Exeter Scholars Privacy Statement

This privacy statement provides you with details of how we collect and process your personal data as a participant in the Exeter Scholars programme – both up to the point of completion and beyond.

If you have any queries about your data or about any information detailed below, please contact us.

1. How Exeter Scholars uses student data

We will only use your personal data when legally permitted:

• Where it is necessary for our legitimate interests, and your interests and fundamental rights do not override those interests.
• Where we need to comply with a legal or regulatory obligation.

We will use your data to:

• Contact you in order to administer selection and participation in the Exeter Scholars programme;
• Make sure that you have all the information you need throughout the Exeter Scholars programme and that you receive all the benefits for which you are eligible;
• Evaluate and report on the impact and effectiveness of the Exeter Scholars programme;
• Conduct research to monitor equality of opportunity.

We may need to collect the following data from you, which is considered special category data under data protection law:

• Information about your health, as we are required under the Equality Act 2010 to ensure that we make any reasonable adjustments for students to be able to fully participate in the Exeter Scholars programme.
• Ethnicity, as we have a duty in the substantial public interest to monitor and report on student ethnic background to the Office for Students, and to undertake research to ensure that there is equality of opportunity to participate in Exeter Scholars.

2. How Exeter Scholars stores your data

Data and information given will be stored in accordance with data protection laws and other applicable legislation. It will be stored by the Exeter Scholars team at the University of Exeter.

Appropriate technical and organisation measures will be taken to keep your data secure. Data will not be stored outside the European Economic Area.

Records will be retained for the duration of the Exeter Scholars project or for 15 years after your place on the programme is confirmed, dependent on which date comes first. Once the date reaches 15 years after your place is confirmed, your data will be appropriately and securely destroyed.

Should you withdraw from the Exeter Scholars programme, your data will be held and used as described here unless you specifically inform us that you do not wish your data to be used in this way. You can do this by contacting us via our online form or calling 01392 72 4043.  

3. Sharing your data

i. Sharing your data for administering your involvement in Exeter Scholars

The following parties will be given access to your data in order to administer the Exeter Scholars programme and track your progress:

• UCAS – The minimum data required to match with UCAS records will be shared in order for the University of Exeter to track any courses to which you may apply, in order to ensure additional consideration is given. This will be done for the first year you are ready to apply to higher education, and one subsequent year.

ii. Sharing your data to evaluate and report on the impact of Exeter Scholars

In order to evaluate and report on the impact and effectiveness of the Exeter Scholars programme, your data will be shared with:

• HEAT (Higher Education Access Tracker, run by the University of Kent) – We will share your data with the Department for and / or with the other organisations with which HEAT works. HEAT has access to government data sets and will inform us about your progression to higher education, your success in higher education, and career paths post-higher education. As well as with its key personnel and the supplier which maintains its database, HEAT may share your data with official custodians of education data including the Higher Education Statistics Agency, UCAS, the Department for Education, the Higher Education Funding Council (to become the Office for Students), the Office for Fair Access, the National Pupil Database, and other agencies for research purposes only (and agreed with the HEAT governance and steering groups). HEAT will only share your data if they are required by law or directed by a court of similar body to do so.
• UCAS – Your data will be shared with UCAS in order to understand the trends and patterns of Exeter Scholars students in each higher education application cycle. Data received back from UCAS is aggregated, and at no point will you be able to be identified within it.

In sharing your data to evaluate and report on the impact, Exeter Scholars will not use your data in a way that will affect you individually. For all reporting purposes, your data will be aggregated or made anonymous; you will not be individually identified in any reports, and confidentiality will be maintained at all times. Your data will not be used for sales and marketing purposes. Exeter Scholars does not and will not sell personal data to third party organisations.

4. Your rights

Please contact the Exeter Scholars team if you have a query about or issue with the use of your personal data. You can contact us via our online form or call 01392 72 4043.

Under certain circumstances, you have rights under data protection laws in relation to your personal data. These include the right to:

• Request access to your personal data. Under data protection law you are entitled to request copies of all the personal data that Exeter Scholars holds about you. This is called a Subject Access Request. To make a request please follow the process set out at www.exeter.ac.uk/dataprotection/request/.
• Request correction of your personal data. It is very important that the information we hold about you is accurate and up to date. Please let us know if at any time your personal information changes by contacting us (see above).
• Object to processing of your personal data.
• Request that your data is removed from our system. Please note: if you are still active on Exeter Scholars and request that your data is removed, you will be withdrawing from the programme, as we cannot administer your involvement without processing some personal data.
• Request restriction of processing your personal data (e.g. you can request that we do not share your data with any parties listed).

You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal data (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive, or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to comply with your request in these circumstances.

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it may take us longer than a month, e.g. if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.

Our privacy policy will be updated when necessary, and was last updated in August 2018.