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Privacy Policy

A legal disclaimer


 

1. Introduction

Welcome to SparkTutors. We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, share, and protect your personal data when you visit our website, use our chatbot, or book our tutoring services.

This policy applies to our students and their parents or legal guardians. We are the data controller for the information we process, unless otherwise stated. Our contact details are provided at the end of this policy.

 

2. What Information We Collect

We may collect and process the following types of personal data:

  • Identity and Contact Data: This includes the student's full name, age, and year group, as well as the parent/guardian's full name, email address, and telephone number.

  • Booking and Transaction Data: Details about the services you have purchased from us, session dates, and payment details. Please note that we use a third-party payment processor (PayPal), and we do not store your full credit/debit card information.

  • Technical Data: Information collected when you visit our website, such as your IP address, browser type, time zone setting, and operating system.

  • Communication Data: Records of your correspondence with us, whether through email, our website contact form, or our chatbot. This includes any feedback or queries you submit.

  • Session Data: To ensure the quality and safety of our sessions, we may record online sessions conducted on Microsoft Teams. You will be notified if a session is being recorded.
     

3. How We Use Your Information

We use your personal data for the following purposes:

  • To Provide Our Services: To register you as a new client, manage your bookings, schedule sessions, and deliver the tutoring you have requested.

  • To Process Payments: To manage payments for our services.

  • To Communicate With You: To send booking confirmations, reminders, and information about our services. To respond to your enquiries and provide customer support.

  • To Improve Our Business: To analyse how our services are used, to improve our website, our tutoring methods, and our customer experience.

  • For Safeguarding and Legal Compliance: To ensure a safe learning environment for all students and to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
     

4. Our Lawful Basis for Processing

Under UK GDPR, we must have a lawful basis for processing your data. We rely on the following:

  • Contract: We process your data to fulfil our contractual obligations to you when you book a tutoring session.

  • Legitimate Interests: We may process your data when it is in our legitimate interest to do so, such as for improving our services or for administrative purposes, provided your rights do not override these interests.

  • Consent: For certain activities, such as sending marketing communications or recording sessions, we will rely on your explicit consent. You have the right to withdraw this consent at any time.

  • Legal Obligation: We may need to process your data to comply with a legal or regulatory requirement.
     

5. Data Sharing and Disclosure

We do not sell your personal data. We will only share your data with third parties in the following circumstances:

  • Service Providers: With trusted third parties who perform services on our behalf, such as payment processors (PayPal) and our platform provider (Microsoft Teams).

  • Legal Requirements: If required by law, we may disclose your information to law enforcement or other government bodies.

  • Safeguarding: If we have a genuine concern about a student's welfare, we may share information with relevant authorities, such as social services or the police.
     

6. Children's Privacy

Our services are targeted at students aged 9-16. We are committed to protecting the privacy of children.

  • For students under the age of 16, we require consent from a parent or legal guardian to collect and process their personal data.

  • We collect the minimum amount of information necessary from students to provide our services.
     

7. Data Security

We have implemented appropriate technical and organisational security measures to prevent your personal data from being accidentally lost, used, or accessed in an unauthorised way. Access to your personal data is limited to those employees or agents who have a business need to know.
 

8. Data Retention

We will only retain your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. Typically, we will hold client data 3 years  after they cease to be a client, in line with statutory requirements.
 

9. Your Data Protection Rights

Under UK data protection law, you have rights including:

  • Your right of access: You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information.

  • Your right to rectification: You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate.

  • Your right to erasure: You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

  • Your right to restriction of processing: You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances.

  • Your right to object to processing: You have the right to object to the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.

  • Your right to data portability: You have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us to another organisation, or to you, in certain circumstances.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us.
 

10. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The latest version will always be available on our website. We will notify you of any significant changes.

11. How to Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or our privacy practices, please contact us at:

You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's supervisory authority for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk).

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