Edward Townsend Education Privacy Notice

This Privacy Notice explains how Edward Townsend Education collects, uses, stores, and protects personal data.

Edward Townsend Education provides online tutoring, admissions test preparation, interview preparation, diagnostic assessments, educational resources, and related educational support.

In this notice:

• “we”, “us” and “our” means Edward Townsend Education;
• “client” means the person who purchases or arranges tutoring, usually a parent or guardian;
• “student” means the person receiving tutoring or educational support;
• “services” means tutoring, admissions test preparation, interview preparation, educational guidance, diagnostic assessments, online resources, lesson materials, written feedback, reports, and related support.

Edward Townsend Education is the data controller for the personal data we collect and use.

Contact details:

We may collect and use the following types of personal data:

• parent or guardian name;
• student name;
• email address;
• phone number;
• billing details;
• lesson booking details;
• school year;
• school or college;
• subjects studied;
• predicted grades;
• target universities or courses;
• academic goals;
• admissions test plans;
• diagnostic test results;
• practice question responses;
• confidence ratings, reflection tags, and performance analytics;
• lesson notes;
• written feedback;
• reports;
• messages sent by email, WhatsApp, forms, or other communication channels;
• information needed to provide safeguarding support where relevant;
• technical information from websites or online platforms, such as account details, usage data, IP address, browser type, device type, cookies, and similar data.

We only collect personal data that is reasonably needed for the purposes described in this notice.

We may collect personal data when:

• a client or student completes an enquiry form;
• a client or student books a call or lesson;
• a client pays for tutoring or a package;
• a student completes a diagnostic assessment or practice questions;
• a student uses our websites or online resources;
• a client or student communicates with us by email, WhatsApp, phone, video call, form, or other channel;
• a lesson, report, or feedback document is created;
• a safeguarding concern is raised or identified.

We use personal data to:

• respond to enquiries;
• assess whether our services are suitable for a student;
• arrange calls, lessons, and tutoring packages;
• provide tutoring, admissions test preparation, interview preparation, and educational support;
• create lesson plans, feedback, reports, and recommendations;
• provide diagnostic assessments and performance analytics;
• monitor student progress;
• process invoices and payments;
• communicate with parents, guardians, and students;
• manage cancellations, scheduling, and lesson administration;
• maintain appropriate safeguarding records;
• comply with legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, and safeguarding obligations;
• improve our services, websites, resources, and platforms;
• prevent misuse of our websites, resources, question banks, and online platforms;
• send relevant service updates or educational information where appropriate.

We may use secure AI-assisted note-taking and analysis tools to help produce lesson summaries, homework tracking, progress updates, parent communications and internal service improvement. This may involve processing lesson audio, transcripts, tutor notes, diagnostic data and student work. We use these tools only to support the provision and improvement of our tutoring services, and not to train public AI models. Raw transcripts, where created, are retained only for a limited period and then deleted or replaced by structured lesson notes.

We rely on the following lawful bases under UK data protection law:

• Contract: to provide tutoring, educational support, diagnostic assessments, reports, resources, and related services.
• Legitimate interests: to run and improve our business, communicate with clients and students, manage enquiries, keep appropriate records, protect our materials and platforms, and support student progress.
• Legal obligation: to comply with tax, accounting, data protection, safeguarding, and other legal requirements.
• Consent: where we rely on permission for a specific activity, such as certain marketing communications, optional recordings, or optional use of images or testimonials.
• Vital interests or safeguarding interests: where information needs to be used or shared to protect a student or another person from serious harm.

Where consent is used, consent can be withdrawn at any time.

Many students using our services are under 18.

Where a student is under 18, the parent or guardian arranging the services confirms that they have authority to provide the student’s personal data to us for the purpose of receiving educational services.

We aim to explain our use of personal data in a clear and age-appropriate way where relevant.

We only collect children’s personal data where it is needed to provide educational services, support learning, maintain records, or meet safeguarding responsibilities.

We do not normally need to collect special category data.

However, clients or students may sometimes choose to share information about health, disability, learning needs, access arrangements, or other sensitive matters.

Where this information is provided, we use it only where relevant to providing appropriate educational support, making reasonable adjustments, or meeting safeguarding responsibilities.

We may contact clients about relevant services, updates, resources, or educational information where permitted by law.

Clients can opt out of marketing communications at any time by contacting us.

We do not sell personal data to third parties.

We may share personal data where reasonably necessary with:

• tutors, contractors, or service providers involved in delivering our services;
• payment processors, accounting providers, or banking services;
• email, scheduling, form, video call, and communication providers;
• website, hosting, analytics, database, and platform providers;
• professional advisers, such as accountants or legal advisers;
• schools, parents, guardians, local authorities, police, or safeguarding bodies where there is a safeguarding concern;
• regulators or authorities where required by law.

We only share personal data where there is a proper reason to do so.

Some of the services we use may process personal data outside the UK.

Where this happens, we aim to use appropriate safeguards, such as providers with recognised data protection protections, standard contractual clauses, or equivalent measures.

We keep personal data only for as long as reasonably necessary.

Typical retention periods are:

• enquiry records: up to 3 years after the last contact;
• client, student, lesson, report, and progress records: up to 6 years after the end of the client relationship;
• invoices and financial records: 6 years, or longer if required by law;
• safeguarding records: for as long as reasonably necessary, depending on the nature of the concern;
• marketing preferences: until consent is withdrawn or the information is no longer needed;
• website analytics and technical records: for a reasonable period depending on the relevant platform or service.

We may keep limited records for longer where needed for legal claims, safeguarding, tax, accounting, regulatory, or legitimate business reasons.

We take reasonable steps to protect personal data, including:

• using password-protected systems;
• limiting access to personal data where appropriate;
• using reputable service providers;
• keeping appropriate records;
• taking care when communicating about students;
• avoiding unnecessary sharing of personal data;
• reviewing data protection and safeguarding practices where needed.

No online system can be guaranteed to be completely secure, but we take data protection seriously and aim to use personal data responsibly.

Where students use our websites, question banks, diagnostic tools, dashboards, or online resources, we may collect information about their activity and performance.

This may include:

• questions attempted;
• answers submitted;
• time spent;
• scores;
• confidence ratings;
• reflection tags;
• report data;
• account details;
• technical usage information.

We use this information to provide educational feedback, generate reports, improve the platform, support tutoring, and understand student progress.

Our websites may use cookies or similar technologies to help the website work, understand usage, improve performance, and support marketing or analytics where applicable.

Where required, users will be given choices about non-essential cookies.

Depending on the circumstances, individuals may have the right to:

• request access to their personal data;
• ask for inaccurate data to be corrected;
• ask for data to be deleted;
• ask for use of data to be restricted;
• object to certain uses of data;
• request data portability;
• withdraw consent where consent is the lawful basis;
• complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

The right to object applies in particular where we rely on legitimate interests or use data for direct marketing.

To make a request, contact:

If you have concerns about how we use personal data, please contact us first so that we can try to resolve the issue.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the UK data protection regulator.

ICO website: ico.org.uk

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time.

The latest version will be made available on our website or provided on request.

For questions about this Privacy Notice, contact: