Higher Education Access Tracker [HEAT]

Information Sheet & Privacy Notice

ABOUT US

Go Higher West Yorkshire is working in your school or college to help you and/or your peers to make decisions about your next steps in education. Go Higher West Yorkshire is a partnership of universities and colleges working together to reduce inequalities and help everyone who can benefit to access and succeed in higher education.

We are part of the OfS Uni Connect Programme – impartial advice and guidance on college and university.  Uni Connect is funded by the Office for Students. It is a national network of partnerships across England which offer impartial advice, guidance and activities on the benefits and realities of higher education in college and university.

ABOUT HEAT

HEAT stands for the Higher Education Access Tracker. It is a secure electronic database, which means no one can see it unless they are supposed to. Lots of universities and colleges use HEAT to track young people who are taking part in similar activities to you. You can find out more information about what HEAT is and how it works at https://heat.ac.uk/privacy-notice/.

ABOUT OUR TRACKING and EVALUATION

We need to collect information about you and the other young people we work with so we can report to the Office for Students. This is important because the money used to fund our activities is public money, it comes from the Government.

We are also doing evaluation and research to find out whether the activities you take part in make a difference to you. To do this we want to find out:

1. If you go on to university or higher-level study at college.

2. If so, which university or college you choose, and which course.

3. Whether you carry on studying or get a job after you have been to university or college.

To answer these questions, and to produce reports about who we are working with for the Office for Students, we use an electronic database called HEAT. We will ask your school or college to provide us with information about you and the activities that you take part in with us (your data) which will be recorded in HEAT. 

Through HEAT we will then be able to find out if you decide to go onto university or college in the future. HEAT do this by sharing your information with the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).  HEAT and HESA work together to provide statistics about whether you go to university or higher-level study at college.  You can find out more about HESA and how they use your information at https://www.hesa.ac.uk/about/regulation/data-protection/notices#linkg . 

We will use these statistics to understand how helpful different activities are and if they make a difference to your decisions about your future. This will help us to decide what activities we should offer to other young people in the future. 

ABOUT OUR REPORTING

These statistics will also be put into reports to communicate them to others. We will share the reports with some other organisations that are involved with us and in Higher Education. These organisations include:

• The Office for Students

• CFE Research (this organisation is responsible for the national evaluation of the Uni Connect programme on behalf of the Office for Students)

• Go Higher West Yorkshire partner universities and colleges

Some reports may be made public for anybody to read. People reading the reports would never be able to identify you as an individual.

KEEPING YOUR INFORMATION SAFE

We know that it is really important that the information about you is kept safe. We have procedures in place to make sure that this happens. Only authorised staff from your school or college, and some members of the GHWY Uni Connect central team will be able to see that data stored about you in HEAT. The HEAT database is only accessible with a password, and only by those who need to access your data to keep it up to date. For more information on HEAT and data security, please see https://heat.ac.uk/privacy-notice/.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO NOW

If you are happy for your school or college to share your data with Go Higher West Yorkshire, you don’t need to do anything now. You should keep this information in case you have questions in the future.

If you have questions or want to know more about our reporting and evaluation, please get in touch with our lead evaluator using the contact details below.

If you do not want your data to be shared with Go Higher West Yorkshire, you have a right to object or to request that the information we hold is corrected or deleted. You can do this by contacting the researcher named in the next section. Our Privacy Notice sets out in more detail your data rights.  

Thank you for your time.

CONTACT DETAILS

Go Higher West Yorkshire

c/o University of Leeds

LS2 9JT

Email: ghwy@leeds.ac.uk

If you have any concerns about the above you can contact Amy Wilson, Senior Project Manager, a.wilson1@leeds.ac.uk

PRIVACY NOTICE

Please note, if you are under 16, your parent/carer can exercise the rights detailed in this Privacy Notice on your behalf.

DATA CONTROLLER AND COLLECTION

The organisation responsible for looking after your personal data (Data Controller) is the University of Leeds (acting on behalf of Go Higher West Yorkshire). Whilst the University of Leeds may share your data with other Go Higher West Yorkshire partners, it will carefully control who is given access to the data.

Your school or college will be responsible for collecting the data and passing it on to the University of Leeds. Your school or college will keep a record of what you have done with Go Higher West Yorkshire to support your future involvement and the development of the Uni Connect programme.

DATA PROTECTION OFFICER

The University of Leeds’ Data Protection Officer is Alice Temple. If you have any queries concerning the use of your data, please email: dpo@leeds.ac.uk.

WHAT WE WILL USE YOUR DATA FOR

We will use your data for monitoring, evaluation and research. You can find more information in the “About our monitoring and evaluation” and “About HEAT” sections above.

SHARING YOUR DATA

For monitoring, research and evaluation purposes, your data may be shared with relevant agencies, including the Office for Students, Department for Education, Higher Education Statistics Agency, or the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), and our partners including universities, colleges, schools, HEAT subscribers, Connexions and the National Data Service. The University of Leeds and its Go Higher West Yorkshire partners will not share your records in any way that would identify you without seeking additional permission first.

GDPR

This evaluation agreement complies with the General Data Protection Regulation 2018 (GDPR).

WHY WE COLLECT YOUR DATA

Whenever an organisation collects data about you, it needs to have a lawful reason for doing so. This is called the ‘legal basis’. In this case, the legal basis is called ‘public task’ or ‘public good’. This refers to Article 9 of GDPR, which says that "processing is necessary for reasons of substantial public interest”. There are two reasons why the collection of data about you and your involvement in the Uni Connect Programme are in the public interest:

1. It is important that public money is spent in the way it is supposed to be spent. Your data will help us to report to our funders about how the funding has been spent and show that it has been used to support young people in Uni Connect target areas.

2. Your data will help us to understand what kinds of support young people like you benefit from, so that young people in the future can also get the right support for them.

WHAT DATA WILL WE BE COLLECTING

As part of your involvement in the programme we will collect data about you. The data we collect is:  

• Full name

• Postcode of where you live

• Date of birth

• Gender

• Ethnicity

• If you may be the first in your family to go to university

• If you are in receipt of free school meals

• If you have Special Education Needs or a disability

• If you are or have been in Local Authority care

• If you are living without the support of your family (estranged)

• If you are an asylum seeker or refugee

• The activities you take part in with Go Higher West Yorkshire

Sometimes, to help us understand what difference the programme is making, we may collect data about your school/college attendance, grades, behaviour, and what you progress to after you leave school/college. We may also sometimes collect the above data even if you have not participated in programme activity, so that we can compare the difference an activity makes against those who have not participated.

Some of this data, such as ethnicity is called ‘special category data’. This is data that needs more protection because it is sensitive. To make sure this sensitive data is properly protected, the law says that we have to make sure an ‘appropriate policy document’ is in place. We have conducted an assessment to make sure that this data is properly protected.

HOW LONG WILL WE KEEP YOUR DATA FOR

Your personal data (in so far as it identifies you as an individual) will be stored for up to twenty years after the end of the project. After that time, any data stored will be anonymised.

YOUR RIGHTS

You have the right to

• Rectification - that any mistakes in the data held about you are corrected.

• Erasure – that data held about you is deleted.

• Restriction of rights to process - that you limit how the data about you is used.

• Object to your data being used.

• Portability – for you to have your data given back to you in an accessible form so that you can take it somewhere else.

• Withdraw – the right to decide you do not want to take any further part in the research, but you may be happy for us to keep the data we already hold about you.

If you are not happy with the way your data is being handled, you have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.