Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Academy Education Network Ltd(“AEN”, “we”, “us”, “our”) is the data controller for the personal data described in this policy. We are registered in England & Wales under company number 15681289. Our office for student correspondence is 124 City Road, Islington, London, EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom.

AEN is a UK student-recruitment agency. We help prospective students — including international students — find, apply to and enrol on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes at our UK partner universities and colleges. This policy explains how we handle your personal data when you enquire, apply, or use this website.

Questions about this policy or how we handle your personal data should be sent to recruitment@academyeducationnetwork.co.uk. This is our designated privacy contact.

Data Protection Officer: Peter Sula (info@academyeducationnetwork.co.uk). Our DPO is your direct contact for any data protection enquiry — including all of the data-subject rights set out in section 7 below, and any complaint about how we handle your personal data.

2. What personal data we collect

We collect personal data in the following categories:

• Contact details — name, email address, telephone number, country of residence, preferred language.
• Enquiry details — the subjects, cities, courses, start date and fee status you are interested in, plus any free-text message you send us.
• Academic records — qualifications, school or university transcripts, English-language test results (e.g. IELTS, PTE, TOEFL), predicted or final grades.
• Identity and immigration documents — date of birth, nationality, passport details, visa history, and any CAS (Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies) letter issued by a UK university. We only collect these where required to submit an application or support a Student Route visa application.
• Financial information — limited to what is required to demonstrate funds for a visa application or to evidence tuition fee payments to partner institutions. We do not collect or store full payment-card details — any payments are processed by the partner institution or a regulated payment provider directly.
• Communications — records of emails, WhatsApp messages, calls and meetings you have with our advisors.
• Website data — IP address, device and browser information, pages visited and, where you have consented, analytics cookies. See our Cookies Policy for details.

Providing some of this data (in particular identity, immigration and academic records) is a requirement of the application process. If you do not provide it, we may be unable to submit an application on your behalf.

3. How we use your data, and the lawful bases

Under the UK GDPR we must have a lawful basis for each purpose. The bases we rely on are:

• Performance of a contract (UK GDPR Art. 6(1)(b)) — when you ask us to represent you, we use your data to prepare and submit applications, liaise with the partner institution, and support you through enrolment.
• Legitimate interests (Art. 6(1)(f)) — for responding to general enquiries, improving our services, running the website securely, and contacting partner institutions on your behalf. We balance these interests against your rights and you can object at any time.
• Consent (Art. 6(1)(a)) — for non-essential cookies and for sending you marketing communications. You can withdraw consent at any time without affecting the lawfulness of prior processing.
• Legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) — where we are required to retain certain records for tax, accounting or regulatory purposes, or to respond to lawful requests from UK authorities.
• Substantial public interest / explicit consent (Art. 9) — where the information is a special category of data (for example, health information relevant to a disability-related application support request), we only process it with your explicit consent or on another Art. 9 basis permitted by the Data Protection Act 2018.

4. Who we share your data with

We share personal data only with:

• UK partner universities, colleges and institutions — to submit applications and track their progress through to enrolment. We share only the data the partner needs to process the application.
• UK Visas & Immigration (UKVI) and the Home Office — only when required to support a Student Route visa application or to comply with immigration reporting duties of a sponsoring institution.
• Service providers acting on our behalf (“processors”) — including our email, file-storage, CRM, website hosting, and communication providers. These processors act under written contracts that bind them to UK GDPR-equivalent safeguards.
• Professional advisors — such as our lawyers, auditors and insurers, only where necessary and confidentially.
• Law enforcement or regulators— where we are legally required to disclose information, for example in response to a valid court order or a request from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with third parties for their own marketing.

5. International transfers

Some of the service providers we rely on to run this website and communicate with students are based outside the United Kingdom — primarily in the United States. In particular:

• Formspree (United States) — delivers enquiry-form submissions from the website to our inbox.
• Google LLC (United States) — Google Analytics (where you have given consent) and, on the Contact page, Google Maps.
• Meta Platforms Ireland / WhatsApp(Ireland, with onward transfers to the United States) — where you contact us via WhatsApp.
• Cloudflare (global content-delivery network) — serves this website from the nearest point of presence to you, which for non-UK visitors may be outside the UK/EEA.

Where your personal data is transferred outside the UK we rely on one of the following UK GDPR safeguards:

• the UK Government’s UK–US Data Bridge (the UK extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework) for processors self-certified under it;
• the UK International Data Transfer Agreement (IDTA) or the UK Addendum to the EU Standard Contractual Clauses for processors that are not covered by an adequacy decision;
• any UK adequacy regulations in force from time to time.

You can ask us for a copy of the safeguard in place for any specific transfer by emailing recruitment@academyeducationnetwork.co.uk. We keep the list of processors and their locations under review, and we will update this policy if our processors or the legal basis for transfer change.

6. How long we keep your data

We retain your personal data for one year from your last meaningful contact with us — whether that is an enquiry, a submitted application, or the start of an enrolled course — and then securely delete or anonymise it.

Where we are required to keep certain records for longer under UK law (for example, financial and tax records, or records needed to defend a legal claim), we will keep only those specific records for the minimum period required, and apply additional access restrictions to them.

7. Your rights

Under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 you have the right to:

• Be informed about how we use your data (this policy).
• Access the personal data we hold about you.
• Have inaccurate data corrected without undue delay.
• Have your data erased where the legal conditions apply.
• Restrict or object to our processing of your data.
• Receive your data in a structured, machine-readable format and ask us to port it to another service where technically feasible.
• Withdraw consent where we rely on consent.
• Not be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing that has legal or similarly significant effects — we do not currently use such decisions for applications.

How to make a Data Subject Request

To exercise any of the rights above, email our Data Protection Officer at info@academyeducationnetwork.co.uk. To help us locate your records and verify identity, please include:

• Your full name and any other names you have used in correspondence with us (e.g. on application forms)
• The email address(es) and phone number(s) you have used to contact us
• A clear description of the right you wish to exercise — for example "I would like a copy of all data you hold on me" or "Please erase my data"
• Proof of identity (a scan of an ID document) — this is to protect you against impersonation, not a barrier to your request

We will respond within one calendar month of receiving your request and verifying your identity. For complex requests we may extend this by up to two further months, in which case we will tell you within the first month and explain why.

Data subject requests are free of charge. We may only charge a reasonable fee for manifestly unfounded, excessive or repeated requests, and we will explain in writing if we propose to do so.

8. How to complain

If you believe we have mishandled your personal data, please contact us first at recruitment@academyeducationnetwork.co.ukand we will try to resolve it. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO):

Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF, United Kingdom. ico.org.uk · 0303 123 1113.

9. Security

We apply technical and organisational measures appropriate to the data we hold, including access controls, encrypted transport (HTTPS/TLS), role-based access to our CRM, and staff training on handling student data. No system is ever completely secure, so if you discover a vulnerability please email recruitment@academyeducationnetwork.co.uk.

10. Cookies

We use a small number of strictly necessary cookies to make the site work, and optional analytics cookies only where you have given consent via our cookie banner. You can change your choice at any time from the banner. Full details are in our Cookies Policy.

11. Children

Our services are aimed at applicants aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect personal data from children under 16. If you believe we hold data about a child that we should not have collected, please contact us and we will delete it.

12. Changes to this policy

We will update this policy from time to time to reflect changes to our practices, our partners, or the law. Material changes will be signposted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you directly. The “Effective” date at the top shows when the current version took effect.

13. Contact

Academy Education Network Ltd
124 City Road, Islington, London, EC1V 2NX, United Kingdom
General privacy contact: recruitment@academyeducationnetwork.co.uk
Data Protection Officer (Peter Sula): info@academyeducationnetwork.co.uk

Last updated: 22 May 2026