This Privacy Policy is designed to help you understand how we and other companies in our group collect and use your personal information. We want you to make informed decisions when using our websites and any features on them, including any registration and e-commerce services.

This Privacy Policy applies to all the pages on our sites and any features of them and any e-commerce, purchasing or other areas which require registration. However, it won’t apply to any third-party sites which are linked to our sites. We recommend that you read the privacy policy of any such sites that you visit as we are not responsible for them.

When we refer to our website or sites, we mean any of our websites from which you have accessed this Privacy Policy.

We have included full details of who we are at the end of this Privacy Policy.

2. Am I a customer or user?

Our customers are educational institutions, such as schools and colleges, who use our sites or services in their institutions. Our customers choose to let their students/learners and teachers use our sites or services. Users include, but are not limited to, all customers, students/learners and teachers that access or use our sites or services.

3. What are my responsibilities as a customer?

Customers who use our sites or services must get the necessary consent (in accordance with relevant privacy legislation) to upload personal information about students/learners and teachers to the sites or services. Customers must also ensure that any personal information they upload is accurate.

If you have any doubt whether you have consent to upload the personal information, please do not use our sites or services.

If you are a customer, you are also required to maintain appropriate technical and organisational measures against unauthorised or unlawful processing of that personal information and against accidental loss, theft, destruction of or damage to that personal information. Passwords and user names for our sites or services should not be written down or shared.

Legally Pearson and the customer are both responsible parties in relation to the personal information that is collected and used by our sites and services. This means that Pearson and the customer are joint responsible parties. A “responsible party” is “a public or private body or any other person which, alone or in conjunction with others, determines the purpose of and means for processing personal information”.

4. What information does Pearson collect about me?

Personal information that we collect may include your name, contact details (phone numbers, email addresses and addresses), your date of birth, gender, job, educational institution, course/grade information, academic results, your personal interests, credit card or billing information, shopping selections and data about the pages you visit on our site, as well as any other personal information relating to you or a third party that you supply to us.

5. How does Pearson collect my personal information?

We collect your information in three ways:

Personal information you choose to disclose. You may, for example, provide us with your information when you post something on our site, when you register for any features on our site that require registration, when you contact us (online or offline) or when you order goods or services from us.
Information collected by us when you interact with our site, our mobile applications or when you open our email communications. We use cookies (a small piece of computer code that we store for a period of time on your computer or mobile device) and other similar technologies to collect this information. To find out more, please visit our Cookie Policy page.
Information that your educational institution discloses to us, either directly or through our service providers.

In a separate automatic operation the web server will collect your IP address and browser type and details of the website, mobile application or email communication you came from before entering our site. This information is used to:

work out how many times our site has been visited
record which parts of our site have been visited so we can improve the content and layout of the site
understand the effectiveness of our email communications.

We may from time to time supply this data to third parties in an anonymised form for uses in connection with our site.

6. What will Pearson do with my personal information?

We and our group companies may use your personal information to process your online purchases, to inform you about products and services offered by us and our group companies, to improve the products and services offered to you, for efficacy, performance and/or market research purposes, for marketing, statistical or analytical purposes, and otherwise to better meet the needs and preferences of our customers. We will not allow unrelated third parties to use your personal information for marketing without your consent.

In particular, we may use your information to:

contact you with more information on our products and services and those of our group companies, except where you have told us not to
inform you of activities on our site
invite you to participate in surveys, discussions and prize draws and ask for your views on our services via online surveys and discussion forums.

We also use personal information in aggregate form (so that no individual user is identified by name) to build marketing profiles, audit how our sites are used, and to help with the strategic development of our sites.

Participation in surveys and discussion forums is entirely voluntary. You may unsubscribe from being contacted for these purposes at any time. Survey information will be used for efficacy, performance and/or market research with the aim of improving our services.

We will show your username on any content you submit or post on our sites (including without limitation discussions, bulletin boards and forums).

7. Email marketing and opt-in

We will not send you marketing emails unless you have opted in for receiving them. Any marketing emails we send you will include an unsubscribe link at the end of the email. Some Pearson sites also provide contact details you may use if you want to contact us by email, post or telephone in order to unsubscribe. In addition, some Pearson sites have a "My Account" page where you can choose whether or not to receive marketing communications from us.

8. How does Pearson keep my personal information safe?

We seek to protect the safety of all your personal information. In particular, provided your browser accepts Secure Sockets Layer encryption, we seek to protect your payment information against unauthorised access through a secure server. Where we use third parties to process personal information, we require them to ensure the safety of your information. We use appropriate security measures on our own systems, but the internet is not a secure medium and we cannot guarantee the security of information transmitted via the internet.

Any personal information that you voluntarily post on a public area of our site, such as a bulletin board or discussion forum, or an interactive area requiring registration and/or subscription, may be collected and used by others. Please be careful what personal information you disclose in this way. You understand that we cannot control the actions of other users.

9. Will Pearson share my personal information with anyone else?

We will never sell your personal information. We may disclose and share personal information with the third parties listed below. Because the internet is a global environment, you accept and agree that this will include the transfer of your personal information to other countries around the world, including countries outside of the Republic of South Africa which may not have the same data protection laws as South Africa. We may share your personal information:

with our group companies or any entity which acquires any part of our business

with our service providers (including, without limitation, credit reference agencies and payment processors, distributors/agents of our products, suppliers who develop or host our sites, service providers who manage to flow of data between us and our customers)

with your educational institution

with third-party search engines that may index user profile pages and usernames as part of the URL of the user profile page by default

if required or permitted by law

with relevant third parties (such as your employer, your educational institution, your internet service provider, law enforcement agencies) if we reasonably believe you may be in breach of the law (e.g. if you have posted defamatory content on our sites)

with other third parties with your consent.

10. What if I am under 18 years old?

If you are under 18, please be sure to read this Privacy Policy with your parent or guardian and ask them questions about anything you don’t understand. Please get their permission before you provide Pearson with any personal information.

11. Abuses of this Privacy Policy

Any improper collection or misuse of personal information is in violation of this Privacy Policy and of our Legal Notice. Please report it by emailing peter.wasserfall@pearson.com.

You agree not to misuse any personal information available on our Site or to gather it or use robots or other automated scripts, codes or functionalities to do so.

We may immediately suspend or terminate your access to our site without notice if we become aware that you are in breach of applicable terms and conditions of use or of this Privacy Policy.

12. Changes to this Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will always include the date of a new version so that you know when there has been a change. If you don’t agree to the changes, please don’t continue to use our site or provide us with your personal information.

13. Contacting Pearson

If you have any questions about our Privacy Policy or the data we hold about you, or you wish to ensure that the data we hold about you is accurate and kept up to date, please do not hesitate to contact us at:

General Counsel: South Africa

Legal and Compliance

Pearson South Africa Pty Ltd

4th Floor, Auto Atlantic,

Corner Hertzog Boulevard and Heerengracht,

Cape Town 8001, South Africa

+27 (0)21 532 6000
peter.wasserfall@pearson.com

This Privacy Policy is provided by Pearson South Africa (Proprietary) Limited (registration number 2009/022455/07, registered office 4th Floor, Auto Atlantic, Corner Hertzog Boulevard and Heerengracht, Cape Town 8001, South Africa ) on its own behalf, and on behalf of its group companies.

References in this Privacy Policy to “Pearson”, “we”, “us”, “our” or similar refer to Pearson South Africa (Proprietary) Limited or whichever Pearson group company is operating the relevant website.

1. Introduction