.
• Just as we respect the security of your data, we require all third parties to respect the security of your personal data and to treat it in accordance with the law.
• We do not allow our third party service providers to use your personal data for their own purposes – we only permit them to process your personal data for specified purposes and in accordance with our directions.

Obtaining your consent

Information about you will be kept confidential as per the Data Protection Act. Apart from the above situations in which you are by law required to provide information stored about you, your personal data will not be disclosed to any third party without your explicit consent.  You are also able to withdraw your consent in writing if you need to. Your decision to withdraw your consent will not affect your employment or studentship with LSME.

Your additional rights

Under certain circumstances, you may have the following rights in relation to your personal data:

Right 1: A right to access personal data held by us about you. Please put your request for access in writing and email it to us. The College will respond with no additional charges within one month of your request. If on the other hand, you make multiple requests, you will be charged up to £10. If your request cannot be honoured by LSME, you will be informed within one month with specific reasons.

Right 2: A right to require us to rectify any inaccurate personal data held by us about you. Your responsibility is to update us of changes to your personal details as soon as possible to enable regular updates.

Right 3: A right to require us to erase personal data held by us about you. This right will only apply when we no longer need to use the personal data to achieve the purpose we collected it for; or when you withdraw your consent if we are using your personal data based on your consent; or where you object to the way we process your data (in line with Right 6 below).

Right 4: A right to restrict our processing of personal data held by us about you. This right will only apply where, for example, you dispute the accuracy of the personal data held by us; or where you would have the right to require us to erase the personal data but would prefer that our processing is restricted instead; or where we no longer need to use the personal data to achieve the purpose we collected it for, but we require the data for the purposes of dealing with legal claims.

Right 5: A right to receive personal data, which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format. You also have the right to require us to transfer this personal data to another organisation.

Right 6: A right to object to our processing of personal data held by us about you.

Right 7: A right to withdraw your consent, where we are relying on it to use your personal data.

Right 8: A right to ask us not to use information about you in a way that allows computers to make decisions about you and ask us to stop.

This information is reviewed and updated annually.

If you wish to exercise any of these rights or for general information, please contact the Data Protection Officer via info@raclondon.com.