Version Number: 2
Date Approved: 15 March 2024
Responsible Person: Director Corporate Affairs
Approved By: SSA Board
Next Review Date: 15 March 2025
The Privacy Act 1988 requires entities bound by the Australian Privacy Principles to have a privacy policy. This privacy policy outlines the personal information handling practices of Studio Schools of Australia Ltd (‘SSA’).
This Policy is written in plain language. The specific legal obligations of SSA when collecting and handling your personal information are outlined in the Privacy Act 1988 and specifically the Australian Privacy Principles found in that Act. We will update this privacy policy when our information handling practices change.
1. Overview
SSA collects, holds, uses and discloses personal information to carry out the functions and activities under the Privacy Act 1988 and other legislation that confers obligations to schools.
These functions and activities include:
- Enrolling students and processing applications
- Performing our duty of care and child protection legal obligations to students while at SSA
- Hiring and managing staff members, volunteers and contractors
- Communicating to our community and to the public
- Maintaining our records and databases
- Meeting our legislative reporting requirements to government agencies
2. Collection of Your Personal Information
At all times we try to only collect the information we need for the particular function or activity we are carrying out. We will explain to you clearly the reason for the collection and how it may be used.
The main way we collect personal information about you is when you provide it to SSA upon request. More specifically:
- Paper or online forms filled out by parents, students and staff
- Face to face meetings and interviews, and telephone calls
- When you apply for employment at SSA
- Enquiries from prospective parents through our website or via email/phone
- From a third party, for example a report provided by a medical professional or a personal reference from another organisation
- Photographs and videos taken of students, staff and parents at formal and informal SSA functions and events
- Through the use of cookies on our SSA website to record usage statistics
- Social networking services such as Facebook and YouTube to communicate with the public about our events and news. When you communicate with us using these services we may collect your personal information, but we only use it to help us to communicate with you and the public. The social networking service will also handle your personal information for its own purposes. These services have their own privacy policies
- Indirectly through publicly available sources
In some circumstances persons may opt out of the collection of personal information for specific purposes. This may include not being included in distribution lists for marketing materials or the use of your photograph in a publication. In such specific circumstances an opt out option will be available.
3. Collection of Your Sensitive Information
Sensitive information includes matters of health, gender, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, family court orders, financial information and criminal history. SSA will sometimes need to collect sensitive information to carry out its functions and activities. These include:
- To provide a safe environment for our staff and students by being aware of and catering for dietary requirements, allergies, immunisation details and individual health care plans
- Managing our accommodation needs at SSA and all other overnight camps and excursions
- Managing gender ratios in student classes to meet our coeducational requirements
- To be able to provide immediate first level health care to students while in the care of SSA
- To assist employees with return-to-work plans, manage work related injuries and our obligations under Occupational Health and Safety laws
- To provide pastoral care support to students
- Ensuring all of our employees and contractors have current Police and Working With Children checks. These must be provided to SSA and remain current during an employee’s contract with SSA.
4. Uses of Your Personal Information
SSA uses your personal information in a variety of ways to meet its legal obligations and to provide its educational services. These include:
- To enrol students and provide them with the appropriate schooling, facilities and educational tools
- To keep parents informed about matters related to their child's schooling, through correspondence, including assessment reports, newsletters and magazines
- Day-to-day administration
- To receive income and to meet our financial obligations
- To market and seek attendees to events and functions
- Looking after students' educational, social, emotional and medical well-being
- Using photographs and videos of staff, parents and students in class photos, news articles, publications, SSA social media channels and website
- Seeking donations and other philanthropic opportunities for SSA
- Recording our history
- To be able to assess potential employees and contractors and then engage and administer their employment
- Seeking funds and marketing for SSA
- To satisfy SSA’s legal obligations, for example, in relation to child protection legislation
- Providing parent occupation and highest education level data to government agencies to allow them to calculate applicable school funding
- Marketing and fundraising: SSA treats marketing and seeking donations for the future growth and development of SSA as an important part of ensuring that SSA continues to be a quality learning environment in which both students and staff thrive. Personal information held
5. Who Might the School Disclose Personal Information To?
SSA may disclose personal information, including sensitive information, held about an individual to:
- Another school
- Government agencies
- Medical practitioners
- Parents and anyone to whom you authorise SSA to disclose information
Web traffic information is disclosed to Google Analytics when you visit our website. Google stores information across multiple countries. When you communicate with us through a social network service such as Facebook, the social network provider and its partners may collect and hold your personal information overseas.
An amendment to the Privacy Act requires that from February 2018 to report and disclose any breaches of privacy that seriously affects any individuals SSA manages personal information about. The disclosure will be made to both the individuals affected and to the Australian Office of the Information Commissioner.
6. Quality of Personal Information
SSA endeavours to ensure that the personal information it holds is accurate, complete and current. We achieve this by:
- recording information in a consistent format
- where necessary, confirm the accuracy of information we collect from a third party or a public source
- promptly add updated or new personal information to existing records
7. Accessing And Correcting Your Personal Information
Under the Privacy Act (Australian Privacy Principles 12 and 13) you have the right to ask for access to personal information that we hold about you and ask that we correct that personal information. You can ask for access or correction by contacting us and we must respond within 30 days. If you ask, we must give you access to your personal information, and take reasonable steps to correct it if we consider it is incorrect, unless there is a law that allows or requires us not to. There are some exceptions to this right set out in the Act. Students will generally have access to their personal information through their Parents.
We will ask you to verify your identity before we give you access to your information or correct it, and we will try to make the process as simple as possible. If we refuse to give you access to, or correct, your personal information, we must notify you in writing setting out the reasons.
If we make a correction and we have disclosed the incorrect information to others, you can ask us to tell them about the correction. We must do so unless there is a valid reason not to.
If we refuse to correct your personal information, you can ask us to associate with it (for example, attach or link) a statement that you believe the information is incorrect and why.
Parents can request access to any information SSA holds about them or their child, by contacting the Principal in writing. However, there will be occasions when access is denied. Such occasions would include where release of the information would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of others, or where the release may result in a breach of SSA’s duty of care to the student, or according to other exemptions stated in the Privacy or Health Records Acts.
Employees and contractors may request access to their personal information by contacting the Human Resources Department in writing. SSA may require you to verify your identity and specify what information you require.
8. Consent Rights of Access to The Personal Information Of Students
Generally, SSA will refer any requests for consent and notices in relation to the personal information of a student to the student's parents. SSA will treat consent given by parents as consent given on behalf of the student and notice to parents will act as notice given to the student.
SSA may, at its discretion, allow a student to give or withhold consent to the use of their personal information, independently of their parents. This would normally be done only when the maturity of the student and/or the student's personal circumstances so warranted.