Privacy notice

This privacy notice supplements the University of Edinburgh’s generic privacy information, which explains what rights you have in relation to your data under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and provides contact details for the University’s Data Controller.

University of Edinburgh generic privacy information

If you have any queries or concerns about our use of your personal information, please contact us at professionallearning@ed.ac.uk.

Email the Professional Learning Team

What data do we collect about you and how do we collect it?

Course/event enquiries: If you ask us to notify you when details of a future course are confirmed, we will record your name and email address to allow us to respond to your request.

Course/event registrations: When you fill in a booking form for one of our continuing professional development courses/events, we collect the information we need to process your application and provide you with an educational service.

Credit card payments are processed by ePay, a third party service which is not operated by the University of Edinburgh and which has its own privacy policy.

ePay privacy policy

Newsletter mailing list: We use a private account on Dot Digital to store email the names and addresses of people who have asked us to add them to our mailing list.

As a temporary measure during the pandemic, Froebel in Childhood Practice Summer and Academic Year students submitting part-time fee grant applications to the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) need to do this electronically via the Professional Learning Team. We will keep copies of the electronic applications on file until a decision from SAAS is received, in case of any queries.

How do we use your data?

We may process your personal data for the following purposes:

• to respond to your request for information about our courses/events
• to process your course/event booking and to liaise with you about the course/event
• to provide you with and manage your access to University facilities and services
• to process the payment of course/event fees
• to advise you about follow-up training opportunities related to a course you have participated in
• (if you have consented) to update you about future relevant courses, events and activities via our monthly email newsletter. 

We do not use profiling or automated decision-making processes.

What is our legal basis for processing your data?

1. Course/event bookings

If you book a place on one of our courses/events, we will process your data on the basis of the ‘contract’ we have with you (to provide training and support).

2. Newsletter mailing list

If you sign up to our newsletter mailing list, we will process your personal data on the basis of ‘consent’. You can withdraw your consent at any time by unsubscribing, or by emailing professionallearning@ed.ac.uk.

3. Information about future events

If you sign up for a course/event where there is a related follow-up course/event (eg the Introduction to Effective Timetabling and Principal Teacher: Leadership of Learning courses), we will send you information about the relevant follow-up course/event on the basis of ‘legitimate interest’. You can opt out of receiving information about follow-up events by emailing professionallearning@ed.ac.uk.

Information about the lawful bases for processing personal data

Who do we share your data with?

We may share your data with:

• employees and associate trainers of the University of Edinburgh for the purpose of providing you with training and support
• if you have a funded place on a course, we may need to share certain information with the funder (eg if you withdraw from the course). We will not share details of your personal circumstances without your specific consent.

We will not share your information externally for any other purposes without your consent unless exceptional circumstances apply.

How do we keep your data secure?

The University of Edinburgh takes information security extremely seriously and we have technical and organisational measures in place to protect personal data.

Your information is securely stored on a section of the University of Edinburgh server to which only members of the Professional Learning Team have access.

How long will we keep your data?

We will retain your data in line with legal requirements or where there is a business need. We have a retention schedule in place to ensure that personal data is disposed of when it is no longer required.

1. Courses

We destroy most personal data records at the end of each course, with the following exceptions:

• core data on course participants (name, email address and certificate awarded) is kept for 3 years from the end of the course to allow us to confirm attendance/certificates awarded and to notify individuals who have attended specific courses (eg Introduction to Effective Timetabling and Principal Teacher: Leadership of Learning courses) about related follow-up events
• We keep financial information for 7 years (in accordance with the University’s retention policy)

2. Events (webinars, ‘In Conversation sessions’, etc)

We destroy records of personal data 12 months after the event.

Changes to our privacy notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review and we will publish any updates on this web page.

This privacy notice was last updated on 12/04/21.