The University of Chester uses the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) to perform monitoring and evaluation of its Widening Participation activities. HEAT aims to record the various Outreach activities each of its members undertakes, to measure the effectiveness of this work on assisting students progression into higher education.
To enable us to do this, we collect information from individuals that we work with, in order to measure the possible impact it has on their future progression to higher education. This information will not be used to contact individuals, and will not be entered into any marketing database. It is about recording the type of activity we’ve delivered, along with activities delivered by other universities, in order to measure the effectiveness of this on an individual’s progression into higher education.
The information below outlines how we collect and use this data. For students in Year 8 and below, we will seek to collect data from parents/carers, for students in Year 9 and above, we collect data directly from the individual. If you are the parent/carer of a student who has provided their data and wish to withdraw it, please email Sean Williamson.
Why do we ask for individual data?
Collecting this information enables us to run our activities and to evaluate how good they are at helping young people to achieve their full potential, including learning more about university. Our funding requires us to be able to evidence our work and its impact. As such, we, and those we share your data with, have a legitimate interest in this data.
What do we do with this data?
We store this information in a secure database until the individual is aged 30. In the short term, we use the data to help us assess if we are reaching young people from backgrounds that are currently under-represented in universities, and if our activities are helping young people in the intended way. Once the individual leaves school or college, we send the data to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) who tells us if this person went onto university. Later, we are also informed if this person finished their degree and found a job after their studies.
Who do we share this data with?
For research and evaluation purposes only, this data may also be shared with the Office for Students (OfS), the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), the Department for Education (DfE) or HESA, and our partners including Higher Education Access Tracker service subscribers and the National Data Service.
Will the data be safe?
Yes, very safe. There are strict laws to make sure that we protect the personal details of the individuals we work with; we comply with the Data Protection Act and, as of May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation.
What if the individual doesn't want to share their data?
We need certain pieces of data for contractual, legal or research reasons but can delete other data we hold about you; contact outreach@chester.ac.uk to enquire about this. If you have any questions or concerns or would like a copy of the data that we hold about you, please contact Sean Williamson by email: sean.williamson@chester.ac.uk or by telephone: 01244 512450.
I want to know more about HEAT
Visit the HEAT website to find our more details and for their data protection policy.
For further information please see the University of Chester's Data Protection Policy and the Outreach (MRA) Privacy Notice