Teacher Booker – Privacy Policy

We take your privacy very seriously. Please read this privacy policy carefully as it contains important information on who we are and how and why we collect, store, use and share your personal information. It also explains your rights in relation to your personal information and how to contact us or supervisory authorities in the event you have a complaint.

We collect, use and are responsible for certain personal information about you. When we do so we are subject to the UK General Data Protection Regulation (“UK GDPR”) and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (“EU GDPR”),) and we are responsible as ‘controller’ of that personal information for the purposes of those laws.

Key terms

It would be helpful to start by explaining some key terms used in this policy:

We, us, our Teacher Booker Limited and our group companies
Personal information Any information relating to an identified or identifiable individual
Special category personal information Personal information revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious beliefs, philosophical beliefs or trade union membership, genetic and biometric data, data concerning health, sex life or sexual orientation

Personal information we collect about you

Depending on how you use our services, we may collect and use the following personal information about you:

  • your name and contact information, including email address, home address and telephone number
  • your bank details
  • details of your professional qualifications
  • details as to your eligibility to work in the United Kingdom
  • professional references
  • your CV or resume
  • information to enable us to check and verify your identity, e.g. your date of birth
  • your billing information, transaction and payment card or other payment method information
  • bank account and payment details
  • your professional online presence, e.g. LinkedIn profile
  • information about how you use our website, IT, communication and other systems
  • your account details, such as username and login details

This personal information is required to provide our services to you. If you do not provide personal information we ask for, it may delay or prevent us from providing our services to you.

How your personal information is collected

We collect most of this personal information directly from you either by your input into our online platform, in person, by telephone, email and/or via our website. However, we may also collect information:

  • from publicly accessible sources;
  • directly from a third party, eg:
    • The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS)
    • Department for Education – Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA). (Formerly the NCTL).
    • sanctions screening providers
    • credit reference agencies
  • from cookies on our website for more information on our use of cookies, please see our cookies policy.

How and why we use your personal information

Under data protection law, we can only use your personal information if we have a proper reason for doing so, e.g.:

  • to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
  • for the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract;
  • for our legitimate interests or those of a third party; or
  • where you have given consent.

A legitimate interest is when we have a business or commercial reason to use your information, so long as this is not overridden by your own rights and interests.

The table below explains what we use (process) your personal information for and our reasons for doing so:

What we use your personal information for Our reasons
To provide services to you For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract
To prevent and detect fraud against you or us For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to minimise fraud that could be damaging for us and for you
Conducting checks to identify our users/customers and verify their identity To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Ensuring business policies are adhered to, e.g. policies covering security and internet use For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to make sure we are following our own internal procedures so we can deliver the best service to you
Operational reasons, such as improving efficiency, training and quality control For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service for you at the best price.
Ensuring the confidentiality of commercially sensitive information For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to protect trade secrets and other commercially valuable information.
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
Statistical analysis to help us manage our business, e.g. in relation to our financial performance, user base, range of services or other efficiency measures For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to be as efficient as we can so we can deliver the best service for you at the best price
Preventing unauthorised access and modifications to systems For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to prevent and detect criminal activity that could be damaging for us and for you.
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Updating customer records For the performance of our contract with you or to take steps at your request before entering into a contract.
To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, eg making sure that we can keep in touch with our customers about our existing relationship and new services.
Statutory returns To comply with our legal and regulatory obligations
Marketing our services to:
– existing and former users/customers;
– third parties who have previously expressed an interest in our services;
– third parties with whom we have had no previous dealings.
For our legitimate interests or those of a third party, i.e. to promote our business to existing and former customers

The above table does not apply to special category personal information, which we will only process with your explicit consent.

Promotional communications

We may use your personal information to send you updates by email about our services, including exclusive offers, promotions or new services.

We have a legitimate interest in processing your personal information for promotional purposes (see above ‘How and why we use your personal information’). This means we do not usually need your consent to send you promotional communications. However, where consent is needed, we will ask for this consent separately and clearly.

We will always treat your personal information with the utmost respect and never sell it to other organisations outside our group for marketing purposes.

You have the right to opt out of receiving promotional communications at any time by:

  • contacting us at support@teacherbooker.com
  • using the ‘unsubscribe’ link in emails

We may ask you to confirm or update your marketing preferences if you instruct us to provide further services in the future, or if there are changes in the law, regulation, or the structure of our business.

Who we share your personal information with

We routinely share personal information with:

  • schools who may wish to engage you (if you are a teacher, teaching assistant,  cover supervisor or other type of candidate on our platform)
  • companies within our corporate group
  • third parties we use to help deliver our services to you
  • other third parties we use to help us run our business
  • credit reference agencies
  • our insurers and brokers
  • our bank

We only allow our service providers to handle your personal information if we are satisfied they take appropriate measures to protect your personal information. We also impose contractual obligations on service providers relating to ensure they can only use your personal information to provide services to us and to you.

We may disclose and exchange information with law enforcement agencies and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

Please see more details about who we share your personal data with here. We or the third parties mentioned on this list occasionally also share personal data with:

  • our external auditors e.g. in relation to the audit of our accounts, in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations;
  • our and their professional advisors (such as lawyers and other advisors), in which case the recipient of the information will be bound by confidentiality obligations;
  • law enforcement agencies, courts, tribunals and regulatory bodies to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations;
  • other parties that have or may acquire control or ownership of our business (and our or their professional advisers) in connection with a significant corporate transaction or restructuring, including a merger, acquisition, asset sale, initial public offering or in the event of our insolvency—usually, information will be anonymised but this may not always be possible. The recipient of any of your personal data will be bound by confidentiality obligations.

If you would like more information about who we share data with and why, please see below: ‘How to contact us’.

Where your personal information is held

Information may be held at our offices and those of our third party agencies, service providers, representatives and agents as described above (see above: ‘Who we share your personal information with’).

Some of these third parties may be based outside the European Economic Area. For more information, including on how we safeguard your personal information when this occurs, see below: ‘Transferring your personal information out of the EEA’.

How long your personal information will be kept

We will keep your personal information while you have an account with us or we are providing services to you. Thereafter, we will keep your personal information for as long as is necessary:

  • to respond to any questions, complaints or claims made by you or on your behalf;
  • to show that we treated you fairly;
  • to keep records required by law.

We will not retain your personal information for longer than necessary for the purposes set out in this policy. Different retention periods apply for different types of personal information.

If you stop using your account for 12 months, we will delete or anonymise your account data.

When it is no longer necessary to retain your personal information, we will delete or anonymise it.

Transferring your personal information out of the EEA

To deliver services to you, it is sometimes necessary for us to share your personal information outside the UK and European Economic Area (EEA), e.g. with our service providers located outside the EEA.

These transfers are subject to special rules under European and UK data protection law and in those cases we will comply with applicable laws designed to ensure the privacy of your personal data.

Under data protection laws, we can only transfer your personal data to a country outside the UK/EEA where the UK government or European Commission has decided that the particular country ensures an adequate level of protection of personal data (known as an ‘adequacy decision’) further to Article 45 of the EU GDPR or UK GDPR or where there are appropriate safeguards in place, together with enforceable rights and effective legal remedies for you, or where a specific exception applies under relevant data protection law.

Any changes to the destinations to which we send personal data or in the transfer mechanisms we rely on to transfer personal data internationally will be notified to you in accordance with the section on ‘Changes to this privacy policy’ below.

We will ensure the transfers comply with data protection law and all personal information will be secure.

Your rights

You have the following rights, which you can exercise free of charge:

Access The right to be provided with a copy of your personal information (the right of access)
Rectification The right to require us to correct any mistakes in your personal information
To be forgotten The right to require us to delete your personal information—in certain situations
Restriction of processing The right to require us to restrict processing of your personal information—in certain circumstances, e.g. if you contest the accuracy of the data
Data portability The right to receive the personal information you provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and/or transmit that data to a third party—in certain situations
To object The right to object:
– at any time to your personal information being processed for direct marketing (including profiling);
– in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal information, e.g. processing carried out for the purpose of our legitimate interests.
Not to be subject to automated individual decision-making The right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) that produces legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affects you
The right to withdraw consents If you have provided us with a consent to use your personal data you have a right to withdraw that consent easily at any time. You may withdraw consents by contacting us. Withdrawing a consent will not affect the lawfulness of our use of your personal data in reliance on that consent before it was withdrawn.

For further information on each of those rights, including the circumstances in which they apply, please contact us or see the Guidance from the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on individuals’ rights under the General Data Protection Regulation.

If you would like to exercise any of those rights, please:

  • email us —see below: ‘How to contact us’; and
  • let us have enough information to identify you;
  • let us have proof of your identity and address (a copy of your driving licence or passport and a recent utility or credit card bill); and
  • let us know what right you want to exercise and the information to which your request relates.

Keeping your personal information secure

We have appropriate security measures to prevent personal information from being accidentally lost, or used or accessed unlawfully. We limit access to your personal information to those who have a genuine business need to access it. Those processing your information will do so only in an authorised manner and are subject to a duty of confidentiality.

We also have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable regulator of a suspected data security breach where we are legally required to do so.

How to complain

Please contact us in the first instance if you have any queries or concerns about our use of your personal data and we hope that we can resolve any query or concern you may raise about our use of your information.

The UK General Data Protection Regulation also gives you right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority. The supervisory authority in the UK is the Information Commissioner who may be contacted at https://ico.org.uk/concerns or telephone: 0303 123 1113.

For a list of EEA data protection supervisory authorities and their contact details, see here.

Changes to this privacy policy

This privacy notice was updated and published in March 2023.

We may change this privacy notice from time to time—when we do we will take steps to inform you, for example via email.

How to contact us

Please contact us by email if you have any questions about this privacy policy or the information we hold about you.

Our contact details are shown below:

Email: support@teacherbooker.com