Privacy Policy

How Everyday English Learning Centre collects, uses, discloses and protects the personal data of our students, parents, enquirers and job applicants, in line with Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act 2012.

1. About this policy

Everyday English Learning Centre (“the Centre”, “we”, “us” or “our”) is a tuition centre registered in Singapore with the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (UEN: 53528691X), providing Primary and Secondary English tuition. We take the privacy of our students and their families seriously.

This policy explains what personal data we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with, and the choices you have. It applies to our website, to enquiries made through our website form, by email, phone or WhatsApp, to our social media pages, to students enrolled with us, and to people who apply to work with us.

“Personal data” means data about an individual who can be identified from that data, or from that data together with other information we have or are likely to have access to.

2. The personal data we collect

If you make an enquiry

• Your name and, where you tell us, your relationship to the student
• Your email address and mobile number
• The student’s level, and your preferred day and timing for classes
• Anything else you choose to include in your message to us

If your child enrols with us

• Student’s full name, school, level and stream
• Parent or guardian’s full name, contact number, email address and relationship to the student
• Class allocation, attendance records, and billing records including the date, amount and reference of each payment
• The student’s work: worksheets, assignments, marks, and our monthly progress reports
• School results and report book information, where you choose to share these with us so we can pitch teaching at the right level
• Any learning needs or other information you choose to tell us that is relevant to your child’s care while at the Centre

We do not ask for your child’s date of birth, NRIC or birth certificate number, and we do not need them.

If you apply to teach with us

• Your name and contact details
• Your curriculum vitae and employment history
• Your PSLE, O-Level, A-Level or Diploma and degree certificates and transcripts, where you send them to us
• Your written assessment answers and our interview notes
• Where we engage you, the further details we need to pay you and to meet our record-keeping obligations

When you visit our website or our premises

• Standard technical information such as your browser type, device type and the pages you viewed, as described in section 10
• CCTV footage of the area outside our premises, as described in section 8

3. How we collect it

We collect personal data directly from you: through the enquiry form on our website, by email, by WhatsApp or phone, through our registration and enrolment forms, and in conversation with you at the Centre. Where a parent or guardian provides information about a student, we collect it from that parent or guardian. We also collect a limited amount of technical data automatically when you browse our website, and CCTV footage of the area outside our premises.

Our website enquiry form is handled by Formspree, a third-party form service that receives your submission and forwards it to us by email. Section 10 explains this in more detail.

We do not buy personal data from third parties, and we do not collect personal data about you from anyone other than you or your parent or guardian without telling you.

4. Why we use it

We use personal data only for purposes a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances, and which we have told you about. In practice, these are:

• Responding to enquiries and arranging trial lessons or class placements
• Delivering our classes, including preparing personalised worksheets, marking work, and tracking each student’s progress
• Communicating with parents about attendance, progress reports, schedule changes, replacement lessons and centre announcements
• Billing and payment, including issuing invoices and receipts and maintaining accounting records
• Health, safety and supervision of students while they are at the Centre, and the security of our premises
• Recruiting and assessing tutors, and administering their engagement with us
• Improving our website and teaching materials, including understanding which pages visitors find useful
• Meeting our legal obligations and dealing with disputes or complaints

5. Consent and withdrawing consent

We collect, use and disclose personal data with your consent, or where the Personal Data Protection Act otherwise permits us to do so. By submitting an enquiry, enrolling a student, or sending us a job application, you consent to us handling your personal data as described in this policy.

You may withdraw your consent to any particular use at any time by writing to our Data Protection Officer at the address in section 18. We will act on your request within a reasonable time and tell you the likely consequences. For example, if you withdraw consent to us contacting you about lessons, we may no longer be able to keep your child enrolled.

Withdrawing consent does not affect anything we lawfully did with your data before you withdrew it, and does not require us to delete records we are required by law to keep.

6. Children and young students

Most of our students are under 18, and many are under 13. We recognise that their personal data deserves particular care.

• We look to the parent or legal guardian to provide consent and to give us the personal data of any student under 13, and we deal with the parent or guardian on that student’s behalf.
• For students aged 13 and above, we may accept information and instructions from the student directly where they clearly understand what they are agreeing to, but we will continue to keep the parent or guardian informed about the student’s progress and attendance.
• We do not use children’s personal data for profiling, behavioural advertising, or any purpose beyond teaching them and keeping their parents informed.
• Our website is not designed for children to sign up on their own. Enquiries should be made by a parent or guardian.

A parent or guardian may ask us at any time what data we hold about their child, ask us to correct it, or ask us to stop using it for a particular purpose.

7. Photographs, video and testimonials

From time to time we take photographs or short videos of lessons and centre activities. Where these include an identifiable student, we use them on our website, in printed materials or on our social media pages only if we have first asked the parent or guardian and they have given us permission.

The same applies to testimonials and results. We publish a student’s name, school, grade or comments about their progress only with the prior consent of the parent or guardian. Where a parent prefers, we will publish a testimonial anonymously or under initials only.

You may withdraw that permission at any time by writing to us. We will remove the material from our website and our own social media pages within a reasonable time. Please note that we may not be able to recall copies already printed, shared or downloaded by others.

8. CCTV

We operate closed-circuit television covering the entrance and the area immediately outside our premises. The cameras are there for the safety of our students and staff and the security of the premises.

• There are no cameras inside our classrooms. Lessons are never filmed or recorded.
• Notices are displayed so that visitors know when they are entering an area covered by CCTV.
• Footage is retained for a short period, ordinarily no more than 30 days, after which it is automatically overwritten.
• Access to footage is restricted to our Data Protection Officer. We review it only where there is a specific reason to do so, such as an incident or a security concern.
• We may disclose footage to the Police or another public agency where we are required or permitted by law to do so.

9. Who we share data with

We keep personal data within the Centre wherever possible. We share it outside the Centre only in these situations:

• Our tutors and staff, on a need-to-know basis, so they can teach and support your child. Every tutor we engage is bound by a confidentiality obligation in their agreement with us.
• Service providers who help us run the Centre, namely Formspree (which processes our website enquiry form), Google (which provides our email and the cloud storage where our records are kept), and our website hosting provider. They are only permitted to use the data to provide their service to us.
• Your own bank, when you pay fees by PayNow. That transfer is between you and your bank. We do not initiate it and we do not receive your account details.
• Where the law requires or permits it, for example to comply with a court order, a regulatory request, or where disclosure is necessary to respond to an emergency that threatens someone’s life, health or safety.

10. Our website and cookies

Cookies

Our website is built on WordPress. WordPress and our hosting provider set a small number of cookies that are necessary for the site to function and to keep it secure. We may also look at basic, aggregated visitor statistics, such as how many people viewed a page, to understand which parts of the site are useful.

We do not use advertising cookies, remarketing tags or behavioural profiling tools of any kind. Nothing on our site is used to follow you around the internet or to build an advertising profile of you or your child.

You can block or delete cookies through your browser settings. If you block cookies, parts of the site may not work as intended.

Our enquiry form

The enquiry form on our website is processed by Formspree, a form-handling service. When you submit the form, the details you have entered, such as your name, contact details, your child’s level and your preferred day and timing, are sent to Formspree’s servers, which then deliver them to us by email.

Formspree acts as our data intermediary. It holds a copy of submissions in our account so that we do not lose an enquiry, and it may record technical information such as your IP address for the purpose of blocking spam. Formspree is a United States company and its servers are located outside Singapore. Please see section 16 on overseas transfers.

We periodically clear submissions from our Formspree account once the enquiry has been dealt with. If you would prefer not to use the form, you are welcome to email or WhatsApp us directly instead, using the details in our Contact section.

11. Social media

We maintain pages for the Centre on Facebook and Instagram, which are operated by Meta.

If you follow us, comment on a post, or send us a message on those platforms, Meta collects and processes that information under its own privacy policy, which we do not control. We can see the information those platforms make visible to us as the page owner, such as your profile name and any message you send us.

We treat enquiries received through Facebook or Instagram the same way as any other enquiry, and we handle any personal data you send us there in line with this policy. We do not run behavioural advertising or use tracking pixels that identify visitors to our website.

If you would rather not share information with those platforms, please contact us by email, phone or WhatsApp instead.

12. Marketing

We do not run a marketing mailing list, and we do not send bulk promotional messages.

If you enquire and decide not to enrol, we will not keep contacting you. Messages we send to enrolled families are about their own child’s classes: attendance, progress reports, schedule changes, fee reminders and centre announcements.

If we introduce a marketing list in future, we will ask for your consent first, make it easy to unsubscribe at any time, and comply with the Do Not Call provisions of the Personal Data Protection Act before sending any marketing message to a Singapore telephone number.

13. How we protect your data

We make reasonable security arrangements to protect personal data in our care against unauthorised access, collection, use, disclosure, copying, modification, disposal or loss. These include:

• Restricting access to student and parent records to the staff who need it
• Keeping our digital records in Google Drive, on accounts protected by strong passwords and two-step verification, with sharing restricted rather than open by link
• Keeping physical documents such as marked worksheets and progress reports in a secure place at the Centre
• Handing progress reports to parents in printed form in person. Where a parent asks for a soft copy, we send it to the email address we hold for that parent and to no one else
• Securely disposing of documents that are no longer needed
• Requiring every tutor we engage to keep student and family information confidential

No method of storage or transmission is completely secure. If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in significant harm to affected individuals, or that is of a significant scale, we will notify the Personal Data Protection Commission and the affected individuals as required under the Act.

14. How long we keep it

We keep personal data only for as long as we have a business or legal reason to keep it.

• Enquiries that do not lead to enrolment: we delete these within 12 months of the enquiry being closed, unless you have asked us to keep you on our list for future classes.
• Student and parent records, including billing records: we keep these for the duration of enrolment and for 5 years after the student leaves the Centre. This period reflects the record-keeping obligations that apply to Singapore businesses, and lets us provide past progress reports if a parent asks for them.
• Student work such as marked worksheets: we return this to students or dispose of it securely at the end of each academic year, apart from what is needed to compile progress reports.
• CCTV footage: ordinarily no more than 30 days, unless it is needed for an ongoing investigation or a legal claim.
• Unsuccessful job applications: we delete the certificates, transcripts and assessment papers within 6 months of the role being filled, unless you have asked us to keep your application on file for future openings.

When personal data is no longer needed for any business or legal purpose, we destroy it or remove the means by which it can be linked to you.

15. Accessing and correcting your data

You have the right to ask us:

• What personal data we hold about you or your child, and how we have used or disclosed it in the past year
• To correct anything that is inaccurate or out of date

Please send your request to our Data Protection Officer using the details in section 18. We may need to verify your identity before we act on a request, and we may charge a reasonable fee for an access request, which we will tell you about beforehand. We aim to respond within 30 days, and if we cannot, we will tell you when we expect to respond.

In a small number of situations the Act allows or requires us to decline an access request, for example where providing the information would reveal personal data about another person. If we decline, we will tell you why.

16. Transfers outside Singapore

Some of the services we rely on store data on servers located outside Singapore. In particular, our enquiry form provider Formspree is based in the United States, and Google, which provides our email and cloud storage, operates data centres in a number of countries.

Where personal data is transferred outside Singapore, we take reasonable steps to satisfy ourselves that the recipient is bound by contractual terms requiring a standard of protection comparable to that under the Personal Data Protection Act. We keep the amount of personal data handled by overseas providers to the minimum needed.

17. Governing law and changes to this policy

This policy is governed by, and shall be construed in accordance with, the laws of the Republic of Singapore. Nothing in this policy limits any right you have under the Personal Data Protection Act 2012 or any other applicable law.

We may update this policy from time to time as our services or the law change. The date at the top of this page shows when it was last revised. Any changes take effect once posted here. Where a change materially affects how we use your personal data, we will make reasonable efforts to notify you directly.

18. Contacting us

If you have a question about this policy, want to access or correct your data, want to withdraw consent, or wish to make a complaint about how we have handled personal data, please contact our Data Protection Officer:

We will acknowledge your message and aim to resolve the matter with you directly. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may raise the matter with the Personal Data Protection Commission of Singapore at the PDPC website.