Fair collection notice for programme applicants

Thank you for applying to Teach First to join one of our programmes.

Teach First is a registered charity (number 1098294) in England and Wales that is committed to building a community of exceptional leaders who create change within classrooms, schools and across society to ensure every young person can be given the same chances in life, regardless of their background. Teach First operates some of its activity through its subsidiaries (Teach First Initial Teacher Development and Teach First Trading Limited) and collectively we refer to all three organisations as 'Teach First' in this notice.

What information is collected?

Teach First will collect and process your personal information through this application form and at later stages in the assessment, enrolment and programme journey, as applicable, both from you and from third parties such as placement schools, employer schools and our university partners. In each case, this will depend on the nature of the programme and may include:

Personal Information 

• Name and contact details, including emergency contact details.
• Biographical details such as nationality, gender and date of birth.
• Equal opportunities data such as free school meal status, school attended, family educational background.
• Academic and employment history.
• References from third parties.
• Information about your entitlement to work in the UK
• Information about your motivations, competencies and previous experiences.
• Information about your progress, and any disciplinary or capability procedures which you go through with Teach First, your university or your placement school.
• For some applications, we ask you to upload a video to YouTube as part of your application. Once your application is complete and has been assessed, you may delete this video
• Information about how you use our website, apps or other technology, including IP addresses or other device information (please see our privacy policy for more details)
• Details of conversations and other interactions with our employees and staff members
• Records of events you have attended as part of the programme 

Special category information

• Information about your physical or mental health
• Information about your race, ethnic origin, sexuality and religion
• Information revealing trade union membership
• Information about any criminal convictions and offences

If you disclose special categories of personal information such as information about health or medical conditions, we will ensure that, in line with our legal requirements, extra safeguards are in place to protect this information and that it will only be processed for the specific purpose for which you provided it to us.

What is this information used for?

We have different purposes for processing information about you. Personal information will only be processed where Teach First is legally permitted to do so, including where we have a legitimate interest in processing personal information before, during and after your time on a programme.

Examples of the purposes for which we may process your information include:

• Helping you to navigate the application process.
• Management of placement and onboarding to a programme.
• Management of trainee records for administration purposes.
• Management and provision of Teach First services and facilities such as IT services.

Statutory and other legal obligations, for example to complete statistical returns to our funders (e.g. the Department for Education).

• To provide trainees with the most appropriate support and help during a programme.
• Equality data monitoring, analysis and planning.
• Financial administration, for example in relation to fee payments.
• For inclusion in management information, statistical analysis and internal research.
• Marketing and ambassador/alumni relations purposes, including contacting you with job and career development opportunities in the future (this will always be subject to your opt-in consent).
• To measure the impact of our online advertising and each programme.

Please note that these are examples only, and this is not an exhaustive list.  Where we need your specific consent to process some of your personal data, we will seek it from you.
Your application will be tracked through the use of cookies and other tracking mechanisms, which can also be used to serve you relevant information through a variety of websites and social media channels (For more information, visit our privacy and cookie policy page.

How long will your information be kept?

Teach First will only retain your personal information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. We will generally keep your personal information, for monitoring and research purposes, for the duration of your interaction with us, plus five years, after which time it will be anonymised/aggregated or deleted.

If your application for the Training Programme is unsuccessful, we will, with your consent, pass your contact details and academic background to the Department for Education, who may contact you regarding other teacher training routes.

Where you have consented to marketing, we will keep such information until you notify us otherwise and/or withdraw your consent.

Who will your information be shared with?

Below are some of the parties/organisations that we may share your personal information with:

• Schools and Universities.
• Teach First's external and internal auditors, and professional advisers.
• Trusted third parties that Teach First works with to deliver its programmes, including but not limited to: those whose platforms or other information technology systems we use to collect and process your data on our behalf; teacher training consultants; programme delivery providers (for example accommodation and food providers); third parties who will support you with relocating (if applicable); Teach For All (an organisation which supports charities addressing educational disadvantage throughout the world); and third parties processing data on behalf of Teach First to support our charitable activities (this may include for purposes of surveys, market research, evaluating our assessment and selection processes, or providing administrative functions for Teach First). 
• We will send your applicant ID number to our data processor who will track where your application came from (i.e. whether you clicked through to our application form from a particular advertisement), and the outcome of your application, in order to inform Teach First about the effectiveness of its online advertising. See above for information about cookies.
• Statutory or funding bodies e.g. the Department for Education and our corporate supporters.
• UCAS
• We may also share anonymised data with our creative agency in order to improve and inform our marketing activity.
• In exceptional circumstances to competent regulatory, prosecuting and other government agencies, or litigation counterparties, or where we are required to disclose by law.
• In some cases, Teach First will connect you to third parties in connection with the provision of services who will collect your personal information themselves (rather than on our behalf) and so who are co-controllers. 

How will my information be stored?

Teach First takes the security of your data seriously. Teach First has internal policies and controls in place to try to ensure that your data is not lost, accidentally destroyed, misused or disclosed, and is not accessed except by employees in the performance of their duties.

Whenever we share your information with third parties who process the data on our behalf, we require such third parties to comply with our instructions and data protection law, making sure the appropriate controls are in place.

Teach First may, from time to time, use the services of a supplier outside the European Economic Area (or the UK after it has left the EEA), meaning that your data is transferred, processed and stored outside the EEA/UK. Where this is the case, we are required to take steps to ensure that suitable safeguards are in place to protect your personal information when processed by the supplier.

For how long will my information be stored?

We keep your personal information in line with our policy depending on:

• The length and nature of our relationship with you.
• How long it is reasonable to keep records to show we have met the obligations we have to you and by law.
• Any periods for keeping information which are set by law or recommended by regulators, professional bodies or associations.
• Any relevant proceedings that apply.

If you would like more information about how long we will keep your information for, please contact us at dataprotection@teachfirst.org.uk.

Your rights

You have the following rights in respect of the information we hold about you:

• the right to request details of the information we hold and to have any inaccuracies corrected;
• the right, in certain circumstances, to request us to erase your personal information and to request us to restrict our processing of your personal information;
• the right to object to our processing of your personal information;
• the right to have us provide you with your personal data in a portable format, such as a CSV file;
• the right to be informed about any automated decision-making or profiling which we undertake, and to be informed more generally about the processing we will undertake of your personal data.

These rights are not subject to any fee, and we will comply with any request within the legal time limits. More information on your rights can be found on the government data protection page. To correct any inaccuracies, ask questions on how we keep your information or object to any information we keep please email dataprotection@teachfirst.org.uk.

Please note that Teach First is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) (Registration Number: Z1080044). Should you have any complaints about how Teach First has handled your data, you can make a complaint to the Information Commissioner, citing this registration number.