Outreach Privacy Statement
About this notice
This Privacy Notice sets out how our Outreach Teams process personal data.
The University of Essex work predominately throughout Essex, Suffolk, Thurrock and East London to support young people in areas where certain members of the population are under-represented in Higher Education. This is known as ‘outreach’ or ‘widening participation’ (WP).
The University’s student recruitment and outreach teams provide a range of events, activities, talks and interventions to help young people, their parents/guardians and their teachers/advisors become more aware of the options that are available after school, sixth form and/or college. At all events and activities, information, advice and guidance (IAG) is given with the aim of helping students to make informed decisions about their future education and career path.
The Office for Students requires the University of Essex to provide evidence that the work we do with schools, sixth forms and colleges is making a difference. This is achieved by reporting on targets that are set in the Access and Participation Plan.
It is important that you read and retain this notice, together with any other privacy notice we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you, so that you are aware of how and why we are using such information and what your rights are under the data protection legislation.
The University of Essex is the controller for the purpose of data protection law.
Our web pages link to external websites: the University has no responsibility for privacy or other legal issues relating to these external sites.
What type of information we collect about you
We may collect and process personal data about students, parents/carers and teachers who participate in one of our programmes, activities, events or webinars.
This may include personal details such as:
- Your name
- Date of birth
- Postcode
- Email address
- School/institution or organisation
- Information relating to your past and future academic progress, educational or professional background,
- Your communication preferences
- Details of emergency contacts
- Bank details to award bursaries
For some events, programmes and activities, we may also collect special categories of data such as:
- Information about health conditions
- Ethnicity
- Disability
- Care/carer status
- Refugee status
- Gypsy/traveller status
- Service children status
- Dietary requirements
Why we use your data - and our legal basis for doing so
The University of Essex’s Outreach and Recruitment teams collect information so that we can:
- Plan and manage virtual and face-to-face activities, events programmes and competitions.
- Monitor participation in virtual and face-to-face activities, events programmes, prize-draws and competitions.
- Evaluate and report on the effectiveness and impact of the activities, for example, to evidence where activities have increased the number of young people going to higher education. To do this, the Outreach and Recruitment teams keep a record of events and activities that individuals attend to see which of those people progresses to further study and collect their feedback.
- Provide the OfS with the evidence it requires to judge whether the work the University of Essex’s Outreach team does is making a difference.
When we collect or otherwise process your personal data, we need both a purpose (i.e. a reason) and a legal basis. Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation there are several legal bases. We generally rely on the following legal bases when processing your personal data.
Table 1 - Other legal basis for processing your data
| Purpose |
Legal Basis |
| For application and registration purposes prior to participating in an event, programme or activity |
Necessary to enter into or perform a contract we have with you |
| To support, deliver and administer our prize-draws, competitions, programmes, events and activities and to update or inform you about them |
Necessary to enter into or perform a contract we have with you |
| To ensure your safety and wellbeing during our events, programmes and activities |
Necessary to enter into or perform a contract we have with you |
| To ensure your safety and wellbeing during events, programmes, and activities in line with relevant health and safety law |
Necessary to comply with a legal obligation |
| To comply with, and monitor our compliance with, Equality legislation |
Necessary to comply with a legal obligation |
| Where there is statutory or other legal requirement to share the information |
Necessary to comply with a legal obligation |
| Where data for pupils under 13 will be collected then parental consent will be required and consent will be the lawful basis relied upon until such time as the pupil reaches age 13 and their data can be processed under legitimate interest |
Consent |
| We collect sensitive personal information to ensure activity can be tailored to participants. We will ask for your consent to this data (e.g., data about access or health requirements) for residential activity, to collect data from you in the absence of a data sharing agreement with your school or college, or if you are registering for an event or activity as an individual, rather than as part of a school/college group. |
Explicit Consent |
| Marketing |
Consent |
| Marketing including updates and information about our events, programmes and activities |
Legitimate interests (where applicable): to further the aims of the University of Essex’s Outreach and Recruitment teams |
Planning and managing activities
|
Legitimate interests. to further the aims of the University of Essex’s Outreach and Recruitment teams |
| Photographs, audio and video footage at our events, programmes, and activities for use in Outreach and Recruitment digital and printed materials, communications, publications, and social media sites to promote the benefits of our activity. |
Legitimate interests. to further the aims of the University of Essex’s Outreach and Recruitment teams |
| Monitoring participation |
Legitimate interests. to further the aims of the University of Essex’s Outreach and Recruitment teams |
| To monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our programmes, events, and activities, through data tracking, research, statistical analysis, feedback and surveys |
Legitimate interests. to further the aims of the University of Essex’s Outreach and Recruitment teams |
| Record Keeping |
Legitimate interests. to further the aims of the University of Essex’s Outreach and Recruitment teams |
We may also use your personal information in the following situations, which are likely to be rare:
- Where we need to protect your interests (or someone else's interests).
- Where it is needed in the public interest or for official purposes.
Where the data we hold comes from
Information such as your name, date of birth, postcode and email address will be gathered directly from your school or college when a data sharing agreement is in place to govern this. If a data sharing agreement is not in place between The University of Essex and your school or college, or if you are directly registering for an activity, you will be asked to share this data with us via online or hard copy forms.
Information relating to teachers/advisors
If you are a teacher/advisor with whom we have an existing relationship we may send marketing without your consent if you have not objected to us doing so. If you do not want us to use your data in this way you do not need to provide your consent, and you can use the unsubscribe link in our email communications at any time to opt out.
Whom we share your data with
We will only share your data when there is a legal basis to do so. Any data we share will only be used by the third-party organisation for the purposes of:
- Delivering virtual and face-to-face activities, events, programmes, prize-draws and competitions to you.
- Monitoring and evaluation in line with this notice.
- Helping to evaluate the effectiveness of our outreach programmes, events and activities as part of OfS policy to widen participation in Higher Education.
For example, sometimes we need to share data from HEAT with the OfS, CFE Research, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). Please see the relevant privacy notices for each organisation if you would like to know more about how your data is processed by them. If relevant, we may also provide your school/college with details of which activities you have attended over the course of an academic year. In the case of administering bursaries, your details will be shared with the University of Essex finance department.
Data will only be shared using secure data transfer methods and stored by us and our partners on secure systems. We and our partners will not use your personal data in any way that would affect you individually.
Any data released into the public domain by The University of Essex will only appear in aggregate form and will be fully anonymised to prevent identification at an individual level.
We never share your information with other organisations for marketing purposes.
Where data is passed to third parties, it is done so in compliance with Data Protection law.
Where we keep your data and how long we keep it for
We have retention schedules that set out how long we keep information of all types.
The University of Essex Outreach team uses the national Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) database, as well as a purpose-built Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to store the information collected on the people who take part in the programme. These databases are where we store details on the programmes, events and activities you participate in. A back-up copy of this data may also be stored for a short period on secure, internal cloud storage systems.
Some personal data, such as your name, may also be stored in online platforms that are used to deliver programmes, events, and activities to you and/or to present evaluation forms to you.
Data Retention
If you are under 21 years old at the time you first engage with The University of Essex:
- Your data will be retained in HEAT and CRM for 15 years after graduation or until 30 years of age (whichever comes first)
If you are over 21 years old at the time you first engage with The University of Essex:
- Your data will be retained in HEAT and CRM for 15 years after graduation or for 10 years after your first activity with us (whichever comes first)
After this time, data will be anonymised in bulk at the beginning of the next academic year. This retention policy will be reviewed each year in line with the HEAT retention policy to ensure it remains fit for purpose and compliant with relevant legislation
This is so we can look at the long-term impact of The University of Essex Outreach and Recruitment activities to assess whether young people who take part are any more likely to progress to Higher Education. It is also to comply with the requirements agreed with the OfS as part of our Access and Participation Plan (APP).
Data recorded in HEAT will be held securely for the duration of the longitudinal programme and anonymised according to anonymisation protocols as appropriate by the HEAT Service. The Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk) has approved HEAT’s retention schedule which shows how long information is kept for. You can read the data privacy information for HEAT on their website.
Back-up data stored on secure, internal cloud storage systems will be held for the duration of the academic year and deleted at the end of the Summer Term ahead of the next academic year.
Changes to the privacy notice
This privacy notice was published on 17 January 2022. We may change this privacy notice from time to time.
Last revised 17 January 2022.
