Personal Data Policy

This policy describes the privacy practices with regard to personally identifiable data that you provide to us at Languages International, The Literacy Professionals (Languages International’s workplace language, literacy and numeracy training service) and the New Zealand Exam Centre. To see our privacy practices specific to your use of our website, visit our Website Privacy Policy here: languages.ac.nz/website-privacy-policy

Who we are

We are Languages International Ltd. Our website address is: https://www.languages.ac.nz

Definitions

“You” refers to:

  • a student or prospective student of Languages International or an exam candidate;
  • an employee or prospective employee of Languages International;
  • a homestay host contracted to provide paid accommodation to our students, and other members of the host’s household.

“We”, “us” refers to Languages International Ltd.

“Retailer” refers to any language travel consultant through which a student makes his/her booking.

“Study” refers your period of study at Languages International.

What personal data we collect and why we collect it

We gather and store the information that we need to do our job, including keeping people safe, and to comply with the law. The information is provided directly, with the provider’s consent, or by a third party which has the consent or legal authority necessary to give us such information. For example, a student may book their course through a language travel consultant, referred to in this policy as the ‘retailer’, in which case the student will give the retailer consent to provide us with the personal data necessary to manage the student’s booking.

In each case, Languages International collects such information only as is necessary or appropriate to fulfil the purpose of your interaction with Languages International. You can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent us from providing you with certain services or offering you certain opportunities.

We process the data we receive with the purposes of:

  • providing the requested service(s)
  • billing for the service(s)
  • maintaining and improving our services
  • communicating (to send you information relating to the services)
  • keeping people safe
  • complying with legal or regulatory requirements

What data is collected depends on your interaction with us.

To see what data will be collected and why when you visit our websites, see our website privacy policy.

If you email us, the information you send will be retained to enable further communication with you.

Course applicants

If you apply to study English at Languages International, we will receive and process the information collected through one of our or a retailer’s application forms, our pre-test if you do it, and any information relevant to your booking you share with us via email or any other medium of communication. You can see the personal data we need to manage your application here: application form, pre-test. OET students use a different application form, which requests slightly different data. You can see what is collected here.

We collect this information because it is necessary for us to know if you are eligible to take certain courses and to generate an Offer of Place and invoice for you. We follow the principle of data minimisation and as such only request the information we strictly need at this stage of your booking. If you book your course through a retailer, they might use their own application form, which might collect more information than Languages International’s forms. Languages International does not request this extra information, but if it is supplied by the retailer, we will process it together with the booking information we do request.

If you apply for a student visa as part of your application to study at Languages International, we sometimes share information about you and your application with Immigration New Zealand and English New Zealand, an organisation that Languages International and other English language schools belong to. We do this to help resolve any problems with your visa application.

CELTA Applicants

Our CELTA Teacher Training course has a different application form from our English courses. It requests the additional information necessary to determine if a candidate is suitable for this extremely demanding course and to comply with the requirements set by Cambridge Assessment English. You can see the information we collect from CELTA applicants here.

If you are offered a place on a CELTA course, you are also required to sign the CELTA acceptance conditions. If you have (a) special need(s) which may affect your ability to complete a CELTA course successfully, you are required to attach a recent specialist report that confirms your special need(s).

Cambridge Exam candidates

If you register with the New Zealand Exam Centre to sit a Cambridge exam, we will receive and process the information collected through one of our registration forms, and any information relevant to your registration that you share with us via email or any other medium of communication. You can see the personal data we need to manage your application here: registration form.

We collect this information because it is necessary for us to register you for the exam with Cambridge English, take payment for the exam and send you your exam certificate. We follow the principle of data minimisation and as such only request the information we strictly need.

Students

If you become a student at Languages International, throughout your course, more data will be collected from you to assess your needs, track your progress, get feedback from you about your satisfaction with our services, bill you for our services, and comply with our legal obligations. Also, to accept your place at Languages International you will need to give us payment details.

On your first day of school we are legally required to collect copies of your passport, New Zealand visa, and insurance details. To help keep you safe, we also need to collect your New Zealand contact details including where you will be living during your study and the contact details of someone we can contact on your behalf in case of emergency.

During your course, we will also record your class attendance, test scores, progress reports from your teachers, what you tell us about your reasons for studying English and future goals as they relate to your study, and any other information you chose to share with us which is relevant to your study, or health and safety, while studying at Languages International.

Workplace Literacy

When you enrol in one of our workplace literacy programmes, you need to do an assessment through the Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) Assessment Tool. For you to do this assessment, we first need to collect the following information: proof you are employed full-time by a company in New Zealand, proof you are a New Zealand resident or citizen, your birthdate, ethnicity and National Student Number (NSI). If you do not have an NSI, one will be created for you. We are also required to check your previous qualifications and credits through the NZQA website (New Zealand Qualifications Authority, a New Zealand government crown entity). We are required to collect this information so that the TEC can fund your course. This data is stored by the TEC together with your diagnostic and progress assessment scores, but we also have a copy.

Host families

If a family applies to become a homestay/ host family for Languages International students, we will collect information directly from the family, including contact details, names, ages, professions and hobbies of family members living in the home, whether the family has pets, whether the family smokes, whether anyone in the family has any relevant health issues, and the types of students the family wishes to host. We also require a photo of all family members and one of the home. In addition, we ask for bank account details so that we can make payments. This information will be kept, together with notes from our inspection of your home and student feedback about their stay with your family, in our database. We will also, after getting each individual’s consent, do a police check on family members aged 18 and over. We collect the above information to ensure our students are staying in safe accommodation and to find the host family that is the best match each student.

Employees and job applicants

If you apply to work at Languages International, we expect to receive your CV, references and contact details. If your application does not lead to employment at Languages International, we delete any electronic copies and destroy any hard copies of communications and documents that you have sent us.

If you are an employees of Languages International, we store in electronic form records with information about you. Our records include:

  • your home address and personal contact details
  • your academic credentials
  • your bank account details
  • your IRD number, Kiwisaver details and any details about deductions for student loan or court fine repayments

Documents kept in electronic and/or hard-copy form that pertain explicitly to you include

  • your CV and references
  • your contract and its appendices
  • performance review records
  • classroom observation records

Who we share your personal data with

Within our company, only people who have a job-related need to see your personal data will access it. It is shared with people outside the organisation only where it is necessary to deliver our services, keep clients safe and healthy, and when there is a legal need.

We will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying or personally-identifying information to anyone.

To help with our business planning and operations and continue to improve our services, we will use aggregated personal data for statistical analysis. For example, it is useful for us to know how many students we have from each country or how many students from different age groups. After this data is aggregated, it is no longer possible to use it to identify any individual.

Student data

If you book your course through a retailer, we will share the results of your pre-test with your retailer. During your course, if you are absent from class so often that we need to issue official attendance warnings, we may notify your retailer of these warnings. If your attendance does not improve and this results in expulsion and the cancellation of your student visa, we may also notify your retailer. If your retailer asks for a progress report, we will only send this with your permission.

If you request to stay in a homestay, we will share some of your application information with the host family, including your name, nationality, age, course dates, and any special requests or relevant health issues of which you have informed us. For example, if you have allergies, they need to know in order to help keep you safe and healthy.

If you book insurance through Languages International, we will give the insurance company your name, nationality, date of birth, and the start and end dates of your course.

If you are sponsored to study at Languages International by a scholarship provider, we will periodically give information such as your learning progress and your rate of attendance to the appropriate authorities, as defined in the terms of the scholarship.

Under New Zealand government regulations we are required to share some personal student data with the New Zealand Ministry of Education. The data we share with them is: your name, date of birth, passport number, country of citizenship, type of visa at the time of enrolment, course type and course length.

We are periodically audited by third parties such as NZQA (New Zealand Qualifications Authority, a New Zealand government crown entity), TEC (Tertiary Education Commission), English New Zealand and financial auditors. During these audits, the auditors can access the personal data we hold for a random sample of students.

If you are in New Zealand on a student visa, we are required to notify Immigration New Zealand if your attendance is low or if you shorten your course.

While you are a student at Languages International, you have a personal account on Microsoft 365, a cloud-based computing service. We share only your name and date of birth with Microsoft. You can read Microsoft’s Services Agreement at https://www.microsoft.com/en-nz/servicesagreement.

CELTA trainees

All information associated with your participation on a CELTA course (including personal data and course work) will only be seen by approved Languages International staff, a Cambridge Assessment English appointed assessor and, if requested, senior assessors at Cambridge Assessment English in the United Kingdom.

APA (Accredited Pathway Assessment) candidates

Information about your course(s) and length of study at Languages International, the results of your APA and your subsequent performance in university study in New Zealand will be shared between Languages International, English New Zealand, Universities New Zealand and the New Zealand university or universities to which you apply and then attend.

Workplace literacy students

We are legally required to share some of your personal data with the TEC, NZQA, and your employer. Most of the data is data which your employer would already have, like your visa status and your date of birth. However, your employer may ask for progress assessment information. (See the section ‘What personal data we collect and why we collect it’ for more information about the data we collect to share with the TEC and NZQA.)
Results from the TEC assessment tool are shared by the TEC with learners, your employer and us. You can see the TEC’s privacy policy here: https://www.tec.govt.nz/footer/about-our-site/privacy/

Cambridge Exam candidates

All information associated with your registration for and sitting of a Cambridge exam will only be seen by approved Languages International staff and Cambridge English. You can see Cambridge English’s Data Protection and Privacy Statement here: cambridgeenglish.org/footer/data-protection/ and their Candidate Privacy Policy here: cambridgeenglish.org/footer/data-protection/candidates/. If you register as part of a school group, your exam score and exam certificate will be shared with your school.

Homestay family data

We share some personal data with potential homestay students. We share your names, suburb, children’s ages, parents’ jobs, the family’s hobbies, and anything relevant about the family’s diet, for example: ‘vegetarian household’ or ‘serves halal food’. If you have stated it, we might tell the student your religion.

If a student is placed with you, they will obviously be given additional information like your address, phone number and email address.

If the student has booked their course through a language travel consultant, the above information will be sent to the student through the language travel consultant.

Employee data

If you are an employee of Languages International, we share data about your employment status and pay with IRD. We sometimes share data with other government agencies such as the Department of Justice and ACC, on a case-by-case basis.

We share your monthly pay details, IRD number, Kiwisaver details and any details about deductions for student loan or court fine repayments with our payroll services provider, who is a private contractor.

We publish your name, profile photo and academic credentials on our website.

We are periodically audited by third parties such as NZQA (New Zealand Qualifications Authority), TEC (Tertiary Education Commission), English New Zealand and financial auditors. During these audits, the auditors can access the personal data we hold for our staff.

How long we retain your data

The data you give us will be kept for the length of time necessary to comply with administrative, security, and legal obligations.

Data which you give us so that we can manage your booking, attendance records and information about your English level is retained indefinitely so that we can continue to provide you services after your course has finished. For example, if you lose your school Leaving Certificate, we would be able to email you a copy. However, if you request for your data to be deleted, we will do so when the data is no longer legally needed. Note that this means we will not be able to reissue your certificate or confirm that you have studied at Languages International.

What rights you have over your data

You have the right to access your personal data, as processed by Languages International, and to correct inaccurate data. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.

If you are a student at Languages International, on your first day of school you will be given access to the Student Portal. It is part of our school database system. Through the portal you can edit some of your personal data.

Where we send your data

For information on where data collected through our websites is sent, see languages.ac.nz and literacyprofessionals.co.nz.

Most of the information we collect is stored in our school database, which is hosted in Australia.
We also store some of your data on paper and digitally in New Zealand, and with Microsoft Exchange hosted in Australia and Microsoft SharePoint hosted in Asia/Pacific (South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.) Here is Microsoft’s privacy policy: https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/PrivacyStatement.

What third parties we receive data from

We may receive personal data about students from:

  • the retailer they use to book their course
  • their homestay family if the family is worried about them
  • if they have studied at a school in New Zealand before our school, that school may provide information about attendance and academic performance to Languages International

Personal Data Policy Changes

Languages International may change its Personal Data Policy from time to time, and at our sole discretion. We encourage visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to our Personal Data Policy. Your continued use of our website or our services after any change in this policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

Contact Us

Email: info@languages.ac.nz

Further contact details: languages.ac.nz/contact

This document was last updated on 6/03/2024