1 - What is this Privacy Notice?

This Privacy Notice has been prepared by Nesta to explain how your personal information may used as part of the EdTech R&D Programme and to explain your legal rights.

For information about how Nesta uses personal information more generally, see our privacy policy on our website at https://www.nesta.org.uk/privacy/.

2 - What is the EdTech R&D Programme?

COVID-19 has led to school closures around the world, making education technology (EdTech) an essential part of every student’s education. However, we know there are many barriers to overcome to ensure that EdTech can benefit everyone equally, from the provision of devices to improved connectivity.

Nesta is working in partnership with the Department for Education to deliver the EdTech R&D Programme which aims to understand how remote learning EdTech tools can better meet the needs of teachers and students. You can find out more about the EdTech R&D Programme on our website at https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/EdTech-randd/.

In the rest of this Privacy Notice, we refer to the EdTech R&D Programme as “the Programme”.

3 - What are the Programme’s aims and objectives?

The Programme aims to develop and evaluate innovative ways that schools, colleges and remote learning EdTech providers can better use EdTech to meet the needs of disadvantaged students. We then want to share these learnings with the wider sector. The Programme has the following objectives:

• To build evidence on the potential of EdTech to support disadvantaged students – we will support EdTech organisations to better understand their ability to reach and support disadvantaged students and to build on opportunities for improvement.
• To improve EdTech implementation – we will support schools and colleges to participate in research that will inform and support rapid and effective remote EdTech implementation.

In order to achieve these objectives, we will work with school staff, students, parents (or legal guardians) and EdTech providers to try to answer the following Programme research questions:

• How do schools/colleges taking part in the EdTech R&D programme currently use remote learning edtech tools to meet the needs of disadvantaged students?
• In what ways can the 7 EdTech tools selected for the EdTech R&D programme work with schools and colleges to improve their platforms and implementation to better meet the needs of disadvantaged students?
• In what ways can teachers and schools taking part in the EdTech R&D programme improve implementation of edtech tools to better meet the needs of disadvantaged students?

At the end of the Programme we would also like understand how well we have done by asking the following Programme evaluation questions:

• Did the Programme meet its objectives?
• Did the Programme activities allow us to answer the research questions?

4 - What personal information will be used in the Programme?

The kind of personal information that will be used in the Programme will depend on who you are.

School staff

If you are a teacher or other member of staff at a school taking part in the Programme, the following information about you may be used:

• Name;
• Email address;
• Contact number;
• School role;
• School name;
• Subjects taught;
• Years of experience teaching.

If you agree to take part in an interview or survey then other information may be collected such as your thoughts, feelings and reflections around the use of technology in your school or working with the EdTech providers. This information will be anonymised (i.e. we will not be able to identify you) before it is used in the Programme.

Students

If you are a student at a school taking part in the Programme, the following information about you may be used:

• Enrolment data such as gender and pupil premium status.
• Assessment data such as results in school exams.
• School attendance data.
• Behavioural data such as behaviour points and merits.
• Teaching group and form group data.
• You speak English as an Additional Language (e.g. you speak a different language with your family or most of the time outside school).
• Self-assessment data i.e. information you provide in response to questionnaires.

This information will be collected using a platform which your school has agreed to use. This platform helps to protect your information because it collects it in a special way where a number or code is used instead of your name. This means that when we get your information, we will know that it belongs to a specific individual but we will not be able to identify that you are that individual.

Your user data from the EdTech tool you are using (e.g. how many times you logged in in a week or how much time you have spent on using the EdTech tool) may also be collected. When we get this information, we will know that it belongs to a specific individual but we will not be able to identify that you are that individual.

If you agree to take part in an interview or focus group then other information may be collected such as your thoughts, feelings and reflections around the use of technology in your school. This information will be anonymised (i.e. we will not be able to identify you) before it is used in the Programme.

Parents and legal guardians

If you are a parent or legal guardian of a student that is participating in the Programme and you agree to participate in the Programme, the following information about you may be used:

• Name.
• Email address.
• Name of the school that your child attends.

If you agree to take part in an interview or focus group then other information may be collected such as your thoughts, feelings and reflections on the use of technology in your child’s school and the home learning context of your child. This information will be anonymised (i.e. we will not be able to identify you) before it is used in the Programme.

EdTech provider staff

If you are a member of staff of an EdTech provider taking part in the Programme, we may use following information about you:

• Name.
• Email address.
• Contact number.
• Job role.

If you agree to take part in an interview or focus group then other information may be collected such as your thoughts, feelings and reflections around the implementation of technology in schools, your experience working with Nesta. This information will be anonymised (i.e. we will not be able to identify you) before it is used in the Programme.

You may also be asked to provide a written account about your experience working with Nesta. This information will be anonymised (i.e. we will not be able to identify you) before it is used in the Programme.

5 - What will your personal information be used for?

Your information will be used to try to answer the Programme research questions and the Programme evaluation questions set out at section 1 above. It may also be used to administer the delivery of the Programme. We will not use your personal information for any other reason.

We hope that by trying to answer the Programme research questions we can better understand how schools, colleges and remote learning EdTech providers can better use EdTech to meet the needs of disadvantaged students. We hope that by answering the Programme evaluation questions we can learn about any improvements we can make to the way that we work which we can apply to our future work at Nesta.

Throughout the Programme, we will share recommendation summaries drawn from the evaluation activities with schools and the EdTech organisations we’re working with. At the end of the Programme we will produce a report (which will also not contain any personal information) explaining what we have learned from this Programme.

The summaries and report will share learnings and make recommendations for future best practice. These reports will be shared with the Department for Education and with the education and EdTech sectors more widely, to help other people better support young people learning remotely.

6 - What is the legal reason for using your personal information?

In the UK, there are laws that apply when organisations want to use personal information. These include the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation. These laws state that organisations must not use personal information unless they have a legal reason to do so. The laws also explain what those legal reasons can be.

The legal reason that we will rely on for using your personal information is “legitimate interests” (as set out in Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation). This means that we have a legitimate interest in using your personal information to explore the questions that the Programme is trying to answer. We have considered what we are trying to do and what personal information we need to have access to in order to be able to do that. We have carefully considered your own rights and interests and we do not believe these override the important work we are going to do. The Programme cannot be carried out without using your personal information in the way we explain in this Privacy Notice.

7 - Who will have access to your personal information?

Your information may be collected by or shared with other organisations or individuals (e.g. partners, suppliers and sub-contractors) who are helping us carry out the work of the Programme.

In particular, your information may be collected by or shared with our key Programme partners:

• ImpactEd Limited

ImpactEd are helping us to carry out the research required to answer the Programme research questions. For example, they may help us by collecting and analysing information and conducting interviews and surveys. ImpactEd is our processor which means they will only be using your personal information on our strict instructions and we will have legally enforceable rules in place to make sure your personal information is still protected. We will remain responsible for your personal information.

• Centre for Education and Youth (CfEY)

CfEY are helping to carry out the research required to answer the Programme evaluation questions. For example, they may help us by collecting and analysing information and conducting interviews and surveys. CfEY will be a controller of the information they collect or use for the Programme. This means they are responsible for how they use your information and for ensuring this complies with laws and regulations that apply when using your personal information. Please see their Privacy Policy which explains how they use personal information.

We may also share your personal information with others if we are required to by law, or to protect or defend ourselves (or others) against illegal or harmful activities, or as part of a reorganisation of our organisations.

8 - Who is responsible for your personal information?

Nesta will be the controller of your personal information when we use this in our Programme. This means we are responsible for how we use your information and ensuring this complies with laws and regulations that apply.

In some circumstances, other organisations who have access to your personal information for the Programme may also be a controller of that information. For example, your school and our Programme evaluation partner CfEY will be controllers of the information that they use, and so they are each responsible for their own use of it and ensuring this complies with the laws and regulations.

9 - Will we transfer your information to a foreign country?

As mentioned above, the UK has laws that apply when organisations want to use personal information. These laws have strict rules which must be followed if an organisation wants to transfer your personal information outside of Europe (e.g. because the organisation is sharing it with another organisation based abroad). The laws say you must be told if your personal information may be transferred outside of Europe.

Nesta will not transfer your personal information outside of Europe.

10 - How do we keep your information safe?

We take our responsibility to protect your personal information very seriously. We take measures and follow procedures that aim to ensure no one can illegally access your personal information, or it cannot be accidentally deleted or sent to anyone else.

Measures that we take include using encryption (i.e. password protection), ensuring systems have appropriate anti-virus protection, ensuring all people who have access to your personal information are adequately trained and that access to your personal information is given only to those who need it.

We have procedures in place to deal with any loss or unauthorised access to your personal information and will notify you and any applicable regulator (e.g. the ICO we refer to at section 13 below) of any such loss or unauthorised access where the law says we have to.

11 - How long will we keep your information for?

We will only keep your personal information for as long as we need to carry out the Programme described in this Privacy Notice. When the work for the Programme has been done we will securely delete your personal information.

When deciding how long we keep personal information for we look at several things including what the information is, whether it’s sensitive and the potential risk of harm from someone else being able to see it.

Taking these factors into consideration, we expect we will delete your personal information on or around 28th February 2022.

For research purposes, we and our Programme partners (see section 7 above) may retain some information but this will be on a fully anonymised basis which means it will not be possible to identify you from that information.

12 - Your legal rights

Your personal information belongs to you. Sometimes, you have specific legal rights including:

• the right to say you do not want your personal information shared with anyone else;
• the right to see what personal information has been shared with us and to make sure we’re doing what we should with it;
• the right to correct mistakes in any personal information;
• the right to request that your personal information is deleted by us where there is no good reason for us to keep it (for example, where you don’t want your personal information to be shared with us).

If any of these apply to you, please get in touch with us using the contact details provided at section 13 below so we can let you exercise your rights. If you are a student or a member of school staff, please let your teacher and/or headteacher know so they can help you get in touch with us using the contact details provided at section 13 below.

Ordinarily, you will not have to pay a fee to exercise your legal rights. However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is not fair, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to deal with your request in these circumstances.

To be able to help you, we may need information from you so we can confirm who you are. This is to make sure we only share your personal information with you (and not some else’s information).

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. If it is going to take longer than that we will let you know.

We can only deal with a request to exercise your rights if we hold information that directly identifies you.

13 - Contact details for questions or concerns

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights which we explain at section 12 above, please contact:

Nesta

Post: Legal Team, 58 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0DS

Email: [email protected]

How organisations collect and use personal information is regulated by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). This means they are responsible for making sure that organisations are following the laws and rules that apply when using personal information. You can get more information about the ICO on their website www.ico.org.uk.

You have a right to make a complaint to the ICO if you aren’t happy about how we are using your personal information. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you contact the ICO, so please let us know first if you have any questions or comments.

14 - Changes to this Notice

This notice was published on October 14 2020. We may update it from time to time.

If we make any significant changes in the way we deal with your personal information we will contact you directly.

1 - What is this Privacy Notice?

This Privacy Notice has been prepared by Nesta to explain how your personal information may used as part of the EdTech R&D Programme and to explain your legal rights. For information about how Nesta uses personal information more generally, see our privacy policy on our website at https://www.nesta.org.uk/privacy/.

2 - What is the EdTech R&D Programme?

COVID-19 has led to school closures around the world, making education technology (EdTech) an essential part of every student’s education. However, we know there are many barriers to overcome to ensure that EdTech can benefit everyone equally, from the provision of devices to improved connectivity.

Nesta is working in partnership with the Department for Education to deliver the EdTech R&D Programme which aims to understand how remote learning EdTech tools can better meet the needs of teachers and students. You can find out more about the EdTech R&D Programme on our website at https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/EdTech-randd/.

In the rest of this Privacy Notice, we refer to the EdTech R&D Progamme as “the Programme”.

3 - What are the Programme’s aims and objectives?

The Programme aims to develop and evaluate innovative ways that schools, colleges and remote learning EdTech providers can better use EdTech to meet the needs of disadvantaged students. We then want to share these learnings with the wider sector. The Programme has the following objectives:

• To build evidence on the potential of EdTech to support disadvantaged students – we will support EdTech organisations to better understand their ability to reach and support disadvantaged students and to build on opportunities for improvement.
• To improve EdTech implementation – we will support schools and colleges to participate in research that will inform and support rapid and effective remote EdTech implementation.

In order to achieve these objectives, we will work with school staff, students and EdTech providers to try to answer the following Programme research questions:

• How do schools/colleges taking part in the EdTech R&D programme currently use remote learning EdTech tools to meet the needs of disadvantaged students?
• In what ways can the 7 EdTech tools selected for the EdTech R&D programme work with schools and colleges to improve their platforms and implementation to better meet the needs of disadvantaged students?
• In what ways can teachers and schools taking part in the EdTech R&D programme improve implementation of EdTech tools to better meet the needs of disadvantaged students?

At the end of the Programme we would also like understand how well we have done by asking the following Programme evaluation questions:

• Did the Programme meet its objectives?
• Did the Programme activities allow us to answer the research questions?

4 - What personal information will be used in the Programme?

The kind of personal information that will be used in the Programme will depend on who you are.

School staff

If you are a teacher or other member of staff at a school taking part in the Programme, the following information about you may be used:

• Name
• Email address
• Contact number
• School role
• School name
• Subjects taught
• Years of experience teaching

If you agree to take part in an interview or survey then other information may be collected such as your thoughts, feelings and reflections around the use of technology in your school or working with the EdTech providers. This information will be anonymised (i.e. we will not be able to identify you) before it is used in the Programme.

Students

If you are a student at a school taking part in the Programme, the following information about you may be used:

• Enrolment data such as gender and pupil premium status.
• Assessment data such as results in school exams.
• School attendance data.
• Behavioural data such as behaviour points and merits.
• Teaching group and form group data.
• You speak ‘English as an Additional Language’ (e.g. you speak a different language with your family or most of the time outside school).
• Self-assessment data i.e. information you provide in response to questionnaires.

This information will be collected using a platform which your school has agreed to use. This platform helps to protect your information because it collects it in a special way where a number or code is used instead of your name. This means that when we get your information, we will know that it belongs to a specific individual but we will not be able to identify that you are that individual.

Your user data from the EdTech tool you are using (e.g. how many times you logged in in a week or how much time you have spent on using the EdTech tool) may also be collected. When we get this information, we will know that it belongs to a specific individual but we will not be able to identify that you are that individual.

If you agree to take part in an interview or focus group then other information may be collected such as your thoughts, feelings and reflections around the use of technology in your school. This information will be anonymised (i.e. we will not be able to identify you) before it is used in the Programme.

EdTech provider staff

If you are a member of staff of an EdTech provider taking part in the Programme, we may use following information about you:

• Name
• Email address
• Contact number
• Job role

If you agree to take part in an interview or focus group then other information may be collected such as your thoughts, feelings and reflections around the implementation of technology in schools, your experience working with Nesta. This information will be anonymised (i.e. we will not be able to identify you) before it is used in the Programme.

You may also be asked to provide a written account about your experience working with Nesta. This information will be anonymised (i.e. we will not be able to identify you) before it is used in the Programme.

5 - What will your personal information be used for?

Your information will be used to try to answer the Programme research questions and the Programme evaluation questions set out at section 1 above. It may also be used to administer the delivery of the Programme. We will not use your personal information for any other reason.

We hope that by trying to answer the Programme research questions we can better understand how schools, colleges and remote learning EdTech providers can better use EdTech to meet the needs of disadvantaged students. We hope that by answering the Programme evaluation questions we can learn about any improvements we can make to the way that we work which we can apply to our future work at Nesta.

Throughout the Programme, we will share recommendation summaries drawn from the evaluation activities with schools and the EdTech organisations we’re working with. At the end of the Programme we will produce a report (which will also not contain any personal information) explaining what we have learned from this Programme.

The summaries and report will share learnings and make recommendations for future best practice. These reports will be shared with the Department for Education and with the education and EdTech sectors more widely, to help other people better support young people learning remotely.

6 - What is the legal reason for using your personal information?

In the UK, there are laws that apply when organisations want to use personal information. These include the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation. These laws state that organisations must not use personal information unless they have a legal reason to do so. The laws also explain what those legal reasons can be.

The legal reason that we will rely on for using your personal information is “legitimate interests” (as set out in Article 6(1)(f) of the General Data Protection Regulation). This means that we have a legitimate interest in using your personal information to explore the questions that the Programme is trying to answer. We have considered what we are trying to do and what personal information we need to have access to in order to be able to do that. We have carefully considered your own rights and interests and we do not believe these override the important work we are going to do. The Programme cannot be carried out without using your personal information in the way we explain in this Privacy Notice.

7 - Who will have access to your personal information?

Your information may be collected by or shared with other organisations or individuals (e.g. partners, suppliers and sub-contractors) who are helping us carry out the work of the Programme.

In particular your information may be collected by or shared with our key Programme partners:

• ImpactEd Limited

ImpactEd are helping us to carry out the research required to answer the Programme research questions. For example, they may help us by collecting and analysing information and conducting interviews and surveys. ImpactEd is our processor which means they will only be using your personal information on our strict instructions and we will have legally enforceable rules in place to make sure your personal information is still protected. We will remain responsible for your personal information.

• Centre for Education and Youth (CfEY)

CfEY are helping to carry out the research required to answer the Programme evaluation questions. For example, they may help us by collecting and analysing information and conducting interviews and surveys. CfEY will be a controller of the information they collect or use for the Programme. This means they are responsible for how they use your information and for ensuring this complies with laws and regulations that apply when using your personal information. Please see their Privacy Policy which explains how they use personal information.

We may also share your personal information with others if we are required to by law, or to protect or defend ourselves (or others) against illegal or harmful activities, or as part of a reorganisation of our organisations.

8 - Who is responsible for your personal information?

Nesta will be the controller of your personal information when we use this in our Programme. This means we are responsible for how we use your information and ensuring this complies with laws and regulations that apply.

In some circumstances, other organisations who have access to your personal information for the Programme may also be a controller of that information. For example, your school and our Programme evaluation partner CfEY will be controllers of the information that they use, and so they are each responsible for their own use of it and ensuring this complies with the laws and regulations.

9 - Will we transfer your information to a foreign country?

As mentioned above, the UK has laws that apply when organisations want to use personal information. These laws have strict rules which must be followed if an organisation wants to transfer your personal information outside of Europe (e.g. because the organisation is sharing it with another organisation based abroad). The laws say you must be told if your personal information may be transferred outside of Europe.

Nesta will not transfer your personal information outside of Europe.

10 - How do we keep your information safe?

We take our responsibility to protect your personal information very seriously. We take measures and follow procedures that aim to ensure no one can illegally access your personal information, or it cannot be accidentally deleted or sent to anyone else.

Measures that we take include using encryption (i.e. password protection), ensuring systems have appropriate anti-virus protection, ensuring all people who have access to your personal information are adequately trained and that access to your personal information is given only to those who need it.

We have procedures in place to deal with any loss or unauthorised access to your personal information and will notify you and any applicable regulator (e.g. the ICO we refer to at section 13 below) of any such loss or unauthorised access where the law says we have to.

11 - How long will we keep your information for?

We will only keep your personal information for as long as we need to carry out the Programme described in this Privacy Notice. When the work for the Programme has been done we will securely delete your personal information.

When deciding how long we keep personal information for we look at several things including what the information is, whether it’s sensitive and the potential risk of harm from someone else being able to see it.

Taking these factors into consideration, we expect we will delete your personal information on or around 28th February 2022.

For research purposes, we and our Programme partners (see section 7 above) may retain some information but this will be on a fully anonymised basis which means it will not be possible to identify you from that information.

12 - Your legal rights

Your personal information belongs to you. Sometimes, you have specific legal rights including:

• the right to say you do not want your personal information shared with anyone else
• the right to see what personal information has been shared with us and to make sure we’re doing what we should with it
• the right to correct mistakes in any personal information
• the right to request that your personal information is deleted by us where there is no good reason for us to keep it (for example, where you don’t want your personal information to be shared with us).

If any of these apply to you, please get in touch with us using the contact details provided at section 13 below so we can let you exercise your rights. If you are a student or a member of school staff, please let your teacher and/or head teacher know so they can help you get in touch with us using the contact details provided at section 13 below.

Ordinarily, you will not have to pay a fee to exercise your legal rights. However, we may charge a reasonable fee if your request is not fair, repetitive or excessive. Alternatively, we may refuse to deal with your request in these circumstances.

To be able to help you, we may need information from you so we can confirm who you are. This is to make sure we only share your personal information with you (and not some else’s information).

We try to respond to all legitimate requests within one month. If it is going to take longer than that we will let you know.

We can only deal with a request to exercise your rights if we hold information that directly identifies you.

13 - Contact details for questions or concerns

If you have any questions about this Privacy Notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights which we explain at section 12 above, please contact:

Nesta

Post: Legal Team, 58 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0DS

Email: [email protected]

How organisations collect and use personal information is regulated by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). This means they are responsible for making sure that organisations are following the laws and rules that apply when using personal information. You can get more information about the ICO on their website www.ico.org.uk.

You have a right to make a complaint to the ICO if you aren’t happy about how we are using your personal information. We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you contact the ICO, so please let us know first if you have any questions or comments.

14 - Changes to this Notice

This notice is published on October 14 2020. We may update it from time to time.

If we make any significant changes in the way we deal with your personal information we will contact you directly.

You can also download a pdf of this privacy notice.