In order to process applications and to provide services to you and to meet legal requirements, Anglia Ruskin University needs to maintain and process personal data such as name, address, date of birth, pathway studied, fee payments, information about examinations, assessments and pathway results.
In addition to this personal data, our University also processes more sensitive personal data such as details of your health where you have provided this data and where it is necessary to enable you to study at our University. Information relating to ethnic origin, domicile and disability is collected for planning purposes and equal opportunity monitoring. Our University is legally required to obtain information about past criminal convictions before a place can be offered on some pathways. Failure to disclose information relating to criminal convictions may in some cases lead to your removal from the pathway.
The information is obtained through UCAS or our University application forms, our registration process and the recording of your academic progress. Anglia Ruskin University processes this personal data in accordance with the eight principles of the Data Protection Act 1998. The processing undertaken on this data is given in Anglia Ruskin University’s registration with the Information Commissioner, which is available on the Information Commissioner’s website (www.ico.gov.uk.).
Personal data is transferred and processed between departments within our University to provide you with access to various services such as library services, computing facilities, collection of fees and the distribution of loan and grant cheques and to facilitate disciplinary action. Information relating to undeclared criminal convictions, acts of violence or unsuitability for professional programmes or placements may be transferred between departments, if it is judged necessary by a qualified member of staff.
The personal data you provide to our University must be accurate and complete. The appropriate University department or faculty must be informed if there are any changes to this data.
Compliance with the Data Protection Act 1998 is the responsibility of every student. Any deliberate breach of Data Protection may lead to disciplinary action being taken.
Our University uses CCTV systems throughout all campuses to assist in safeguarding the personal security, health and safety of students and employees and also to aid the prevention, deterrence and detection of crime.
Our University analyses data about students not only for planning future academic pathways, but also to provide to bodies such as government departments. In this processing your data is anonymised.
Our University may, from time to time, contact individual students and also specific groups of students for the purpose of soliciting their views on aspects of our services.
Data held by our University relating to any aspect of students’ studies, professional activities, or private lives will not be disclosed to the parents and/or guardians of students without the consent of the student involved, unless:
1) A student’s life or health is threatened. In these cases the usual need for consent before disclosing to relatives may be waived as it is judged to be in the student’s ‘vital interests’. It is the student’s responsibility to inform their emergency contacts that they have supplied their information to our University. This information will only be used under these circumstances.
2) For students under 18, it is judged by qualified members of staff to be in their best interests to do so and, where possible, in full consultation with these students. Data which may be released in these circumstances include attendance, academic progress or performance data and data related to disciplinary proceedings for academic or non-academic offences.
Our University will confirm periods of attendance, etc. in individual cases to bodies such as Local Education Authorities, Student Loan Company, tax collecting bodies, immigration authorities and funding/sponsoring bodies. If students are being supported by their employers who are paying their fees or allowing study time, our University will inform employers of the progress of their studies and attendance.
Personal data about individual students may be disclosed to debt collection agencies where internal University procedures have failed to recover outstanding debts.
Anglia Ruskin University has certain other statutory obligations under which it may be required to pass personal data relating to students to certain external agencies. Where possible, students will be informed about these disclosures but in some cases it is not possible to do this. Below are examples of the types of agencies to which our University has a statutory obligation to disclose personal information relating to students:
The Data Protection Act 1998 allows organisations to disclose data to relevant bodies for the assessment and collection of taxes. Therefore our University may disclose your personal data to the local council (to assess liability for Council Tax) without first obtaining your consent. As students who live in properties occupied solely by other students are not liable to pay Council Tax, such disclosures will usually be in your interest.
Our University may on occasion be obliged to provide data to the police or local councils without the student’s consent if it is deemed necessary for the prevention or detection of crime or the collection of taxes.
Our University is obliged to share a certain amount of personal and academic data when placing students with external bodies, i.e. in industry, educational or medical establishments. In most cases this data will be shared in order to ensure that students’ placements run smoothly and correctly and that monitoring and assessment of their progress is properly recorded.
Students undertaking professional programmes may be required to declare criminal records or health issues that would affect the suitability for the pathway or admission into the appropriate profession. It is the responsibility of the student to notify our University and/or placement organisation immediately of any change of circumstance that may affect their suitability. Students who fail to disclose data and are subsequently discovered to have failed to notify, or who are no longer deemed suitable to continue studies, may be withdrawn from their placement and/or pathway immediately pending review.
Exam results, class lists, photographs etc. may be displayed on notice boards within our University. Personal data (name and award (s) attained) about individual graduates will be included in the graduation ceremony booklets. Graduates may also be included in the videos of the graduation ceremonies available for purchase.
Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and Learning Skills Council (LSC).
Our University has a statutory obligation to disclose personal data about you to HEFCE and HESA which is then passed to relevant government agencies that require it to carry out their statutory functions in relation to the funding of education. Data in your record will be used primarily for statistical analysis which may result in the publication and release of data to other approved users, which may include academic researchers and commercial bodies. Further information about how HESA use your data is available at: www.hesa.ac.uk/collection-notices
On occasion, HEFCE, or agencies acting on its behalf, may ask our University for your address for the purposes of administering national surveys (such as the National Student Survey). If you prefer our University not to pass details of your address to HEFCE for this purpose, please contact Jackie Barlow - the University Records Manager in writing.
Around six months after you graduate, our University will contact you to ask you to fill in the HESA ‘Destinations of Leavers from HE’ questionnaire. We will not give your contact details to HESA. You might be included in a sample of leavers who are surveyed again a few years after they graduate. If so, our University will pass your contact details to the organisation that has been contracted to carry out that survey. That organisation will use your details only for that purpose and will then delete them.
If you do not want to take part in these surveys, please let us know.
Under the Data Protection Act 1998, you have rights of access to the data HESA holds about you. You will have to pay a small fee for this. For further information about the HESA record please see www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php/content/view/131/180/
or email data.protection@hesa.ac.uk.
Students on Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Courses at institutions in England only:
If you are on an ITT course at an institution in England, HESA will also pass some or all of your HESA record to the General Teaching Council for England (GTC).
GTC is a data controller under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998. GTC will process your personal data in order to fulfil its remit and its statutory obligations, including the administration of provisional registration. Except where there is a legal obligation, GTC will not share your data with any third party, except those fulfilling a service on their behalf and under their expressed instructions.
Like all other Higher Education Institutions, Anglia Ruskin University appoints external and internal auditors who have access to students’ personal data during the course of their investigations.
Our University has a data sharing agreement in place with Anglia Ruskin Students’ Union whereby information is released to the Union for its own administrative purposes.
If you are involved in an accident on or involving university property, it may be necessary for us to pass your details to our insurers and/or the Health and Safety Executive.
If you are normally entitled to vote in UK, local or European elections, you may choose to register to vote locally. A new Register is created each October but you can now have your name added at any time, given the appropriate notice. The register is created from forms delivered to all households in September and October and comes into force on February of the next year. Anglia Ruskin University notifies the Electoral Registration Officer of the local Borough Council of all eligible students who are known to be living in a hall of residence on the qualifying date in October. Our University also notifies the Electoral Registration Officer of all eligible students who are living off campus so long as those students have not written to us to confirm that they do not want their details to be disclosed.
Our University is also required under the Learning and Skills Act 2000 to pass the names and addresses of students between the ages of 13 and 19 and/or their parents to the Connexions Service upon request. Connexions is an organisation which aims to support young people and help them to achieve their potential. Other relevant information (such as confirmation of student status, dates of study, pathway registered for) may also be passed to the Connexions Service if requested – you may opt out of this additional data being passed on by contacting Jackie Barlow - the University Records Manager to register an objection.
If you have provided the name of a member of staff as a referee, our University interprets you as having given your consent for the disclosure of personal data in the form of a reference. As a matter of good practice, you are encouraged to inform people if you intend to cite them as a referee.
Students making use of the Turnitin ® UK System will be required to submit a limited amount of personal data including names and email addresses and course details. This data is stored on a server based in the United States under a ‘Safe Harbor Agreement’. This means that the data will be managed to the same standards as required under UK Data Protection laws. Students will be required to provide consent for their data to be stored within Turnitin ® when they make use of the system.
At the end of your pathway, your name, address and pathway details are passed to the Alumni Association and to agents contracted by our University for particular alumni-related projects. In addition, our University may send you information about future study opportunities and other services and products. It may also contact you in connection with its own fundraising activities.
Students processing personal data as part of their academic studies must:
Students should be aware that our University holds intellectual property rights over the content of lectures, seminars and tutorials. Students are not normally permitted to make audio or visual recordings of these sessions. Our University does however make every effort to assist disabled students who have been given a recommendation to record lectures and seminars as a reasonable adjustment. Students should contact the Anglia Assessment Centre for further information and advice.
Students must not:-
Students have the right to refuse consent to certain uses of their data, e.g. photograph display, publishing results on notice boards or disclosure to the Alumni Association. Students who wish to refuse consent should contact the relevant faculty/department.
Students are entitled to access the personal data held by our University about them. The request to access this data should be made to Jackie Barlow - the University Records Manager. She will send you a ‘Subject Access Request Form’. There is a fee of £10 per request.
Anglia Ruskin University’s data protection notification may be accessed via the Information Commissioner’s website at www.ico.gov.uk
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