AQA Stride privacy notice

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AQA Stride privacy notice

The personal information you give to AQA is important. Utilising your personal data means that we can offer you services that best meet your needs.

This privacy notice has been compiled in relation to your personal data processed within the AQA Stride learning environment, it explains what information we collect, what we do with it, how we collect it and keep it secure. This should be read in conjunction with our AQA Stride terms of use

If you require any further information on your rights, or this processing, you can reach out to AQA’s Data Protection team via GDPREnquiries@aqa.org.uk, or review AQA’s privacy notice for further privacy related information.

Last updated: May 2024

Parties involved in processing your data

The legal entities that control and process your personal information are:

Data Controller: Your school/centre (you).
Data Processor: AQA Education Ltd (registered office: Devas Street, Manchester, M15 6EX).
Sub-processor: Area9 Lyceum (registered office: Galionsvej 37, 1437 København, Denmark).

To find out more about the platform, please visit the Area9 Lyceum website

View the Area9 Lyceum privacy policy

The data we collect

The data collected within the platform, and the use of, is as follows:

Centre data: centre name, postcode, centre number, centre internal ID, centre UK PRN, centre URN, group name, group internal ID, group UK PRN, student names, teacher names, accounts, school email addresses, student email addresses, teacher email addresses, student user IDs, teacher user IDs, schools’ subscriptions, teacher passwords, student passwords;
Student data: name, email address, user ID, student UPN, password, assessment data;
Teacher data: name, email address, user ID, password, assessment data;
Caller data: name, email address, job role, centre number, organisation name, organisation type, contact preferences, subject interest, specification, course data, forecast entries, qualification type, academic period, student and teacher notes;
Webform data (added to Dynamics CRM): name, email address, job role, centre number, organisation name, organisation type, contact preferences, subject interest, specification, course data, forecast entries, qualification type, academic period, student and teacher notes.

What we do with your data

This data is required for the purpose of providing access to the platform for the purposes of diagnostic assessments and personalised learner content to support students for the duration of your subscription to the AQA Stride platform and will be deleted in line with our retention schedule after your subscription has ended. The data is collected by contract with you as a Centre. You warrant, as per the Terms of Use, that you have obtained all the relevant consents of the users of the platform. You as a Data Controller can revoke use of the AQA Stride platform at any time, you are not obliged to provide any personal data and can decide not to at no detriment.

Your data will be shared with AQA as a Data Processor and their Sub-processor. For further details, please see parties involved in processing your data or contact us.

In order to set up the AQA Stride platform and provide user, and technical support for your use of the learning environment, AQA and the Sub-processor will require access to the data collected within the platform. AQA and the Sub-processor have a contract in place between them, which is no less onerous than the Terms of Use with you as a centre.

For the most up-to-date information on how AQA collect and use personal data, please refer to AQA's privacy notice

How the data is protected

Any third party AQA engage with has to meet stringent security and data protection criteria. For high risk processing AQA also deploys privacy by design and default within our Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) procedures.

The platform and Sub-processor been vetted by AQA in the following areas:

Incident/risk management
Employee training and awareness
Information handling and encryption
Access control
Platform infrastructure
Vulnerability management
Disaster recovery and business continuity
Cloud security
Data sharing

To find out more about the platform, please visit the Area9 Lyceum website

Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the platform

The AQA Stride platform uses AI to select the most relevant content to show a learner at a given time. Data used is: how other learners have performed on the same content and how the learner themselves has performed. Metrics are scores, timings, answers, metacognition, as well as the structure and priorities of the learning objectives.

The algorithm does not have access to any metadata about the user, and thus it cannot utilise any specific personal information about the user. Neural network machine learning is also used to estimate the time required to complete content. This is done using historical data from the population of learners, as well as semantic analysis of the content text using word-vectors. The result is trained to fit the data and serves as the initial guess for time requirements.

The platform also utilises math probe, which can be used when solving math problems. It allows the learners to enter their work towards the solution. The underlying math engine uses AI to evaluate the response according to mathematical truths.

To find out more about the platform, please visit the Area9 Lyceum website

International data transfers

Data is stored in the Frankfurt region of Amazon Web Services which is covered by UK GDPR adequacy in the European Economic Area.

Data sharing and retention

We will not share personal data with third parties other than those required to provide the service to you. The AQA Stride platform does require the use of sub-processors to store data but they are vetted and contracted to the same standards as AQA demand within our ISO27001 certified processes.

AQA will store personal data for the minimum period required, after this point any data will be deleted or anonymised as soon as possible after its use, unless there is a lawful basis to continue to process the data provided. Data will be retained as per our data retention routines and schedules.

If your account is deemed to be inactive we'll review deleting your account, and the data within it, after two years.

We may share anonymous data with the wider AQA Group of companies for research purposes but will not involve any personal data. You can find out more about AQA Group of companies by visiting our privacy notice

Automated decision making

The platform does utilise some AI techniques to: show relevant content to learners, how learners have performed, estimating time to complete content, math probes to evaluate responses against mathematical truths, and to allows learners to put work towards math solutions.

Any AI or automated decision making will have no significant or legal effects at all on users. It will not be used in summative high stakes exams for example, only for formative developmental assessments to understand current progress.

Your rights

You have several rights under the data privacy legislation. This includes, under certain circumstances, the right to:

Access your data – you can access your data at any time by completing the subject access request form – please be specific about what you want to know. We’ll need to confirm your identity before we release data to you.
Correct your data – you can ask us to correct any data we hold about you that's inaccurate.
Request erasure – you have the right to ‘be forgotten’, in certain circumstances. This doesn’t apply if it would prevent the performance of a contract with you. Or if there's another legal requirement for us to keep your data. If erasure is not possible, you may be able to ask us to restrict processing.
Request the restriction of processing of your data – you can suspend the processing of your data under certain circumstances. For example, pending a review of the accuracy of the data or after you have objected to our use of the data, and we need to establish whether we may lawfully continue processing it.
Request the transfer of your data – in some cases, you can ask us to transfer the data you originally provided to us to yourself or to another company. This only applies to data you provided directly, or that we observed about you through automated means.
Object to the processing of your data – you can object to our processing of your data for direct marketing purposes, based on our stated legitimate interests. In some cases, we may have compelling lawful grounds to process your data which override your rights and freedoms.
Object to automated decision making – you can also object to the processing of your personal data where profiling is being used to make assumptions about your behaviours or preferences; for example, to target marketing communications. You have the right not to be subject to automated decision making and can require that any such decisions are reviewed by a human.

Making a complaint

We take the handling of your personal data very seriously. But, if you feel your data is being handled in a way that breaches data protection legislation, you can make a complaint.

Please contact our Data Protection Office at GDPRenquiries@aqa.org.uk

We may charge a reasonable fee if your request is unfounded, repetitive or excessive. We can refuse to follow your request in these circumstances. We’ll always try to respond to any legitimate request within one month. It may take us longer if your request is complex or you've made many requests. In this case, we'll let you know and keep you updated.

As a security measure, we may ask you to confirm your identity. This ensures that:

personal data isn't disclosed to any person who doesn't have a right to receive it
your right to access your data or to exercise any of your other rights.

We may also contact you to ask you for further information in relation to your request to speed up our response. You also have the right to complain to the UK Information Commissioner

Contact us

If you have any questions about the way in which AQA collect, hold or process your data – or wish to exercise your rights – please contact us at GDPRenquiries@aqa.org.uk