Privacy notice: Widening Participation

The University of Central Lancashire run activities that help raise attainment (eg improve exam results) and encourage young people to progress to college, higher apprenticeships or university. These activities can include (but are not limited to) workshops, lectures, mentoring programmes, residential activities, homework clubs and revision masterclasses.

All universities who charge higher tuition fees have to deliver this type of activity and report on it to a government body called Office for Students (OfS). We collect information from the young people we work with and this information helps us assess whether the activities we fund and deliver in schools, colleges and the community make a positive difference to the education and career choices that young people make. We use the information we collect to help us track the long-term outcomes of our activities (e.g. after taking part in UCLan activity, do more young people go to university?). By evaluating our work in this way, it helps us assess whether the activities we are offering are effective and whether funding is being spent in the best way.

We also need to collect information about you so we can let the OfS know how many students have taken part in our activities, and so that we can share it with organisations who evaluate these types of activities across the whole country to see if the activities delivered by lots of different universities are providing positive outcomes for young people.

We collect information about you from forms we ask you to fill in. Schools also give us some information about you directly. The information we collect is added to a database called HEAT, which is managed by the University of Kent. We will add the following information about you to HEAT:

• Name
• Date of Birth
• Postcode
• Details of the activity you participated in
• School/College name
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Year group
• Email address

We add your information to HEAT so that those who manage the HEAT database can combine it with information from other universities who use HEAT, and information from other organisations like government departments, to see the choices you make about your future education and career after you have attended our activities and events. The HEAT team then uses the combined information for research purposes to see how widening participation activities improve outcomes for young people.

The HEAT team also provides us with reports from the HEAT database once a year which contain information about you. This information allows us to see whether individual activities or events you have attended influence your exam results, education pathways and career choices. Using this evidence means we can make sure we focus funding on activities that are the most effective and benefit young people the most. The information we add to HEAT is combined with the information outlined in the table below to provide us with these reports. If the table says that information is ‘anonymised’, it means we can’t tell who the data belongs to e.g. we get exam results for everyone who has taken part, but we don’t know which results belong to which student.

To find out more about how your information will be used once it has been added to HEAT, please see the HEAT privacy notice.

We may also collect the following data directly from your school or from the forms you fill in:

• Whether you have a disability
• If you are a young carer
• Whether you have any experience of care
• Whether you are from a military family
• If you are an asylum seeker or refugee
• Whether you are eligible for pupil premium funding

We do not store this data on HEAT – it is stored on University systems as is not shared with any other organisations.

For data protection purposes, UCLan is a data controller for the personal data we collect and use for our widening participation activities and evaluation. When we add your information to HEAT, we share it with the University of Kent (which runs HEAT). The University of Kent is a separate controller of the personal data we share with it within HEAT. This is because they decide how they use the personal data once we have shared it. They will use it for research purposes and to improve the equality of opportunity (relating to accessing higher education) for young people. Further information is available in the HEAT privacy notice.

UCLan is registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office and our registration number is Z5512420. You can contact UCLan’s Data Protection Officer on DPFOIA@uclan.ac.uk. Further information and contact details can be found here.

You can contact the UCLan outreach team on HEAT@uclan.ac.uk.

To process personal data, we must have a lawful basis from data protection legislation (the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA)) which allows us to do so. For the purposes of widening participation, we rely on the following lawful basis from the UK GDPR:

Article 6(1)(e), which allows us to process personal data where it is necessary to perform a task in the public interest. The OfS has tasked universities with increasing participation in higher education from underrepresented groups. The activities delivered as part of UCLan’s Widening Participation work are designed to meet this task. The evaluation of the project, including our use of HEAT and the sharing of your data associated with using HEAT, is a necessary activity to meet this task as it helps us to see if our activities are increasing participation in higher education and whether or not funding is being used in the most effective way.

Where we collect and use special category data such as information about your ethnicity or disability, we rely on the following additional lawful basis from the UK GDPR:

Article 9(2)(g) which allows us to process special category data if the processing is necessary in the substantial public interest and there is a basis to do so in law. The law which allows us to rely on this basis is section 10 DPA and:

• Schedule 1(8) DPA. This is because we collect this data for equality monitoring purposes to ensure we are delivering activities and providing opportunities to young people who are underrepresented in higher education, and to input into research which ensures that all young people have an equal opportunity to access higher education.
• Schedule 1(4) DPA, which allows us to use and share special category data for research purposes in the public interest. Those research purposes relate to improving equality of opportunity for underrepresented groups accessing higher education.

Your information will be shared with the University of Kent for national evaluation and to produce the reports detailed in the table above (the University of Kent runs the database HEAT). The University of Kent then shares this data with the Office for Students (OfS), the Department for Education (DfE), UCAS and HESA to obtain the data to produce the reports outlined in the above table. Your information will not be shared with any third parties for marketing purposes.

Your information will be kept on the HEAT database and on UCLan record until you are 25 years old. At this point the information will either be fully anonymised or deleted.

Under data protection law, you have rights we need to make you aware of. The rights available to you depend on our reason for processing your information. Further information about each of these rights can be found on the Information Commissioner’s Office website here.

Your right of access

You have the right to ask us for copies of your personal information. This right always applies. There are some exemptions, which means you may not always receive all the information we process. To make a request, please contact UCLan using the details on our website here.

Your right to rectification

You have the right to ask us to rectify information you think is inaccurate. You also have the right to ask us to complete information you think is incomplete. This right always applies.

Your right to erasure

You have the right to ask us to erase your personal information in certain circumstances.

Your right to restriction of processing

You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your information in certain circumstances.

Your right to object to processing

You have the right to object to any processing we carry out, if we carry it out on the basis that it forms part of our public task or is in our legitimate interests. You also have the right to object to your personal information being used for direct marketing purposes.

If at any point your wish to object to your personal data being used by UCLan including your information being stored on HEAT, you can contact UCLan by emailing the team on HEAT@uclan.ac.uk or ringing 01772 894447; or you can object using the UCLan website.

Your right to data portability

This only applies to information you have given us. You have the right to ask that we transfer the information you gave us from one organisation to another, or give it to you. The right only applies if we are processing information because we have your consent or because it is necessary for a contract you have with us, and the processing is automated.

We work to high standards when it comes to processing your personal information. If you have queries or concerns, please contact UCLan’s Data Protection Officer, and we will respond.

If you remain dissatisfied, you can make a complaint about the way UCLan processes your personal information to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is the UK supervisory authority for data protection. Further information can be found on the data protection pages of the UCLan website here.