Privacy Laws and St Andrew's Cathedral School

New Federal Privacy Laws became effective from 21 December 2001. This legislation regulates the way schools can collect, use, keep and disclose personal information. St Andrew's Cathedral School is obliged to handle personal information in accordance with National Privacy Principles as outlined in the legislation.

Personal information

The School collects personal information from students, parents/guardians in the course of a student's enrolment and subsequent attendance at the School. Additional details are collected through contact and interaction with members of the wider School community. The School will advise its constituents (or it will be obvious from the information sought) why information is collected, when it is collected and how the information will be used.

The School collects personal information arising from emails or from visitors to the School's website. It may also acquire information from agents or service providers or from other public sources, published information or publicly available documentation. In some circumstances the School may be provided with personal information about an individual from a third party, for example, a report provided by a medical practitioner, an educational professional or a student's record from another school. If you provide personal information about another person, legislation requires you to inform that person you have done so and provide them with a copy of this policy.

Use of information

The School collects personal information such as name, address, telephone/mobile number, email address and, in some instances, other sensitive information to: 

1. keep parents informed in relation to their child's schooling
2. sustain day to day administrative and operating procedures
3. maintain student's educational, social and medical well being
4. communicate between the School and its community
5. satisfy the School's legal obligations and discharge its duty of care to all student's
6. provide you with information and services which may interest you as a member of the School community.

The School may disclose personal or sensitive information held about an individual to:

1. another school, as required
2. government departments
3. medical practitioners
4. people providing services to the School such as special visiting teachers, sports coaches, counsellors, etc
5. another person/s you authorise the School to disclose information.

Sensitive information

Sensitive information incorporates details such as a person's racial or ethnic origin, membership of political party, political opinion, religion, membership of a trade union, professional or business association, sexual preference, criminal record or health information.

As a general principle the School will only collect sensitive information where it is pertinent to provide adequate educational services or to sustain the School's duty of care to its students, for example, collecting health information. Sensitive information will be disclosed only for the purpose for which it was provided or for a related secondary purpose or as allowed by law unless you have agreed otherwise.

Security

The School strives to ensure the security, integrity and privacy of personally identifiable information and to secure personal information from misuse, loss, unauthorised use or disclosure. Electronic security is maintained using a variety of security measures including firewalls, coded and restricted access to data and data bases, password access, secure servers, encryption of credit card transactions, etc. These measures are complemented by a range of security controls and selected keycard access to restrict personnel access to offices, records and file storage areas containing personal information. 

School community members should be conscious that no Internet data transmission can be guaranteed to be totally secure. Any information posted on bulletin boards and/or communicated in "chat rooms" or via live dialogue could be accessible externally. While the School strives to protect and respect person's privacy and the confidentiality of information it cannot guarantee the security of such publicly presented information.

Online Transactions Security

Our payment system transmits your credit card details directly to our server via industry standard SSL encryption. This means that should the data stream be intercepted by an unauthorised third party during transit, they will not be able to see your credit card details. Once on our server, your credit card detail is only visible to our authorised order processing personnel.

Your browser and internet connection will need to support SSL encryption and Javascript to utilise our online payment system. The easiest way to tell if your browser is prepared to transmit encrypted data is by choosing the online payment option, and watch for the appearance of a padlock icon on the bottom status bar of your browser window. Other signs include the appearance of "https://" in the URL address bar instead of the usual "http://", and by a notification dialog box the browser may display when connecting to our secure server.

For more information on how SSL encryption works, please see http://developer.netscape.com/tech/security/ssl/howitworks.html

If you get an error message, your Internet connection may not allow you to connect to our secure server; or your browser does not support cookies or Javascript. Use our payment by fax or mail form instead. This form is intended to be filled in on-screen and printed; the data you fill in will never be transmitted anywhere.

Use of aggregated data

The School collects information from online inquirers or visitors to the School website.

The School may use identifiable information to improve the School's educational services or to advise you of new services or updated information which may interest site visitors. This contact could include "chat rooms" or direct on-line dialogue although the website user retains the right to terminate such interaction with no further disclosure of details nor giving a reason for such termination.

The School may collect certain non-personal information, for example, the identity of your Internet browser, the type of operating system you use, your IP address and the domain name of your Internet service provider. The School may use such non-personal information for internal site development purposes, including but not limited to, improving the content of the School website or to more widely communicate its educational services.

Certain electronic aids, such as web beacons, clear gif technology, single-pixel gifs, etc may be used to compile aggregated statistics about website usage. Aggregated website statistics may be used in conjunction with partner companies but the School will not allow other organisations to place such monitoring devices on the School website.

The School may use personally identifiable information in aggregated form to improve the School's educational services and website details or to maintain communication to its community. The School may use such statistical information for marketing, promotion, advertising or research purposes.

While the School may sent information from third party suppliers at no time will it disclose personal information, email addresses, etc to those third parties. If you do not wish to receive such information please advise the School.

Online links to third party or co-branded websites

In the course of extending its community and network affiliations the School may establish relationships with business partners to enable visitors to the School's website to link with these partner sites. Such inter-connectedness enables School website users to directly and conveniently link to organisations which have an authorised affiliation with the School, for example, business sites associated with the School's City Links partner companies or organisations. These sites may collect personal information from you that may not necessarily be shared with the School. The School has no agreements with outside organizations to collect personal information via the School website.

The School is not responsible for the content or practices of such third party websites although they may be "co-branded" with the School name, crest or appropriate identification. Convenient hyperlinks to third party websites do not constitute sponsorship, endorsement or approval of the content, policies or practices of such sites by St Andrew's Cathedral School. Once you have left the School website via such a link the School's privacy policy no longer applies. You should check the applicable privacy policy of the third party website.

What else you should know about privacy on the Internet

Close your browser when you have finished your user session to ensure others cannot access your personal information and correspondence if you share a computer or are using a computer in a public place like a library or Internet cafe. You are responsible for the security of and access to your own computer.

Personal information voluntarily disclosed over the Internet may be collected and used by others. Personal information posted in publicly accessible online forums may result in you receiving unsolicited messages from other parties in return. You are solely responsible for maintaining the secrecy of your username, password and any personal account information or records. School-hosted chat lines or on-line forums will be operated along secure lines, and in accord with the terms and conditions specified by the School. In certain circumstances such on-line interchange may be unsupervised.

Website/email information processes

The School web server automatically recognizes the domain name and records certain user-specific information such as time spent on the website, entry pages and page "hits" to the website. Other information that may be volunteered from time to time such as survey information, user details and/or site registrations recorded through on-line booking procedures may also be recorded.

This statistical data is used to improve the website, to customize its content and/or the site layout, to measure the appropriateness of School communications and to update and improve user information onto the website.

Persons who supply information on-line may receive electronic contact from the School with information regarding new educational services, upcoming events or to facilitate interchange regarding the School's educational offerings. If you do not wish to receive such contact send an e-mail to the website address, contact the School by telephone or write to the School.

From time to time, the School may use customer information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in our privacy notice. Changed information practices will be posted to the website and appropriate procedures will be published to enable you to opt out of these new uses, if you so choose. If you are concerned about how your information is used, you should check on the website periodically.

Cookies

Cookies are data that a website identifies for record-keeping purposes and statistical tracking. The School uses cookies to record user-specific information on the web page users access, visiting patterns, site access times, etc and to assemble website activity data to provide better service, to customize web page content based on visitors' browser type or to assemble other information provided by the visitor. Cookies can facilitate a user's ongoing access to and use of the School website. Cookies allow the School to track usage patterns and to compile data to improve the website's content and its serviceability to the School community. Cookies may be necessary to provide website users with features such as merchandise transactions, tuition fee payments or on-line booking services, etc. Such services may no longer be supplied if you choose to disconnect cookies through your Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, etc. browser.

Your rights to access personal information held by the School

Under the Commonwealth Privacy Act an individual has the right to obtain access to any personal information which the School holds about them and to advise the School of any perceived inaccuracy.

To make a request to access any information held by the School write to:
Privacy Officer
St Andrew's Cathedral School
474 Kent Street, Sydney NSW 2000

The School can be reached via e-mail at inquiries@sacs.nsw.edu.au
or by telephone 61 2 9267 6491 or fax  61 2 9261 8748