ParentSay is a research platform operated by Parentkind. Parentkind (formerly PTA UK) was established in 1956 and is the UK’s leading PTA membership organisation.
As a charity, Parentkind’s main objective is:

To advance education by encouraging the fullest cooperation between home and school, education authorities, central government and all other interested parties and bodies.

To further this objective, Parentkind delivers a number of business functions, some of which involve the collection, gathering and processing of information that is considered personal information. The way in which Parentkind processes this type of information must comply with the requirements of the UK Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) where it constitutes personal data, the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations 2003.

The purpose of this privacy notice is to explain how your personal information is processed and provide information about the rights you have under data protection legislation. For each of Parentkind’s business activities that use personal information, details are provided about what information we collect, how we use that information, and what happens to your information when it is no longer required. We have also provided information about recipients (those who your information will be passed to) and international transfers. An explanation of some of the legal terms and as well as your rights where we process your personal data can be found in the section Additional Information.

Only Parentkind will use the data you provide on ParentSay and we will not sell or share your data with any third-parties. The ParentSay platform is facilitated by research provider QuestionPro and data will be stored on servers owned by QuestionPro based within the UK or the EU.

The purpose of our data collection on the ParentSay platform is to help us accurately represent the views of parents across the UK, and identify to what extent our research is representative of UK parents, and to what extent there are different views and experiences between different parent groups. Overall, ParentKind is seeking to ensure that our research and consultation responses on behalf of parents provide strong and high-quality evidence of parents views to help schools and government make informed decisions that take parents into account.

How we use your data:
In order to use this website, users must first complete the registration form and provide a basic level of personal information that is necessary for us to facilitate the research, including demographic information and contact information. ParentSay uses this demographic information (such as age, gender, number of school-aged children) to invite users to participate in relevant polls, surveys and focus groups. We also use the demographic information you submit to interpret the results of our research, e.g. understanding whether there are different experiences and views amongst parents with different backgrounds. ParentKind will not disclose your identity or any of personally identifiable information to third parties without your explicit permission.

We use additional demographic information to understand the profile of parents responding to our surveys so that we can ensure we are collecting a representative view of parents across the UK and are able to provide reliable evidence for policy recommendations to government and schools, or contributions to government consultations on behalf of parents.

All information in the initial registration is mandatory to use the platform. All information in profile fields are optional and you can choose whether or not to complete these fields. Some questions in the surveys that we ask you to complete might help update your profile based on your responses, if you give permission for Parentkind to do so. We collect a very limited amount of information on the children of parents signed up to the platform (e.g. which academic year they are in). As parents or guardians, any data you provide on your children is with your consent as a parent. Parentkind will not retain information on children after they have turned 18 and left school.

When registering, we will ask you to identify a username; this will protect your identity. We will never ask you to provide your name, or the name of anyone in your household. All datasets will be either anonymised or pseudonymized so that in the event of a data breach it would be difficult to identify any personal details from this information .

Parentkind will retain all of the data associated with your profile for as long as your account is active. All of your data will be deleted within one week if your account has remained inactive for 24 months, you have delated your account, or Parentkind has deleted your account due to a violation of the ParentSay platform’s terms and conditions.

Cookies:
A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's hard drive containing information about the user. Usage of a cookie is in no way linked to any personally identifiable information. ParentSay serves session cookies only. Once the user closes his or her browser, the session is ended and the cookie simply terminates. For instance, by setting a cookie on our site, the user would not have to log in a password more than once, thereby saving time while on our site. We may also use cookies to track and target the interests of our users to enhance the experience on our site. Users who reject cookies will have limited use of our site. Cookies are not linked to any personally identifiable information.

Log Files:
We use IP addresses, browser type, referring URLs, operating system, and date/time stamp to analyse trends, administer the site, track user's dual location and gather broad demographic information for aggregate use in optimising the performance of our site and our services. We will not use this data types to gather any personally identifiable information.

Links:
ParentSay may contain links to other sites. Please be aware that Parentkind are not responsible for the privacy practices of such other sites. We encourage our users to be aware when they leave our site and to read the privacy statements of each and every web site that collects personally identifiable information. This privacy statement applies solely to information collected by this Web site.

Your Rights:
Under the GDPR, you have a number of rights in relation to your personal information. You have the right to:
i. request access to your personal information;
ii. request rectification of your personal information which means you are able to have inaccurate personal information corrected without undue delay;
ii. request erasure of your personal information when certain conditions apply;
iii. restrict processing under certain circumstances;
iv. object to processing;
v. data portability in some circumstances.

There may be occasions when Parentkind is unable to comply with requests to exercise the rights above. Should this apply to a request you make, it will be explained to you why Parentkind is unable to comply with the request and any options available.

By completing surveys in ParentSay, you are consenting for Parentkind to process your personal information. You have the right to withdraw your consent at any time. You should be aware that, while Parentkind will stop using your information for that purpose with immediate effect, it may not always be possible to remove information from the public domain, for example where it has been used in hard copy publications.

You may withdraw your consent at any time for allowing your information to be used for marketing purposes.

Complaints:
Should you be unhappy with the way in which Parentkind have processed your personal data, we would like to try and resolve this directly with you in the first instance please contact us at [email protected]. If you are unhappy with our approach, ultimately you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner, who regulates data protection legislation across the UK. Their contact details can be found at https://ico.org.uk/ .