Privacy & Cookie Policy
Connect is committed to protecting your personal data, whether you are a Member or other stakeholder. Please read this policy carefully to understand how we collect, use and store your personal data.
The processing of your personal data is carried out by, or on behalf of, Connect.
Connect, a trading name of Scottish Parent Teacher Council, is a registered charity in Scotland (SC019168) and a registered company in Scotland (SC151086).
How to Contact Us
If you have any questions or concerns regarding our Privacy Policy or our processing of your personal information, please contact:
Connect
The Melting Pot, 15 Calton Road, Edinburgh, EH8 8DL
Email: info@connect.scot
or by telephone at 0131 474 6199.
Notification of change of Privacy & Cookie Policy
This Privacy & Cookie Policy may change from time to time. Please revisit this section in order to keep up to date with the changes in our Privacy Policy. Last updated: February 2026
Cookie Consent
By using our website, our social media pages (such as Facebook and Twitter) or subscribing to our website, you agree that we can place the types of cookies set out below on your device and use that data in accordance with this policy, unless you have set your computer's browser to reject cookies.
To remember that you have accepted our use of cookies, we will place a temporary cookie to remember your consent for 3 months. For more information about how we use cookies on this site, please review our Cookie Policy below.
Privacy Policy
How do we collect your information?
What information do we collect?
Do we process ‘sensitive’ personal information?
How will we disclose the information we have collected to outside parties?
How do we protect your personal information?
How can you change your preferences or update the information we hold about you?
Why are we allowed to process your personal information?
Processing Personal Information of Connect Members
Connect Member Information Sessions, and Professional Learning (face to face and online)
Job applicants and current and former employees
Cookie Policy
What information do we collect using cookies?
Website statistics analytics, testing and personalisation
Changing your cookie preferences
Privacy Policy
How do we collect your information?
When you apply for Connect membership, on behalf of your Parent Council/PTA or other parent group.
When you complete a form or you contact us to give us contact details and preferences.
When you register for our digital library MyConnect. When your application is approved, you are invited to set up an account on our MyConnect host Sutra.co. You can read its privacy policy here.
When you register for a Connect Information Session or Professional Learning programme.
When you provide us with comments and feedback from a training session or Professional Learning programme.
When you sign up for one of our campaigns.
When you apply to be a director of Connect.
When you sign up to receive email updates and/or Parents’ Voice surveys
When you apply for a job with us
We may collect information about you when you respond to one of our surveys. For example, when we ask for contact details so we can send you more information or if you win a prize draw, or information you provide in comments.
We may collect information about you directly whenever you interact with us. For example, when you contact Connect for information or advice, send us information such as Success Stories through our website, or engage with our social media, you may provide us with your personal information.
We may collect aggregated or anonymous information when you visit our website or interact with our content. For example, we may collect information about the services you use and how you use them, visit our website or view and interact with our content. Please see our Cookie Policy for more detail.
What information do we collect?
The information we collect from you directly, or from third parties with whom we work, may include:
- name
- address
- email address
- telephone number
- parent group, school or organisation, local authority, and your role in these
- contact preferences
- We do not use cookies to collect this type of information
- For job applicants: we collect educational and career information and comments.
We may also collect and process information about your interactions with us, including details about our contacts with you through email, post, on the phone or in person (i.e., the date, time, method of contact, and what it is regarding), and events or activities that you register for or attend. This information is treated as confidential and no information which can identify an individual will be shared outside the organisation.
Do we process 'sensitive' personal information?
Under data protection law, certain categories of personal information are recognised as sensitive, including health information and information regarding race, religious beliefs, and political opinions (‘special category data’) or criminal offence data. We may process sensitive data only in relation to monitoring demographics in survey responses, which is anonymised and collated in reporting.
How will we disclose the information we have collected to outside parties?
Connect may provide your information to our service providers only where we require to do so to provide you with the services you have asked for. For example, we may provide your postal or email details to other companies to send you information you have asked for, or to our insurers in regards to a claim you are making through your membership-linked insurance.
We enter into contracts with service providers that require them to comply with data protection laws and to ensure that they have appropriate controls in place to protect the security of your information.
We will never sell or provide your details to third parties for commercial purposes
How do we protect your personal information?
We take appropriate physical, electronic and managerial measures to ensure that we keep your information secure, accurate and up to date, and that we only keep it as long as is reasonable and necessary.
Although we use appropriate security measures once we have received your personal information, the transmission of information over the internet is never completely secure. We do our best to protect personal information, but we cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted to our website or through email, so any transmission is at the user’s own risk.
How can you change your preferences or update the information we hold about you?
You can change or update your preferences for communication by contacting us by telephone 0131 474 6199 or email info@connect.scot.
You can unsubscribe from our email communications and Parents’ Voice surveys at any time, by clicking ‘Unsubscribe’ at the foot of the emails.
If you have indicated that you do not wish to be contacted, we may hold your details to help ensure that we do not continue to contact you. However, we may still need to contact you for administrative purposes, including (but not limited to):
- Processing your Connect membership
- About your attendance at a Connect event
- Explaining and apologising where we have made a mistake.
If your contact details have changed or you think any information we have about you is incorrect or incomplete, you can always update or correct the information we hold about you by contacting us as explained above.
Why are we allowed to process your personal information?
Our Privacy and Cookie Policies take into account several laws, including:
- The Data Protection Act 2018
- General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679
Generally, our processing of your personal information as described in this policy is allowed by these laws based on one or more lawful grounds, including:
- Where you have given us consent to use your personal information in a certain way.
- So we can fulfil a contract with you, or are taking preliminary steps before entering a contract.
- When it is required to allow us to comply with a legal obligation.
- Where it is reasonably necessary for the purpose of a legitimate interest, and your privacy rights do not override the legitimate interest. We will consider any potential impact on you (positive or negative), your rights under data protection laws, and will not use your personal information for activities where the impact on you overrides the legitimate interests in the processing.
We only use your information to send you information when there is a legitimate interest to contact you about: your Connect Membership; attendance at our Information or Professional Learning sessions, eNewsletter, campaign, or survey communications by email with your consent. You can opt out at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link provided on these emails or by contacting us.
Processing Personal Information of Connect Members
Parent groups which pay for their own Connect membership need to provide us with a Key Contact when applying for or renewing membership. This is so we can carry out our membership contract with your group. This person will be the main point of contact with us regarding the membership and is often the Chair, Secretary or Treasurer of the Parent Council/PTA or parents’ group. Members must ensure we have up-to-date details of the key contact, by getting in touch by email, phone, website or through the Member Portal.
The name of the Key Contact is shared with our insurance provider so they can validate Connect Membership if the member group needs to make a claim. No contact details (eg email or phone number) are shared unless an insurance claim is being made.
Some local authorities buy Connect membership on behalf of the Parent Councils of the schools they run. While these Parent Councils do not need to provide Connect with a Key Contact to process the membership, we do require it so we can ensure your group gains maximum benefit from membership, and to allow validation of your membership-linked insurance. You can check if your parent group is a member here.
In each new membership year, members will be reminded to update the key contact we hold.
Connect Member Information Sessions, and Professional Learning (face to face and online)
We need to process your personal information for session registration, and to contact you about the session if it is necessary, such as if it needs to be rescheduled. We will not add you to our list to receive Connect eNewsletters and updates unless you give permission.
We may contact you if we think you may legitimately be interested in similar events Connect is running.
Your information will be anonymised for reporting and evaluation purposes.
Photographs and films taken at Connect events may be used for Connect publicity, including website, social media and publications and promotional materials e.g. marketing documents, presentations. If you have informed us you do not wish your photograph to be taken/used for publicity, you will be given a badge to wear and no images featuring you will be used.
Your information will be held for two years after your last session with us, then deleted.
If your Connect Membership is paid for by your local authority, we may share statistical data on which establishments make use of our services with them, for example the number of attendees from a particular school. This information is anonymised.
Job applicants and current and former employees
If you apply to work at Connect, we will only use the information you give us to process your application and to monitor recruitment statistics. If we want to disclose information to someone outside Connect - for example, if we need a reference - we will make sure we tell you beforehand, unless we are required to disclose the information by law.
If you are unsuccessful in your job application, we will hold your personal information for three months after we’ve finished recruiting the post you applied for. After this date we will destroy or delete your information.
If you begin employment with us, we will put together a file about your employment. We keep the information in this file secure and will only use it for matters that apply directly to your employment.
Once you stop working for us, we will keep this file according to our record retention guidelines.
Appointed Directors
If you are appointed to the Board of Directors, we will keep a file holding the related paperwork until you step down. We will also share the information you provide to us with regulators and bankers as legally required (eg Companies House, OSCR). Companies House is required to keep a record of all past and present Directors on its website by law and requires directors to verify their identities. OSCR is required by law to publish the names of charity trustees on the charity register from early 2026.
Your information is stored securely. Your contact details will be kept in our database for two years after you step down as a Director.
Other websites
We cannot be held responsible for the privacy of data collected by websites not owned or managed by Connect, including those linked through our website.
Emails terms of use
Emails aren’t always secure, and they may be intercepted or changed after they’ve been sent. Connect doesn’t accept liability if this happens. The contents of emails reflect their author's views and not necessarily those of Connect.
Please do not send Connect any financial data by email.
The information in emails is confidential, so if you’ve received one by mistake, please delete it without copying, using, or telling anyone about its contents.
Your rights
UK GDPR gives certain legal rights to individuals over their own personal data. These rights are:
- Data access rights
- Right to restrict processing
- Right of Rectification
- Right to Erasure (Right to be Forgotten)
- Right to object to processing
- Right to withdraw consent; and
- Data portability rights.
These give you the right to know if we hold information on you, to obtain the information we hold on you, and to obtain its correction, update, amendment or deletion in appropriate circumstances.
These rights are not absolute, and some may be subject to some exceptions or limitations.
We will respond to your request to exercise these rights within 30 days of receiving a request. Please see ‘How to contact us’ above.
Cookie Policy
Cookies and how we use them
What are cookies?
Cookies are text files containing small amounts of information which are downloaded to your device when you visit a website. Cookies are then sent back to the originating website on each subsequent visit, or to another website that recognises that cookie. Cookies are useful because they allow a website to recognise a user’s device and to target the content displayed to the user’s interests.
You can find more information about cookies at: www.allaboutcookies.org and www.youronlinechoices.eu for a video about cookies, visit this website.
Do we use cookies?
Yes.
Types of cookies
There are two broad types of cookies - 'first party cookies' and 'third party cookies':
First party cookies are cookies that are served directly by the website operator to your computer and are often used to recognise your computer when it revisits that site and to remember your preferences as you browse the site. These are the cookies we use.
Third party cookies are served by a service provider on behalf of the website operator and can be used by the service provider to recognise your computer when you visit other web sites. Third party cookies are most commonly used for web site analytics or advertising purposes.
In addition, cookies may be either 'session cookies' or 'persistent cookies'. Your computer automatically removes session cookies once you close your browser. Persistent cookies will survive on your computer until an expiry date specified in the cookie itself, is reached. We use both session and persistent cookies.
What information do we collect using cookies?
We may collect some, or all, of the information available from cookies when you visit our website, depending on how you use it. We monitor how people use our website so we can improve it. We collect this information anonymously.
However, you can choose to use our website anonymously without giving us any information. Please see ‘Changing your cookie preferences’ below.
If you visit our website, we may use cookies to record information about:
- the areas of the website you visit
- the amount of time you spend on the site
- whether you are new to the site, or have visited it before
- the country, region, city and/or borough associated with your IP address or device
- how you came to our website – for example, through an email link or a search engine
- the type of device and browser you use
- how you use the website and the quality of your experience – for example we may track your bandwidth when viewing videos
- how you interact with our sign-up forms – for example what you select as your communication preferences
- any error messages that you receive on the site.
Although not through cookies, we do measure the success of the emails we send – so we know what subject lines and stories people liked the most. We receive this information anonymously. We don’t share this information.
Website statistics analytics, testing and personalisation
Our website currently uses a third party web analytics service:
Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. (“Google”). Google Analytics uses “cookies”, which (as discussed above) are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyse how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) will be transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States. Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website, compiling reports on website activity for website operators and providing other services relating to website activity and internet usage.
Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google's behalf. Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google. You may refuse the use of cookies by selecting the appropriate settings on your browser, however, please note that if you do this you may not be able to use the full functionality of this website. By using our Connect website, you consent to the processing of data about you by Google in the manner and for the purposes set out above.
You can always opt-out of Google Analytics cookies using Google’s opt-out tool.
Changing your cookie preferences
The "Help" menu in the toolbar of most web browsers will tell you how to change your browser's cookie settings, including how to have the browser notify you when you receive a new cookie, and how to disable cookies altogether. Below is some helpful guidance about how to make these changes.
How to disable cookies
You can find out information on how to block cookies at your browser’s website:
Find out more detailed information on disabling cookies here.
If you have any questions about this Privacy and Cookie Policy, please contact us.