Privacy Notice – Students
How we use your personal information - Students
This statement explains how Magdalene College (“the College”, “we” and “our”) handles and uses information we collect about those applicants we make an offer of study to, and students once they join the College (“you” and “your”). In broad terms, we use your personal information to manage the ongoing relationship between the College and you as part of our lifelong community of scholars. This includes guiding and supporting your academic studies, maintaining and reviewing your academic progress and pastoral welfare, reviewing your financial commitments to the College and (if you live in College accommodation) managing our relationship with you as a resident.
When changes are made to this statement, we will publish the updated version on our website and notify you by other communications channels as we deem appropriate or necessary.
The controller for your personal information is the Magdalene College, Cambridge CB3 0AG. The Data Protection Officer for the College is the Office of Intercollegiate Services Ltd [12B King’s Parade, Cambridge; 01223 768745; college.dpo@ois.cam.ac.uk]: OIS Ltd. should be contacted if you have any concerns about how the College is managing your personal information, or if you require advice on how to exercise your rights as outlined in this statement. The person within the College otherwise responsible for data protection at the time of issue, and the person who is responsible for monitoring compliance with relevant legislation in relation to the protection of personal information, is the Assistant Bursar, Mrs H Foord, assistant.bursar@magd.cam.ac.uk.
The normal legal basis for processing your personal information is that it is necessary in the performance of one or more contracts with us (including preparing to become a student and member of the College, the expectations on both sides during your course of studies and any related accommodation contract). We have commitments to other external bodies (particularly the University of Cambridge) as part of those contracts, and we outline below (see “How we share your personal information) how and when we ordinarily will share your personal information. For some specific purposes, we may rely on another legal basis, including where we are required for compliance with a legal obligation (e.g. financial records, equal opportunities monitoring), or where we believe it is in our legitimate interest to do so (e.g. to enable your access to external services). You may ask us for further information on these matters at any time if you have specific concerns.
How your information is used by the College
We collect and process your personal information, as specified below, for a number of purposes, including:
- maintaining your personal details, including ensuring effective communications with you;
- maintaining a formal record of your academic progress and achievements at the College, the University of Cambridge and elsewhere;
- maintaining a formal record of your other engagements with and achievements at the College, the University of Cambridge and elsewhere
- maintaining a record, where appropriate, of any particular personal needs you require to participate fully in College and University life (including any support needs that are, or have been, provided by the College or the University during your course of studies), as well as information about your general health and wellbeing;
- maintaining financial records relating to your studies, your funding and other financial support arrangements;
- provision of references to third parties;
- maintaining a record of your behaviour and in particular where there has been concerns or complaints raised about you;
- maintaining a record of any complaints you make to the College and their outcomes;
- maintaining records relating to your accommodation contracts if you are resident in College;
- maintaining data to enable the College and the University to produce statistics and research for internal and statutory reporting purposes.
Further details are provided in the Annex. If you have concerns or queries about any of these purposes, please contact us at the address given below, or speak to the Senior Tutor, Prof S Martin, senior.tutor@magd.cam.ac.uk
We also operate CCTV on our site, which will capture footage. Our CCTV Code of Practice can be viewed at https://www.magd.cam.ac.uk/cctv-code-of-practice.
Please note that if you engage with us for any other purpose (e.g. you work for us, or volunteer for us), there are additional data protection statements that you will be provided with for those other purposes, usually at the first point of engagement.
How long we keep your information for
The Annex outlines specific retention periods for certain categories of information: most of these are determined by legal requirements relating to that specific information.
The College publishes a data retention schedule, which you can access at:
Data Protection Policy - Annex A
Finally, we strongly encourage all of our students to remain in touch with the College after they leave and, for that reason, we transfer a subset of this information to our Alumni and Development office. You are encouraged to read our separate statement about personal information for alumni, which covers your ongoing lifelong membership of the College at https://www.magd.cam.ac.uk/data-protection-alumni-information
How we share your personal information
Within the College
We share the following information with relevant people within the College: Tutorial files; student admissions files; files relating to student financial matters; files relating to disciplinary matters involving students; medical notes in respect of students, medical files in respect of day to day health and welfare of students; files maintained by the College Librarian relating to students; records relating to student accommodation matters. Again, this is considered necessary for the College to operate smoothly but you can request a greater level of privacy by contacting the Assistant Bursar, Mrs H Foord, assistant.bursar@magd.cam.ac.uk
The College also takes photographs of its students, either individually and/or as a group in a matriculation and graduation photographs. These are widely used within the College and may be on public display.
Otherwise, the College restricts the sharing of your personal information within the College in line with its confidentiality statement https://www.magd.cam.ac.uk/system/files/2022-12/confidentiality_statement.pdf.
With the University
By being a member of a College and registering for a course of study, you are automatically a member of the University of Cambridge. The academic and student support arrangements between the College and the University of Cambridge are complex and varied depending on your course and level of study. Information relating to you (and particularly your academic studies) is shared routinely and often with the University, and the University and its partners (including the College) have a data sharing agreement to govern such interactions and information transfers in both directions, as well as a shared student record system and database.
The personal information shared with the University will include only that which is necessary for you to undertake and complete your studies and your examinations, and in addition will include any information necessary for the College to fulfill its obligations and agreements with the University about the shared University community (including sufficient information for the University to record and collate instances of student behaviour or complaints across all of the Colleges and the University). Where possible, the College will notify you of its intention to share such data in advance.
The University is a separate legal entity to the College and has its own statement about your personal information and its procedures, which you can view at: https://www.information-compliance.admin.cam.ac.uk/data-protection/student-data. It in turn shares information with the affiliated student unions and a number of other bodies for statutory and other purposes.
With other organisations
The College routinely shares information with, and receives information from, where appropriate:
- the Cambridge City Council and other local authorities (to provide evidence of any rights to or exemptions from local services and taxes, including electoral registration and council tax);
- your funding providers or sponsors, as agreed with them and/or you, including the Student Loans Company;
- Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (in relation to your application, offer and requirements to meet any offer of study).
We may also be subject to a legal requirement (with or without your consent) to share your personal information with some government agencies under special circumstances (e.g. relating to crime or health and safety), such as the police or security services or other statutory authorities with investigatory powers. Where possible, the College will notify you of its intention to share such information in advance.
We will only provide confirmation of your qualifications and other academic references to a prospective employer, financial sponsor or other agency with your express written permission and in accordance with our security procedure, which is administered by the College Academic Office.
We will only provide references relating to accommodation with your express written permission and in accordance with our security procedure, which is administered by the College Accommodation Office.
We may also provide personal information to agencies and trusted advisers in order to receive professional advice or guidance in relation to a number of matters (examples of such advice include legal and audit services, fee status verification services, intercollegiate agreement services) or to provide services to you through a third party on our behalf. In such circumstances, data sharing agreements are in place to ensure your personal information is not retained by them for longer than necessary or otherwise shared more widely.
The College may share information with organisations overseas as part of arrangements related to your membership of the College (e.g. field trip, student exchange programme, an overseas funding provider). In most cases, this will be related to the operation of a contract.
Publication of your personal information
We would not normally make your personal information publicly available without your consent.
We would encourage you to be careful when sharing personal information about other students in public social media sites and other similar environments.
Please also note the University’s people search function may also be widened to be accessible to the general public by changing the settings at http://www.lookup.cam.ac.uk/self: its default setting is otherwise access to all members of the University and all Colleges: we share this because we believe it helps significantly in building community relations and networks and helps others get in touch with you easily.
Your rights
You have the right: to ask us for access to, rectification or erasure of your personal information; to restrict processing (pending correction or deletion); to object to communications; and to ask for the transfer of your personal information electronically to a third party (data portability).
Some of these rights are not automatic, and we reserve the right to discuss with you why we might not comply with a request from you to exercise them.
If you have questions or concerns about your personal information, or how it used, please speak to the relevant College staff in the first instance. If you need further guidance, please contact the Senior Tutor, using the details given above.
If you remain unhappy with the way your information is being handled, or with the response received from us, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF (https://ico.org.uk/).