IfATE Privacy Notices

IfATE Privacy Notices

In this section

General Privacy Notice
The Big Conversation Privacy Notice
Post 16 Technical Qualifications Privacy Notice
Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQ) Privacy Notice
Employer Directory Privacy Notice

1. General Privacy Notice

About this notice

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) is committed to protecting the privacy and security of your personal data.

In carrying out our work we collect and use (or ‘process’) personal data. This means that we are a ‘data controller’ under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018 (‘data protection law’).

As a data controller, we are required to inform you of our privacy rules and your rights pertaining to your personal data. This privacy notice describes how we process your personal data in accordance with data protection law.

Who does this notice apply to?

This notice applies to any individual whose personal data we process except where data is processed:

as part of the Big Conversation, please refer to the Big Conversation privacy notice
in connection with the approvals process for post 16 qualifications, please refer to the post 16 qualifications privacy notice
in connection with the approvals process for higher technical qualifications (HTQs), please refer to the higher technical qualifications (HTQs) privacy notice
on our Employer Directory, please refer to the Employer Directory privacy notice
in connection with Peer Review work (Peer Reviewers are issued with a separate privacy notice)
for human resource purposes (staff and anyone else whose personal data we process for human resource purposes are issued with a separate privacy notice)
in any other circumstances where a separate privacy notice is provided. For example, we may provide you with a separate privacy notice where your personal data is shared with a third party or where your data is transferred outside the UK.

If you are not clear what personal data we process about you, or why, or you have any other questions about our use of your personal data you can contact us at Institute.DPO@education.gov.uk.

Individuals whose personal data we process include:

students, learners and apprentices
trailblazer group members
external experts, consultants and advisers
staff of stakeholders relevant to our work including employers, awarding organisations and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs)
suppliers and service providers
individuals who make (or are otherwise named in) enquiries, procedural review requests, complainants and their representatives (including whistleblowers and individuals who make freedom of information requests)
respondents to consultations and surveys
journalists and the media
lobbyists, research participants, event or conference attendees, route panel members, and
members of the public (including visitors to our offices who are captured on CCTV).

What personal data do we hold?

We collect and store personal data in order to discharge our statutory functions. This may be information that you have provided when you visit our website, or information that we have otherwise collected in the course of our work such as when you contact us by telephone, through email or other written communication or during events that you attend.

Personal data that we collect includes:

your name, contact details and any other information that you provide when you use our website
questions, queries or feedback you leave on our website as well as our response (if any)
your email address and subscription preferences when you sign up to our newsletters, blogs or any other services
your IP address, and details of which version of which web browser you used
if you create an account for the trailblazer portal or members area, your name, email address and information about the organisation you represent as well as the trailblazer group or panel you belong to
diversity monitoring information that you provide when responding to a consultation or survey
your name, contact details and any accessibility or dietary requirements if you attend any of our events
the name and contact details of staff within employers, awarding bodies, HEIs or other relevant stakeholders - these may be provided, for example, by others within your organisation
records of engagement with relevant stakeholders such as: apprentice panel applicants and members, trailblazer applicants and members or staff of employers, awarding bodies or HEIs, respondents to our consultations and surveys
personal information that you provide when you contact us by telephone, through email or other written communication
photographs, videos or audio recordings of individuals recorded during in-person events or for the purpose of our social media or communications activity
audio or video recordings of online meetings with individuals in the course of our work
personal information that is provided via our social media channels.

We also collect information about how you use our website using cookies and page tagging techniques.

How do we use your personal data and what is our lawful basis for doing so?

We use the data we collect to support the effective delivery of our work.

We are required to ensure that we have a lawful basis for any processing of personal data that we carry out. Article 6 of the UK GDPR allows us to process personal data where it is necessary to perform a public task or for official functions, and the task or function has a clear basis in law. As a public body that is required by law to carry out certain tasks, we rely on this basis where we use your data in order to enable us to carry out those tasks.

For example, we rely on this basis to enable us to hold the contact details of, and records of engagement with, individuals with expertise related to our work. This is because it is necessary for us to liaise with these individuals to obtain their opinions, input or expertise on a matter on which we have a statutory responsibility. This includes anyone who:

is on, or who has completed an expression of interest form to join, the Peer Review register
is a member of a Trailblazer group or T Level employer panel
is an employee of an awarding body or employer (including members of our Employer Directory), or
is, or who has applied to become, a member of any of IfATE’s panels or forums.

We also rely on this basis where we use your personal data to:

improve our website by monitoring how you use it
gather feedback to improve our services
respond to any feedback you send us (if you have asked us to provide feedback)
send email alerts to users who request them
respond to an enquiry, complaint or procedural review request
contact users of the Apprenticeship Builder and members area, for example, to provide feedback
understand the demographics of the users of the Apprenticeship Builder and members area
ensure any accessibility or dietary requirements are met when individuals attend any of our events.

We may also process personal data where the processing is necessary for us to comply with a legal obligation (not including contractual obligations). We rely on this basis where, for example, we process personal data in order to enable us to undertake diversity monitoring.

Finally, we may sometimes ask for your permission or consent to process your data. We rely on this basis where, for example, you have consented to us using photographs, video or audio recordings of you as part of our social media activity. Consent must be freely given in order to be valid and may be withdrawn at any time by contacting Institute.DPO@education.gov.uk.

In some cases, there may be more than one lawful basis for processing your personal data.

Where the information we process is special category personal data (for example, diversity monitoring information or information about a person’s accessibility or dietary requirements), in addition to the above lawful bases, we also rely on the following for processing your special category personal data (under Article 9 of the UK GDPR):

Explicit consent
Public interest: the processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest (to promote equality of opportunity or treatment)

Change of purpose

We will only use your personal data for the purposes for which we collected it, unless we reasonably consider that we need to use it for another reason and that reason is compatible with the original purpose. If we need to use your personal data for an unrelated or new purpose, we will notify you and we will explain the legal basis which allows us to do so.

Please note that we may, if necessary, process your personal data without your knowledge or consent, in compliance with this notice, where this is required or permitted by law.

Disclosure of personal data to third parties

We will in some circumstances have to share your data with third parties, including service providers, suppliers and other civil service bodies.

We will only share your data with third parties where we have a lawful basis to do so. We require third parties to respect the security of your data and to treat it in accordance with the law.

We will not, without your consent, share your information with any third parties for the purposes of direct marketing.

Data storage

We store your data on secure servers in the UK.

Some information may also be stored on our behalf on secure servers outside the UK. This includes data held on our behalf for the purpose of:

The IfATE newsletter - we use MailChimp to manage the mailing list for our external newsletter. You can learn more about how Mailchimp protects your information in the Mailchimp privacy policy.
Apprenticeship Builder - we use Cognito Forms to provide some templates for our users to draft and submit apprenticeship standards to IfATE or to collect information as part of our consultations. You can learn more about how Cognito protects your information in the Cognito Privacy Policy
Other forms - we also use Microsoft Forms for other temporary data collection activity such as for 'expressions of interest' and public consultation responses. Learn more by reading Microsoft’s privacy policy
We also store information, such as information relevant to our public consultations, on Sharepoint, which is hosted by Microsoft.
Managing meetings – we use OnBoard to manage our meetings with external stakeholders such as route panel members. Learn more by reading OnBoard’s privacy policy.
Occupational maps - we use servers to store your data which are hosted on our behalf by PDMS – you can learn more about how PDMS protects your information in PDMS’ privacy policy. If you use the feedback form or request an API key on the occupational maps, your data is collected by Cognito Forms. You can learn more about how Cognito protects your information in the Cognito Privacy Policy.

Data retention

We only keep personal data for as long as is necessary. After this point, we will delete or securely dispose of personal data depending on how we came into possession of the data.

To determine the appropriate retention period for personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal data, the purposes for which we process your personal data and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal requirements. In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal information so that it can no longer be associated with you, in which case we will use such information without further notice to you.

Links to other websites

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy notice does not apply to those websites. If you go to another website from this one, you should read the privacy notice on that website to find out how your information is used.

If you come to our website from another website, we may receive information from the other website. We don’t use this data. You should read the privacy notice of the website you came from to find out more about this.

Ensuring your personal data is accurate and current

It is important that the information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal data changes during your working relationship with us.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, you have rights. The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your information.

Request access to copies of your personal data (commonly known as making a ‘data subject access request’).

Request correction of any of your personal data that you think is inaccurate or incomplete.

Request erasure of your personal data in certain circumstances. This enables you to ask us to delete or remove personal data where there is no good reason for us to continue to process it. You also have the right to ask us to delete or remove your personal data where you have exercised your right to object to processing (see below).

Object to processing of your personal data in certain circumstances e.g., where we are relying on a legitimate interest (or those of a third party) and you wish to object to processing on this ground.

Request the transfer of your personal data to another party, in certain circumstances.

Please contact us at Institute.DPO@education.gov.uk if you wish to make a request or object to the processing of your personal data.

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

If you’ve signed up for our newsletters, you can unsubscribe or change your settings at any time.

If you’ve created an account for the trailblazer portal or members area, you can delete your account and your personal information at any time. Personal information associated with the deleted account will be removed from our systems.

We will review inactive accounts as part of our regular Route Review exercises. You can read more about reviews to learn more about the frequency of these exercises.

How to contact us

Our Data Protection Officer is responsible for ensuring compliance across our data processing activities. For any questions or concerns about how we process your personal data you can contact our Data Protection Officer:

Simon Love - Institute.DPO@education.gov.uk

You can also write to us:

IfATE, Sanctuary Buildings,

20 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BT

How to contact the Information Commissioner’s Office

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s address:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House, Water Lane

Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Helpline number: 0303 123 1113

ICO website: https://www.ico.org.uk

Changes to this privacy notice

This privacy notice was last updated on 1 March 2023. We reserve the right to update this privacy notice at any time, and we will provide you with a new privacy notice when we make any substantial updates. We may also notify you in other ways from time to time about the processing of your personal data.

2. The Big Conversation Privacy Notice

Privacy Notice for The Big Conversation 2022

Who we are

This work is being carried out the Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE)., IfATE is the data controller for the personal data processed.

What data we will collect

We will collect:

Your name,
email address,
employment information such as employer size, sector area and regional location.

Where your data is stored

We use Cognito Forms for temporary data collection activities. This data will then be downloaded as a .CSV file to our own servers for analysis.

Keeping your data secure

Sending information over the internet is generally not completely secure, and we can’t guarantee the security of your data while it’s in transit.

Any data you send is at your own risk.

We have procedures and security features in place to keep your data secure once we receive it.

Disclosing your information

We may pass on your personal information if we have a legal obligation to do so, or if we have to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements. This may include exchanging information with other government departments for legal reasons.

We won’t share your information with any other organisations for marketing, market research or commercial purposes, and we don’t pass on your details to other websites.

Your rights

You can find out what information we hold about you and ask us not to use any of the information we collect.

An IfATE employee you already work with may signpost you to the survey asking for your support in our stakeholder engagement around the Big Conversation. Participation is voluntary.

This stakeholder engagement is part of IfATE’s commitment to listening and learning, IfATE needs to collect and act on insights from stakeholders gathered by teams across the organisation. As part of this, we may quote participants in written reports or articles published on our website and made available to the public. We will always check with you if you are happy for us to quote you in this way before any publication. You have the right to withdraw your consent to this if you so wish.

How we will use your information

This stakeholder engagement will form part of the Big Conversation project which will provide IfATE with a snapshot of public views about apprenticeships, technical education, and the skills system. This may be used to form a report from the Big Conversation project, to help shape internal processes and to inform policy.

Why our use of your personal data is lawful

In order for our use of your personal data to be lawful, we need to meet one (or more) conditions in the data protection legislation. For the purpose of this survey, the relevant condition is:

Article 6(1)(e) UK GDPR, to perform a public task as part of our function as a department.

Who we will make your personal data available to

We sometimes need to make personal data available to other organisations. These might include contracted partners (who we have employed to process your personal data on our behalf) and/or other organisations (with whom we need to share your personal data for specific purposes).

Where we need to share your personal data with others, we ensure that this data sharing complies with data protection legislation.

How long we will keep your personal data

IfATE will keep your personal data as part of the Big Conversation project for 12 months or until the report is published (Report is expected to be published in April 2023), whichever is sooner.

Your data protection rights

Under the Data Protection Act 2018, you are entitled to ask if we hold information relating to you and ask for a copy, by making a ‘subject access request’.

For further information and how to request your data, please contact IfATE at Enquiries.IFA@education.gov.uk.

Further information about your data protection rights appears on the Information Commissioner’s website at: Individual rights | ICO. Alternatively, you have the right to raise any concerns with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Last updated

We may need to update this privacy notice periodically, so we recommend that you revisit this information from time to time. This version was last updated September 2022.

Contact Info:

If you have any questions about how your personal information will be used, please contact us at Enquiries.IFA@education.gov.uk.

3. Post 16 Technical Qualifications Privacy Notice

Post 16 Qualifications Privacy Notice

Our contact details

Name: Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education

Address:

Sanctuary Buildings,

20 Great Smith Street,

London

SW1P 3BT

Email: Ifate.POST16@education.gov.uk

The type of personal information we collect

We currently collect and process the following information:

name of the primary contact
telephone number
email address

How we get personal information and why we have it

All of the personal information we process is provided to us directly by you or your awarding organisation/body through the online form for one of the following reasons:

maintaining contact with the applicant throughout the approvals process
maintaining contact with the applicant post approval (for example, where we need to contact the applicant in relation to changes to standards or qualifications).

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the lawful bases we rely on for processing this information are:

we need it to perform a public task under our governing legislation, the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 (as amended by the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022)

What we do with the information we have

We use the information that you or your awarding organisation/body have given us in order to:

call or email the primary contact to address questions/queries related to the registration of interest and /or submission for Post 16 Qualification approval
call or email the primary contact to provide additional information on the registration of interest and /or submission for Post 16 Qualification approval
call or email the primary contact post review for the purposes of feedback on the submission for Post 16Qualification approval
call or email the primary contact for the purposes of renewal of the approved status for Post 16 Qualifications

We may share this information with the Department for Education, Ofqual, and the Office for Students for the purpose of evaluation of the programme and/or evaluation of the submitted qualifications. They may wish to contact you during the approvals process. Each of these public bodies has a power to share information with the other public bodies for the purpose of their statutory functions. We will ensure that any personal data disclosed is only disclosed for the purpose of these functions.

What is our basis in law for processing your personal data

The GDPR allows us to process personal data where it is necessary to perform a task in the public interest (Article 6(1)(e) of the UK GDPR). We have a number of statutory functions conferred on us by the Apprenticeships, Skills Children and Learning Act 2009 and we process your personal data in order to effectively discharge those functions. We therefore rely on Article 6(1)(e) as the lawful basis on which we process your personal data.

How we store your information

Any personal information we hold information is securely stored on our internal file storage and information management systems.

We keep the name, email address and telephone number information for the applicant’s primary contact for seven years from the date of registration/application. We will then review our need to retain this information, where we dispose of this information, we will do so securely by deleting all electronic copies of the data.

Your data protection rights

Under data protection law, where we process personal data about you, 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. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete.

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.

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.

How to contact us

Please contact us at Institute.DPO@education.gov.uk if you wish to make a subject access request.

How to complain

You can also complain to the ICO if you are unhappy with how we have used your data.

The ICO’s address:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF