Privacy Notice
PRIVACY NOTICE
This privacy notice sets out how Independent Schools Inspectorate uses and protects your personal information. This privacy notice is provided in a layered format so you can click through to the specific areas set out below. Alternatively, you can download a copy of the policy here. This privacy notice should be read together with our Terms & Conditions.
Please read the following carefully to understand our practices regarding your personal information and how we will treat it.
1. ABOUT US
We are committed to protecting your privacy. We aim to ensure that any information you give us or which we receive or gather in the course of inspection and inspection-related activities is held securely and safely.
This privacy notice gives you information about how Independent Schools Inspectorate collects and uses your personal information through your use of this website, including any data you may provide when you provide information about yourself when writing to us or telephoning us, or when you have provided information about you in the course of our inspection work and inspection related activities.
Controller
Independent Schools Inspectorate (“ISI”) is the controller responsible for your personal information (collectively referred to as “we”, “us” or “our” in this privacy notice).
If you have any questions about this privacy notice, including any requests to exercise your legal rights (Section 11 Respecting your Individual Rights), please contact the Data Protection Compliance Manager at dp@isi.net or using the information set out in the contact details section (Section 13 Contact Details).
2. THE TYPES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT ABOUT YOU
Personal information means any information about an individual from which that person can be identified. It does not include data where the identity has been removed (anonymous data).
We may collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal information about you which we have grouped together as follows:
| Category | Examples |
| Identity Data | Includes title, name, date of birth and gender |
| Contact Data | Includes address, email address and telephone numbers |
| Technical Data | Includes internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, device ID and other technology on the devices you use to access this website |
| Usage Data | Includes information about how you use our website, for example how long you spend on a given page |
| Marketing and Communications Data | Your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties and your communication preferences |
| Recruitment, Professional and Educational Qualifications Data | Includes right to work documents, CVs, cover letters, professional training records and qualification certificates, occupational health checks and adverse media background screening |
| Special Category Personal Information | Includes health, ethnicity, religion, biometrics or sexual life and information relating to protected characteristics, sensitive data such as family situation including social services or local authority involvement, safeguarding information, and information about special educational needs |
| Criminal Offence Screening Data | Includes results from Disclosure and Barring Service (“DBS”) checks |
3. HOW WE COLLECT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We use different methods to collect data from and about you including through:
Your interactions with us. We are likely to hold information about you if any of the following apply:
- you provide information about yourself when writing to us or telephoning us
- you provide information about yourself to us in the course of an interview or call which is transcribed or recorded;
- you provide information in the course of our inspection work and inspection related activities;
- when you provide us with information when acting as an inspector, former inspector or at any stage of training to be an inspector;
- you work or have worked for or with us in any other capacity; or
- you are a named contact at a school we inspect.
Information provided by third parties. We may also collect personal information about you from other individuals or organisations, including:
- where, in the course of interviews and inspections, another individual (for example, an interviewee or inspector) provides us with personal information about you, where that information is relevant to the school under inspection or to our investigation;
- where you apply to become, or act as, an inspector or member of staff, from referees, former employers, or regulatory and professional bodies, for the purposes of reference checks, qualification verification, or fitness-to-practise checks;
- from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) or equivalent bodies, in connection with criminal record and safeguarding checks carried out on inspectors and staff;
- from schools, parents, pupils or other third parties, where a complaint, concern or safeguarding referral is made about an inspector or member of staff; and
- from other regulatory, government or professional bodies, where information is shared with us in connection with your role as an inspector or member of staff, or our regulatory functions.
Cookies and other tracking technologies. As you interact with our website, we will automatically collect Technical Data about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns. We collect this personal information by using cookies and other similar technologies. Please see our Cookie Policy for further details.
4. HOW WE USE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
Legal Basis
The law requires us to have a legal basis for collecting and using your personal information. We rely on one or more of the following legal bases:
- Performance of a contract with you: Where we need to perform the contract we are about to enter into or have entered into with you.
- Legitimate interests: We may use your personal information where it is necessary to conduct our business and pursue our legitimate interests, for example to prevent fraud and enable us to give you the best and most secure customer experience. We make sure we consider and balance any potential impact on you and your rights (both positive and negative) before we process your personal information for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal information for activities where our interests are overridden by the impact on you (unless we have your consent or are otherwise required or permitted to by law).
- Legal obligation: We may use your personal information where it is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation that we are subject to. We will identify the relevant legal obligation when we rely on this legal basis.
- Public interests: We may use your personal information where it is necessary for us to carry out a task in the public interest or when exercising official authority vested in us.
- Consent: We rely on consent only where we have obtained your active agreement or the agreement of the person with parental responsibility to use your personal information for a specified purpose, for example if you subscribe to an email newsletter.
Purposes For Which We Will Use Your Personal Information
We have set out below, in a table format, a description of all the ways we plan to use the various categories of your personal information, and which of the legal bases we rely on to do so. We have also identified what our legitimate interests are where appropriate.
| Purpose | Legal basis | Personal information categories processed |
| Planning, scheduling and delivery of inspections |
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| Training and recruitment of inspectors and our employees |
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| Transcription and recording of interviews and calls |
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| Communication of information and guidance to inspectors, schools, and colleges |
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| Receiving and reporting concerns and information relevant to inspections |
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| Promotion and safeguarding of the health, welfare and safety of children |
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| Support and/or improvement work relating to IT services (please see our Cookie Policy for further detail on how personal information submitted via the website will be handled); and/or |
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| To administer and protect us and this website (including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, system maintenance, support, reporting and hosting of data) |
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5. SPECIAL CATEGORY DATA
Some of the personal information we process may include special category personal information (for example, information relating to protected characteristics, sensitive data such as family situation including social services or local authority involvement, safeguarding information, and information about special educational needs) and/or criminal offence data. Under data protection laws these categories of personal information are considered sensitive and require that we apply a higher standard of care. Typically, we will only process these categories of personal information where we have obtained explicit consent or if processing is for the legitimate interest of ISI or any party to whom the data is being disclosed and ISI is performing a task carried out in the public interest.
Safeguarding children is at the centre of our role as a school inspectorate and the Safeguarding Team is primarily responsible for ensuring that we adhere to our commitments. Parents, teachers, pupils and other stakeholders may express any concerns in relation to schools by contacting the Safeguarding Team via online form, or email.
We acknowledge that in some circumstances the information provided to us (generally in relation to safeguarding concerns) includes some cases, where it will be inappropriate for us to inform such individuals of the processing of their personal information, as doing so could disrupt the management of the concern and safeguarding of children. Such processing is considered by us to be in the substantial public interest.
If you are providing personal information in relation to individuals who are not aware of the disclosure you are making, please only provide information that is necessary and relevant to the matter.
6. CHILDREN’S PERSONAL INFORMATION
Some of the personal information we process relates to individuals under the age of 18. Our systems and processes are designed to cater for the particular protections required when collecting and processing children’s personal information.
7. DISCLOSURE OF YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION
We may share your personal information where necessary with the third parties set out below for the purposes set out in the table (see Section 4 Purposes For Which We Will Use Your Personal Information above). We may share your personal information with:
- Third-party business partners that support our business, such as web hosting service providers, software platforms including databases, payment providers, and other third parties we engage.
- Government and competent authorities (for example, the Department for Education, Home Office, Ofsted and local authorities) if asked for details by a law enforcement agency in order to comply with any of our obligations as a government appointed body, law, court order, legal request or other legal process.
- Professional advisers such as legal advisers or accountants.
- Professional advisers, potential buyers, and their representatives where necessary for the purposes of valuing our business or facilitating its sale, merger, or restructuring. Any such sharing will be limited to what is strictly required, and recipients will be bound by confidentiality and data protection obligations.
We will never sell your personal information.
We require all third parties to respect the security of your personal information and to treat it in accordance with the law. We do not allow our third-party service providers to use your personal information for their own purposes and only permit them to process your personal information for specified purposes and in accordance with our instructions.
8. TRANSFER OF DATA OUTSIDE THE EEA
We may transfer personal information outside the UK and the European Economic Area (EEA) for legitimate business purposes, for example in connection with inspections of British Schools Overseas. Where we do so, we will ensure that transferred data is fully protected and safeguarded as required by the UK GDPR.
9. SECURITY
We have put in place appropriate security measures to prevent your personal information from being accidentally lost, used or accessed in an unauthorised way, altered or disclosed: entry controls to the office; secure lockable desks and cupboards; limited access to files; methods of document disposal and deletion; use of computer equipment; and network security.
In addition, we limit access to your personal information to those employees, agents, contractors and other third parties who have a business need to know. They will only process your personal information on our instructions and they are subject to a duty of confidentiality.
We have put in place procedures to deal with any suspected personal information breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where we are legally required to do so.
10. DATA RETENTION
We will only retain your personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or reporting requirements. We may retain your personal information for a longer period in the event of a complaint or if we reasonably believe there is a prospect of litigation in respect to our relationship with you.
To determine the appropriate retention period for personal information, we consider the amount, nature and sensitivity of the personal information, the potential risk of harm from unauthorised use or disclosure of your personal information, the purposes for which we process your personal information and whether we can achieve those purposes through other means, and the applicable legal, regulatory, tax, accounting or other requirements.
In some circumstances you can ask us to delete your data: see Section 11 Respecting Your Individual Rights below for further information.
11. RESPECTING YOUR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS
We acknowledge and respect your rights in relation to the personal information we hold about you.
You have the right to:
| Individual right | What does this mean |
| Right of access | You have the right to ask us if we process personal information about you and for copies of your personal information. You can also request other information such as details about where we get personal information from and who we share personal information with. There are some exemptions which means you may not receive all the information you ask for. |
| Right to rectification | You have the right to ask us to correct or delete personal information you think is inaccurate. |
| Right to erasure | You have the right to ask us to delete your personal information. |
| Right to restriction of processing | You have the right to ask us to limit how we can use your personal information. |
| Right to object to processing | You have the right to object to the processing of your personal information. |
| Right to data portability | You have the right to ask that we transfer the personal information you gave us to another organisation, or to you |
| Right to withdraw consent | When we use consent as our lawful basis you have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. Please contact us at dp@isi.net for further information. Once we have received notification that you have withdrawn your consent, we will no longer process your information for the purpose or purposes you originally agreed to, unless we have another legitimate basis for doing so in law. |
| Right to complaint | While we would welcome the opportunity to resolve any complaints in the first instance, you may have the right to complain to the relevant data protection supervisory authority in your jurisdiction. If you are located in the European Economic Area then details for the relevant data protection supervisory authority can be found here: Our Members | European Data Protection Board. If you are located in the United Kingdom (“UK”), then the relevant supervisory authority is the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) who can be contacted here: Contact us | ICO. |
We acknowledge and respect that these rights apply equally to children whose personal information we collect.
If you wish to exercise any of the rights set out above, please contact us at: dp@isi.net and clearly state the nature of your request.
No Fee Usually Required
You will not have to pay a fee to access your personal information (or to exercise any of the other rights). However, we may charge a reasonable fee if the request is complex or in some cases we may refuse to respond if we assess that your request is unfounded, repetitive or excessive.
What We May Need From You
We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity and ensure your right to exercise any of your rights to access your personal information (or to exercise any of your other rights). This is a security measure to ensure that personal information is not disclosed to a person who has no right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request if we need any clarification.
Time Limit To Respond
We will respond to all legitimate requests within one month. Occasionally it could take us longer than a month if your request is particularly complex or you have made a number of requests. In this case, we will notify you and keep you updated.
12. HOW WE USE AI WHEN YOU INTERACT WITH US
Meeting recording and transcription
When you attend a meeting or interview with us, such interactions may be recorded and transcribed using AI. We do this to:
- Maintain accurate records;
- Improve service quality;
- Train our teams;
- Comply with legal and regulatory obligations.
You will be informed at the start of each meeting if we will be recording the discussion. If you do not wish to be recorded, please let our inspector or agent know and we will offer an alternative.
AI-assisted customer communications
We may use AI tools (including Microsoft’s Copilot) integrated into our systems to:
- Draft or suggest responses to your enquiries;
- Summarise prior interactions so we can respond to you faster.
A human reviews and sends all external communications.
Legal bases (UK GDPR / EU GDPR)
| Processing | Legal basis |
| Call recording (quality, training) | Legitimate interests |
| Call recording (regulatory compliance) | Legal obligation |
| AI-assisted responses | Legitimate interests; contract performance |
| AI meeting recording and transcription | Legitimate interests |
Sensitive personal information
We do not use AI to collect or infer sensitive or special category personal information (such as precise geolocation, race, health data, or sexual orientation) for profiling purposes.
Automated decision-making
We do not use AI outputs as the sole basis for decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects on you. Human review is applied before any consequential action.
13. CONTACT DETAILS
If you have any questions about this privacy notice, about the use of your personal information or would like to exercise any of the rights listed above, please write to us or email us using the contact details provided below.
Data Protection Compliance Manager: dp@isi.net
Or:
Independent Schools Inspectorate
CAP House, 9-12 Long Lane, London, EC1A 9HA
14. COMPLAINTS
While we would welcome the opportunity to resolve any complaints in the first instance, you have the right to complain to the relevant data protection supervisory authority in your jurisdiction. If you are located in the European Economic Area then details for the relevant data protection supervisory authority can be found here: Our Members | European Data Protection Board. If you are located in the United Kingdom (“UK”), then the relevant supervisory authority is the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) who can be contacted here: Contact us | ICO. However, before doing so please make sure you have first made your complaint to us or asked us for clarification if there is something you do not understand. The ICO will expect you to have done this before reviewing your complaint.
15. FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT
As a private company, ISI is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. You may find the information you seek on our website and sometimes we are able to supply additional information on a voluntary (non-statutory) basis.
16. REGISTRATION
ISI is registered as a controller on the Information Commissioner’s Office’s data protection register. ISI’s registration number is ZA138661 and the registered address is CAP House, 9-12 Long Lane, London, EC1A 9HA.
17. ENQUIRIES
Questions, comments and requests concerning this privacy notice are welcome – please contact us using the contact details provided above.
18. THIRD-PARTY LINKS
This website may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their privacy notices. When you leave our website, we encourage you to read the privacy notice of every website you visit.
19. UPDATES TO THIS PRIVACY NOTICE
We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This version was last updated on 10 September 2026.
It is important that the personal information we hold about you is accurate and current. Please keep us informed if your personal information changes during your relationship with us, for example a new address or email address.