Privacy

What we hold

For an enquiry: a name, an email address and whatever you write to us.

For an application: the parent’s name, email address, telephone number and relationship to the child; the child’s first name, age and school year; the type of school and, if you give it, its name; where you are and in what time zone; what your child is reading now and what support they have had before; what you hope for and what else fills their week; any access needs you tell us about; how your child feels about the idea, whether any date matters and who else is part of the decision; and the times you suggest for the sessions. Every one of these is a question we ask because Leah reads the application herself.

If a place is taken we hold the essays your child submits, the marking on them and the written report. Ask us to delete them and we will. The application form asks for no writing and none is marked at that stage.

For a mock paper booking: the subject, the level, the examination board, the tier and paper where they apply, the student’s first name and year group, and whatever you write about what the paper should lean on, together with your name, your email address and your telephone number. The form is our own and sits on this site. The payment is taken by Stripe, on Stripe’s own page, after you leave ours. We never see or hold your card details. They go straight to Stripe, which is a regulated payment processor; what comes back to us is that a payment of a stated amount succeeded, and nothing more. Your answers are held with that payment at Stripe and are sent to us by email at the moment it succeeds.

For a comment on the blog: the display name you choose, your email address and what you write. The name and the comment are published once Leah has read them; the email address is not published, is not passed on, and exists only so that she can tell a real reader from a machine. Comments are for adults. For the newsletter: your email address and the fact that you ticked the box, and nothing else.

We do not hold school records, examination results, medical information or any special category data, and would rather not be sent them.

Why, and on what basis

• —To answer an enquiry, and to teach a child once a place is taken — performance of a contract, or steps taken before entering one.
• —To send the reading list and occasional letters — your consent, withdrawable in one click at the foot of any of them.
• —To take a booking for a mock paper, write the paper and take the payment for it — performance of a contract. Keeping the record of that payment afterwards is a legal obligation.
• —To publish a comment you sent us for publication — our legitimate interest in running a blog people can answer back to, which is the whole point of having one. Ask us and it comes down.
• —To send the monthly newsletter — your consent, given by ticking a box that was not ticked for you, and withdrawable in one click at the foot of every letter.
• —To keep accounting records — a legal obligation, six years.
• —To make a safeguarding referral where a child may be at risk — a legal obligation and the vital interests of the child.

Who else sees it

An email provider for correspondence, a video-call provider for tutorials, Cal.com for the diary you choose your introductory conversation from — it receives your name, your email address and the time you pick, and nothing else from your application — Netlify, which hosts this site and runs the small programs that its forms post to, Web3Forms, which carries what you write on a form to our inbox and keeps no copy of it, Stripe, which takes the payment for a mock paper, receives the answers on that booking so that they sit with the payment, and is the only party to your card details, and Meta, for advertising measurement only, on the terms set out under Cookies, advertising and measurement below. Nobody else, and never for their own purposes. We do not sell anything to anybody, and there is no advertising on this site.

How long

Enquiries that come to nothing: twelve months. Applications that do not lead to a place: twelve months, then destroyed. Assessment papers, the marking and the report: twelve months after the report is sent, then destroyed, unless you ask for them sooner or ask us to keep them longer. Essays, marking and reports where a place was taken: three years after the last teaching, then destroyed, unless you ask for them sooner, in which case you are sent the lot. Mock paper bookings, and the paper and the marking that follow: three years after the paper is sent, then destroyed, unless you ask for them sooner. The record that a payment was made: six years, with the accounting records, because we must. Published comments: for as long as the post is up, or until you ask us to take yours down — whichever comes first. Comments we did not publish, and the email address attached to any comment: twelve months. Newsletter subscribers: until you unsubscribe, after which we keep only the fact that you did, so that we do not write to you again by accident. Accounting records: six years, because we must.

Cookies, advertising and measurement

Nothing that measures you is loaded unless you agree to it. Not loaded and switched off — not requested at all. If you decline, or simply ignore the question, no advertising script is fetched, no cookie of theirs is set, nothing you read or click here is measured, and the site behaves exactly as it does for someone who accepted. Declining is one click, the same as accepting. There is one exception and it is set out in full below: if you go on to book a conversation with us, that booking alone is still reported, without anything that could tie it to an advertisement.

If you accept, we load Meta’s advertising pixel so that we can tell which advertisements bring families here and which are wasting money. It records that a page was viewed, that an application or enquiry was sent, and that a time was afterwards chosen. There is nothing to buy on this site, so no purchase and no amount of money is ever reported. Meta also sets two identifiers in your browser, which is how it recognises that the person who clicked an advertisement is the person who later booked.

The same events are also sent to Meta from our own server, not only from your browser. Meta calls this the Conversions API. It exists because browser measurement is blocked for a great many people, and the two copies carry a shared reference so that one booking is counted once rather than twice. It is the same events either way, going to the same one company — nothing is measured this way that is not also described above.

When you book an introductory conversation, the email address and name you give are sent to Meta in hashed form. Hashing turns them into a fixed string of letters and numbers that cannot be read back into an address; Meta uses it only to check whether it already holds the same string, so that the booking can be matched to the advertisement you arrived by. The readable address is never sent, and this happens for the booking alone — never for an application or an enquiry.

If you decline, one thing still happens. A booking you make is still reported to Meta from our server, because you gave those details in order to book and the booking is a thing we are entitled to count. What is NOT sent in that case is either of the two browser identifiers, so the booking cannot be tied back to an advertisement or to anything else you did on this site. No script of Meta’s is loaded, no cookie of theirs is set, and nothing else you do here is measured at all.

Nothing about your child is ever sent to Meta. Not a name, not an age, not a school, not a word of anything written for us. The application form asks for those because Leah reads it herself, and they go to us and no further. Your telephone number is never sent, and neither your name nor your email address is sent when you make an application or an enquiry — the booking described above is the single exception, and even then only in hashed form. What otherwise goes is that a form of a given kind was sent and the bare fact that a booking was made — not the day of it, not the time, and not who it is for.

Your answer is remembered in your browser for twelve months and then asked again. You can change it whenever you like: change your choice. Withdrawing is as easy as giving it, and takes effect immediately.

One thing is stored whatever you choose, because the site cannot work without it: when you send a form, your first name is put into the browser’s own session storage so that the page which follows can greet you by it. It is read once and cleared, it never reaches the web address, and closing the tab removes it. Your answer to the question above is stored the same way, in your browser only. If any of this changes, this passage will change with it before anything is installed.

Your rights

You may ask what we hold, have it corrected, have it deleted, or have a copy of it sent to you. Write and it is done within a month, usually the same week. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.