Website Privacy and Cookies Policy 

Erskine Stewart’s Melville School is managed by the Merchant Company Education Board, a registered Scottish Charity (SC009747) and is responsible for your personal data.

This privacy statement is to help you understand how we collect, use, and protect your personal data when you visit our website. By using our website, you agree to the terms of this policy. It is important that you read this statement together with any other privacy policy we may provide on specific occasions when we are collecting or processing personal data about you so that you are fully aware of how and why we are using your data. This statement supplements other privacy policies and is not intended to override them.

1. Information We Collect

We collect and process the following personal information about you in connection with your use of our website:

• Information you give us: This is information about you that you give us by filling in forms on our website, for example, where you make a general enquiry or want to hire any of our facilities.
• Information we collect about you: When you visit our website we may automatically collect the following information:
• Personal Information: This includes any information you voluntarily provide, such as your name, email address, telephone number, or any other details you submit via the forms on our website site.
• Technical Information: This includes information about your device and browsing habits, such as your IP address, browser type, operating system, referral source, length of visit, page views, and website navigation paths. We use cookies and similar technologies to collect this data.
• Required information: We indicate on our website forms what information is mandatory. If you do not provide this mandatory information, then we may not be able to provide the services you have requested.
• Cookies: Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our website.

2. How We Use Your Information
The information we collect may be used in the following ways:

• To Provide Services: We use your personal information to respond to enquiries, carry out obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us, process applications, manage enrolments and provide you with the information and services that you request from us and notify you about changes to our service.
• To Improve Our Website: Technical data is used to monitor and improve the performance, usability, and security of our website.
• Communication: We may use your contact details to send you updates, newsletters, or other information related to our school, provided you have given consent where required by law. We use a third-party provider, Campaign Monitor, to deliver our e-newsletters. We gather statistics around email opening and clicks using industry standard technologies to help us monitor and improve our e-newsletter. For more information, please see Campaign Monitor’s privacy notice
• Legal Obligations: In some cases, we may be required to use or share your information to comply with legal obligations or in response to legal requests.
• Legitimate Interests:  We may communicate with you where it is necessary for our legitimate interests, for example, to notify you about changes to our terms and conditions or privacy policy, ask you to leave a review or take a survey. We may also use data analytics to improve our website, customer relationships and experiences where necessary for our legitimate interests in keeping our website updated and relevant.
• Job applications: We will ask for your personal details including name, contact details, age, sex (and preferred pronouns), disability, marital status, religion, ethnic group, sexual orientation, caring responsibilities, information about your health and whether you have any criminal convictions. We will also ask you about your previous experience, education, referees and for answers to questions relevant to the role you have applied for. Our recruitment team will have access to all of this information. The information we ask for is used to assess your suitability for employment, to ensure we are aware of any adjustments you may need, to understand and ensure diversity of individuals working at ESMS, and to maintain a record of general staff data for organisational purposes.

3. Sharing Your Information

We do not share your personal information with third parties except in the following circumstances:

• Service Providers: We may share data with trusted service providers who assist us in operating our website or delivering our services, subject to strict data protection requirements.
• Legal Requirements: We may disclose your information if required to do so by law or in response to legal processes or if we have safeguarding concerns
• With our professional advisers and insurance company: For example, where there is a serious incident at the School or in connection with actual or contemplated litigation
• Fraud protection: With other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Some of our external service providers are based outside the UK so their processing of your personal data will involve a transfer of data outside the UK. Whenever your personal data is transferred out of the UK, we ensure a similar degree of protection is afforded to it by ensuring at least one of the following safeguards is implemented:

We will only transfer your personal data to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data.

Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK.

4. Hotjar user experience tracking

We use Hotjar in order to better understand our users’ needs and to optimize this service and experience. Hotjar is a technology service that helps us better understand our users experience (e.g. how much time they spend on which pages, which links they choose to click, what users do and don’t like, etc.) and this enables us to build and maintain our service with user feedback. Hotjar uses cookies and other technologies to collect data on our users’ behaviour and their devices (in particular device’s IP address (captured and stored only in anonymized form), device screen size, device type (unique device identifiers), browser information, geographic location (country only), preferred language used to display our website). Hotjar stores this information in a pseudonymized user profile. Neither Hotjar nor we will ever use this information to identify individual users or to match it with further data on an individual user. For further details, please see Hotjar’s privacy policy.

5. Hotjar Opt-out

You can opt-out to the creation of a user profile, Hotjar’s storing of data about your usage of our site and Hotjar’s use of tracking cookies on other websites by following this opt-out link.

6. Cookies

Our website uses various technologies to collect information that helps us improve your online experience.

We may collect information about your computer including, where available, your IP address, operating system and browser type. This statistical data about our users’ browsing actions and patterns does not identify any individual.

Our website, microsites and 360 virtual tour use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website, microsites and tour. This helps us to provide you with the best experience when you browse any of our sites and allows us to improve it in the future. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on the browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree.

When you visit our website, you should see a pop-up directing you to this Website Privacy and Cookies Policy. By clicking the “I agree” button that appears in the pop-up, you are demonstrating that you have freely given us informed and specific consent for us to place cookies on your device for the purposes specified in this cookie policy and you are accepting and consenting to the practices described.

If you do not see a pop-up on your screen you may have already accepted our Website Privacy and Cookies Policy.

You may block cookies by activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

You may also be using a pop-up blocker or similar tool that prevents this policy from being brought to your attention.

How do we use cookies?

When you visit our site or tour, we send a cookie to your device. Cookies may be used in the following ways:

Essential Cookies

These are essential for the operation of our site. They include for example, cookies that enable you to login to secure areas of our site or make use of e-billing services. We also use cookies to prevent fraudulent use of your login credentials. These cookies are essential for using our site, therefore, if disabled can severely affect your use of our site.

Analytical/Performance Cookies

Performance cookies allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors to our website and tour to see how visitors move around our site when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our site works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily. These cookies also allow us to see overall patterns of usage on our site and help us record any difficulties you may have navigating around our website or tour.

Targeting Cookies

We and our service providers and partners may use targeting or advertising cookies to record your visit to our site, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. For example, we may use targeting or advertising cookies to limit the number of times you see the same advert and to help measure the effectiveness of digital advertising campaigns.

Cookie Consent

Our website employs CookieYes to inform users about our use of cookies and to obtain the necessary consents in compliance with applicable data protection laws. CookieYes provides a cookie consent banner that appears upon your first visit to our site, allowing you to accept or customize your cookie preferences. This tool helps us comply with data protection regulations by ensuring that we obtain your consent before deploying non-essential cookies. You can manage your cookie preferences at any time by clicking on the ‘Cookie Settings’ link available on our website. Through this link, you can adjust your consent preferences or withdraw consent entirely. Additionally, most web browsers allow you to control cookies through their settings; please refer to your browser’s help section for more information.

7. Data Security and Retention

We are committed to ensuring that your information is secure. We implement appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect against unauthorised access, alteration, disclosure, or destruction of your personal data.

We will only keep your data 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.

In some circumstances we will anonymise your personal data (so that it can no longer be associated with you) for research or statistical purposes, in which case we may use this information indefinitely without further notice to you.

8. Your Rights

You have the following rights regarding your personal information:

• Access: You can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Correction: You can request correction of any inaccurate or incomplete data.
• Deletion: You can request the deletion of your data where there is no compelling reason for us to continue holding it.
• Objection: You can object to the processing of your data in certain circumstances.
• Restriction: You can ask us to suspend the processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.
• Data Portability: You can request the transfer of your data to another organisation in a structured, commonly used format.
• Withdraw consent: You can withdraw consent at any time where we are relying on your consent to process your personal data.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us using the details provided below. We may need to request specific information from you to help us confirm your identity.

9. Third-Party Links

Our website may contain links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or content of these external sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of any third-party websites you visit.

10. Any questions

If you have any queries or concerns about Privacy on the ESMS website, please contact the Data Controller (Bursar: bursar@esms.org.uk).

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK regulator for data protection issues (www.ico.org.uk). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO so please contact us in the first instance.

Please read this policy carefully before you use our site. We may revise this policy any time by amending this page. Please check this page from time to time and take note of any changes we have made. For more information about How your data is collected, used and stored by ESMS, you can read our full Privacy Notice. If you do not agree to these policies, please do not use our website or complete any of our online forms including our Contact Us forms.