Newscast Media Group Ltd, trading through School Connection Intelligence, is the controller for the processing described here unless a contract identifies a different role. This notice should be read with our GDPR and PECR compliance statement, cookie notice and intelligence standards.
Enquiry, client, professional and limited technical information described in this notice.
You, your organisation, public professional sources, clients and necessary service records.
To respond, deliver agreed work, maintain relevant intelligence and meet legal obligations.
Access, correction, objection, restriction and complaint routes remain available.
Who we are and how to contact us
Controller: Newscast Media Group Ltd, company number SC469540.
Registered office: Suite 4 Pentland House, Saltire Centre, Glenrothes, Fife, KY6 2AH.
ICO registration: ZC018112.
Privacy contact: chris@schoolconnection.co.uk. Please use the subject “Privacy request” so it can be routed correctly.
The information within scope
| Category | Examples | Why it may be used |
|---|---|---|
| Website and security data | IP address, request time, device or browser information, security events and essential cookie data. | To deliver, protect, diagnose and maintain the website. |
| Enquiry and relationship data | Name, organisation, role, business contact details, message, meeting notes, service interest and correspondence. | To answer enquiries, scope work, administer contracts and maintain professional relationships. |
| Client-supplied programme data | School names, URNs, postcodes, organisation records, agreed prospect files, solution scope and relevant professional contacts. | To deliver a defined intelligence programme under agreed purpose and access controls. |
| Professional intelligence data | Name, professional role, employing organisation, public business contact details and publicly stated professional responsibilities or activity. | To connect education change to the responsible professional context and support relevant B2B intelligence or communication. |
| Derived intelligence and profiling data | Affected-cohort membership, evidence state, priority band, connected-system relationship, role-family mapping, relevance classification and inferred operational consequence. | To organise evidence for human review and answer a defined intelligence question. A classification is not treated as proof of need, intent, authority or future purchasing. |
| Engagement and preference data | Topic interest, enquiry route, communication history, consent where used, opt-out, objection and suppression status. | To keep communications relevant, evidence permission routes and honour choices. |
Most Observatory information concerns schools, trusts, companies, places, assets, policies and operational conditions rather than identifiable people. The service is not designed to ingest pupil-level records, safeguarding case data, health data or other special-category information about children. Clients must not provide that material.
Providing information through a general enquiry is optional. Information identified as necessary for a contract or defined programme is required to answer that question or deliver the agreed service; if it is not supplied, we may be unable to proceed.
The website contact form performs same-site anti-abuse validation and prepares an addressed draft in the visitor’s own email application. Form contents are not retained by the website or added to a marketing list. The visitor decides whether to send the draft; any email subsequently received is handled as enquiry and relationship data under this notice.
Where information comes from
- Directly from you, for example when you email us, meet us, request a programme or contribute evidence.
- From your organisation or an authorised client contact in connection with a defined engagement.
- From official and public sources, including government registers and publications, regulatory sources, Companies House, Charity Commission records, school and trust websites, procurement and planning publications, professional websites and other lawfully accessible B2B sources.
- From service providers or data suppliers where provenance, permitted use and contractual safeguards have been reviewed.
- From our own editorial, research and engagement activity, including corrections, preferences and documented professional interaction.
Purposes and lawful bases
| Purpose | Lawful basis | Key safeguard |
|---|---|---|
| Answer an enquiry and take requested pre-contract steps. | Steps at your request before contract; legitimate interests for ordinary business administration. | Use is limited to the enquiry and relationship context. |
| Deliver and manage an agreed service. | Contract where you are the contracting individual; legitimate interests where the client is an organisation. | Purpose, access, output and retention are defined for the engagement. |
| Build and maintain professional education intelligence. | Legitimate interests in providing relevant B2B intelligence, improving market understanding and supporting informed professional communication. | Purpose, necessity and balancing must be documented before this processing is activated. |
| Send role-relevant B2B communications. | Consent where PECR requires it; otherwise legitimate interests where appropriate for corporate B2B communication. | Before this route is activated, sender identity, opt-out and suppression controls must be approved and tested. |
| Protect the service, prevent abuse and keep records required by law. | Legitimate interests and legal obligation, depending on the record. | Applicable access, logging, retention and processor controls must be documented before this processing is activated. |
Legitimate interests is not treated as automatic permission. The relevant interest, necessity and balance against the individual’s rights and reasonable expectations must be documented for the processing concerned.
Public-source transparency and Article 14
Professional information being publicly accessible does not remove UK GDPR obligations. Where personal data is obtained indirectly, our process must consider Article 14 transparency, the purpose of use, source, reasonable expectations and any applicable exception. Privacy information is normally provided within one month of obtaining the data, at the first communication, or before the first disclosure to another recipient, whichever applies first.
If a disproportionate-effort exception is considered for wider public-source monitoring, it must be assessed rather than assumed, documented with appropriate safeguards and revisited when the data is used, disclosed or materially repurposed. High-risk or materially changed processing is subject to data protection impact assessment screening.
AI assistance and human decisions
Automation and AI may assist with collection, matching, deduplication, change detection, classification and drafting. It does not silently publish intelligence, approve an editorial, make a client handover or take a solely automated decision about an individual that produces legal or similarly significant effects. Material conclusions and external actions remain subject to human review.
Who information may be shared with
- Service providers supporting secure hosting, communications, databases and business operations, under appropriate contractual and confidentiality controls.
- Professional advisers, insurers, auditors or authorities where necessary and lawful.
- A client or specialist organisation only where a defined programme, direct enquiry or qualified handover makes that disclosure relevant and lawful. The wider database is not disclosed.
- A successor organisation if a lawful corporate transaction affects the service, subject to equivalent protections.
The public website does not expose personal contact lists. A named professional is not handed to a supplier merely because the system detects relevance or content engagement. Any identity-level supplier handover requires an affirmative request or valid consent covering that follow-up. A recipient acting as an independent controller remains responsible for its own lawful basis, transparency, security, retention and suppression duties.
International processing, retention and security
Some technology providers may process information outside the United Kingdom. Where a restricted transfer occurs, an applicable adequacy regulation or approved contractual safeguard is required, together with proportionate due diligence. You can request information about the relevant safeguard through the privacy contact above.
Before the relevant processing is activated, a documented retention decision must define the applicable purpose, legal requirement, contract, review trigger and deletion point. Client files must be reviewed against the agreed engagement and must not be retained indefinitely for unrelated use.
Before the relevant processing is activated, the applicable access, environment, transfer, supplier, logging, backup, recovery, incident, minimisation and human-approval controls must be documented and evidenced for that scope.
Your rights
Depending on the processing and lawful basis, you may ask for access, correction, erasure, restriction, portability or information about the source and use of your personal data. You may object to processing based on legitimate interests and may withdraw consent where consent is used. Rights are not absolute in every case, but every request will be assessed and normally answered within one month, subject to any lawful extension or identity clarification.
You have an absolute right to object to the use of your personal data for direct marketing, including related profiling. Email chris@schoolconnection.co.uk with “Object to direct marketing”. We will stop that use and retain only the minimum suppression information needed to respect your decision.
Complaints and changes
Please contact us first so we can investigate through our data complaints procedure. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint or by calling 0303 123 1113.
We will review this notice at least annually and sooner if the service, purpose, source coverage, recipients or applicable law materially changes. Earlier versions and the reason for material changes will be retained internally.