The Learning Connexion Privacy Notice
This privacy notice lets you know how The Learning Connexion will protect and manage all personal information we hold, as per the requirements of the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020. This is a general notice that covers the privacy practices across The Learning Connexion, including at our premises, on our website, and in relation to those who work and study off-site.
Personal information
Personal information is any information that identifies a person. The personal information we collect includes:
- Name and contact details (e.g. phone numbers, email address, home address)
- Emergency contact information (next of kin or guardian)
- Citizenship/residency information/Iwi affiliation
- Demographic information (e.g. gender and ethnicity)
- Health & disability (including learning disability) information
- National Student Number
- Education history
- Identification evidence (e.g. passport, birth certificate, ‘RealMe’ ID)
- Billing or purchase information
- Your image (for student ID card if requested)
- A record of interactions with us during a student’s enrolment and post-enrolment
- Information related to complaints and legal matters
- Information related to recruitment and human resources needs (e.g. CVs, portfolios, references, employment records, correspondence, bank details and tax information, etc.)
In some cases, we may request criminal conviction history, career information, health information and English language proficiency.
Why we collect your personal information
Collection of your personal information is necessary to carry out our operations, functions and activities as a private training establishment and as an employer. Specifically we collect information to:
- Verify students’ identity
- Assess students’ eligibility to receive our services
- Analyse students’ learning experiences and progression through our programme
- Correspond with you
- Provide student support and pastoral care
- Meet legal and regulatory obligations, such as reports to the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC), the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA), and the Ministry of Education (MOE)
- Receive appropriate government funding
- Gather data to help us improve our services
- Marketing and promotional activities
- Ensure security measures to protect the safety of those on campus
- Fulfill all aspects of recruitment and staffing requirements
- Verification or sighting of vaccination status. Please note: While verification is required for access to our campus for onsite activities, we do not store your vaccination record
Learner analytics (for students)
With your permission, we use the information from your enrolment application to help you succeed, improve your experience at The Learning Connexion and complete your qualification. We analyse information about you to identify areas where you may need additional support from us. Through data analysis, we may offer such support as referring you to student services, providing programme support or regularly checking in to help you get the most out of your course. We follow strict ethical guidelines to ensure that we treat your data with care. The information we analyse may include your: previous education records, date of birth, next of kin, gender, ethnicity, addresses, passport, and birth or marriage certificates. If you keep allowing it, we will keep collecting information about you as you continue to study here (such as class attendance and academic results) and with each year’s enrolment application. You can opt out at any time.
How we collect your personal information
We collect information about you in three ways:
- Information that you provide directly to us. NB: You don’t have to provide any personal information to us, but if you don’t, we may not be able to enrol you as a student, employ you as a staff member/contractor or provide services to you.
- Information we collect from third parties. This includes government or education agencies and providers (MOE, StudyLink, TEC), and through pre-employment checking and references (prior to employment).
- Information we automatically collect. This includes your use of our website (www.tlc.ac.nz) - (for more information, see ‘Privacy on our website’ below), CCTV footage (for security purposes), and recordings of exhibitions, presentations, interviews and classes.
Sharing your information
We may share students’ personal information with Work and Income, StudyLink and MOE to help them perform their functions relating to any student entitlements including, but not limited to, benefit entitlements, student allowances, student loans and administration. We may also disclose students’ personal information to TEC so that, if they are eligible for fees free tertiary education, they won’t be charged inappropriately. At all other times, we will only disclose personal information if you allow us (e.g. to community service organisations, nominated contacts, scholarship providers, health service providers and relevant government agencies, etc.) or if we are required to by law.
Looking after your personal information
We take all reasonable precautions to protect personal information we hold from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. We do this by having strong external and internal premises security, storing information in access-controlled systems, limiting staff interaction with data, ongoing auditing of our use of personal information and providing training on the Privacy Act to all our staff. Student data is stored on our internal student database with limited access; staff data is stored confidentially in Google Drive, accessible only to HR personnel.
How long do we keep personal information?
We retain your personal information for as long as it is necessary for our purposes and for us to comply with our legal obligations and perform our contracts with you. We are required under New Zealand law to retain information in accordance with the Public Records Act 2005.
Accessing your personal information
You have the right to request access to any personal information we hold about you and to ask for it to be corrected if you think that it is wrong. If you would like to request your information or seek corrections, please email us at privacy@tlc.ac.nz
Website privacy statement
We collect information about all visits to our website (including IP addresses, types of browser used and type of device used). Our systems remove any information that might identify you and send the rest to Google Analytics. We then use Google Analytics to get information like how many people visit our website, what page is visited most, the location people are connecting from and what types of devices are being used.
We use ‘cookies’ which are record-keeping tokens that are stored on your device when you visit our website. The aggregate data from cookies is collected and stored on our internal servers and only accessed by authorised staff. Cookies help us provide additional functionality to you and help us analyse site usage more accurately. If you do not wish to receive cookies from our website, you can set your browser to refuse them or to warn you when you are about to receive one. Turning off cookies will not affect your ability to use our website.
CCTV privacy statement
The Learning Connexion operates CCTV within its building premises and on campus. The purpose of collecting information via CCTV is to deter criminal activity, increase personal safety of staff, students and visitors, protect school property and the property of staff, students and visitors, and to assist the school in investigating any incidents on campus.
CCTV footage will be stored on an internal school drive and viewed only if necessary by designated staff. The information collected may be disclosed to the NZ Police, TLC staff, students or visitors in relation to any of the circumstances outlined above. Individuals identified on CCTV have the right to ask for access to footage about them (in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 which also stipulates when information may be withheld). If any individual wishes to access footage relating to themselves, or inquire about the handling of their personal information, they should contact us at privacy@tlc.ac.nz
Changes to this policy
We may update this privacy policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our practices or for other operational, legal or regulatory reasons.
Contact information
If you have any questions about privacy at The Learning Connexion and our management of your personal information, you can contact us at privacy@tlc.ac.nz
If you are not satisfied with our response to any privacy-related concern you may have, you can contact the Privacy Commissioner at:
Email: enquiries@privacy.org.nz
Post: Office of the Privacy Commissioner, PO Box 10094, Wellington 6143
Phone: 0800 803 909 (NZ only) or +64 4 474 7590