Privacy and Cookies

Privacy and GDPR

The privacy of our stakeholders is important to us and the Trust takes care to safeguard it. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires organisations to process personal data in a transparent manner. Our privacy notices are designed to inform you:

  • how and why the Trust uses your personal data
  • what your rights are under GDPR
  • how to contact us so that you can exercise those rights

Web browser cookies

What are cookies?

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are transferred to your computer, tablet or mobile phone (all referred to here as a ‘device’) through your web browser. They are stored on your device’s hard drive and contain a unique number, but no personal data. Cookies are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site and a more tailored site experience to you.

Each website can send its own cookie to your web browser if your browser’s preferences allow it. Many websites do this whenever a user visits their website in order to track online traffic flows. Similar technologies are also often used within emails to understand whether the email has been read or if any links have been clicked. Most browsers allow you to choose whether cookies are used or not. The ‘help’ portion of your browser’s toolbar will usually tell you how to configure your browser to refuse cookies, to delete cookies or to notify you when you receive a new cookie. However, by turning off cookies you may make the website less efficient and some services may not function properly.

How do we use cookies?

We use cookies to make sure our website works effectively. Cookies record information about your online preferences and allow us to tailor our websites to your interests. By monitoring visitors’ movement from page to page, we can ensure any choices you make and/or details you submit are ‘remembered’ as you navigate the site. This is done on a repeat visit by checking to see, and finding, the cookie left there on the last visit. During the course of any visit to website – including all academies and subsidiaries of the trust – the pages you see, along with a cookie, are downloaded to your device. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive all cookies on any website managed by the trust. However, you can change your cookie settings at any time.

Cookies we use, including those set by add-ons:

NameCookie typePurpose
Google AnalyticsFunctional cookiesThis collects information about how visitors use the website, to be able to compile reports and make improvements to better meet our users’ needs. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited. Google Analytics data and privacy information. Opt out add-on for Google Analytics.
Google AnalyticsTargeting cookiesWe use Google Analytics Audience Demographics and Interest Reporting within Google Analytics to further our audience understanding so we can improve our content and user experience accordingly. Opt out of Google’s personalised advertising.
YouTubeFunctional cookiesYouTube uses cookies to help maintain the integrity of video statistics and prevent fraud. We embed some videos on our site from our official YouTube channels; when we do this, we aim to use the privacy-enhanced mode which means YouTube will not set a cookie unless a user clicks to play the video. YouTube cookies contain the count of views of embedded videos. YouTube privacy enhanced mode information.
TwitterFunctional cookiesWe use Twitter to display relevant feeds on our sites to enhance our content. Twitter widget data such as page visit and browser information is held within the cookie. Twitter also used logged in status information and may tailor content to improve your experience. Twitter privacy information and preference options.
Facebook and Facebook PixelFunctional and targeting cookiesWe use Facebook to display relevant feeds on our site to enhance our content. Facebook cookies indicate logged in status information to show relevant and social information for the social plugins and services. We use cookies to help Facebook show ads and to make recommendations based on information from the trust that may be of interest to you. Facebook privacy information and opt out options.
Google Conversion TrackingTargeting cookiesWe use conversion tracking to understand user behaviour and to improve our site. The Googleadservices.com cookies help website owners who buy ads from Google to determine how many people who click their ads end up purchasing their products. The conversion tracking cookie is set on your browser only when you click an ad delivered by Google where the advertiser has opted in to conversion tracking. These cookies expire within 30 days and do not contain information that can identify you personally. If this cookie has not yet expired when you visit certain pages of the advertiser’s website, Google and the advertiser will be able to tell that you clicked the ad and proceeded to that page. Each advertiser gets a different cookie, so no cookie can be tracked across advertiser websites. Opt out of Google’s personalised advertising.
DoubleClickTargeting cookiesThe DoubleClick.net cookies allow us to serve our adverts online. We use it to understand behaviour and how users arrive at our site and interact with it. There is no personal identifiable information sent in the tag. Opt out option.

Where the Trust embeds content from social media and other third party websites, some websites may use Google Analytics to collect data about user behaviour for their own purposes. The Trust does not control this. For more information, see ‘How Google uses data when you use our partners’ sites or apps’.

Changes to our cookie statement

Any changes we may make to our cookie statement in the future will be posted on this page.