Wesley College Melbourne (the College) is committed to protecting the personal information we collect, use and store. The College recognises the long-term and close relationship with our community and the significance that places on safeguarding personal information.

This privacy policy supports the College’s need to collect personal and sensitive information and outlines our information management practices ensuring individual privacy rights.

About this policy

The College collects, holds, uses, and discloses personal information to carry out the functions and activities under the Privacy Act 1988 and other legislation that confers obligations on schools including the Victorian Health Records Act 2001. Other legislation that affects the way the College manages privacy is listed at the end of this document.

These functions and activities include:

  • Enrolling students and processing applications
  • Looking after students and meeting our child protection responsibilities
  • Hiring and managing staff members, volunteers, and contractors
  • Communicating to our community and to the public
  • Maintaining our records and databases
  • Meeting our reporting obligations to government agencies

This policy applies to Wesley College students, employees, parents, alumni, donors, applicants for employment at the College, prospective parents, Council and Committee members, sponsors, volunteers, visitors, and guests and any person accessing College systems. For international students from the European Union the General Data Protection Rules also apply. For further information contact privacy@wesleycollege.edu.au

Collection of your personal information

Personal information relates to an identifiable natural person; someone who can be identified, directly or indirectly by name, identification number, online identifier, or other factors specific to them.

The College collects, uses and stores only the personal information we need to provide our educational services and to meet our legal obligations.  When seeking personal information, we will explain to you clearly the reason for the collection and how your personal information may be used.

The main way we collect personal information about you is when you provide it to the College upon request. More specifically:

Direct Input

  • Paper or online forms completed by parents, students, and staff or their delegate where relevant
  • Through visitor kiosks at our campus receptions
  • Face to face meetings, video conferences, email, and telephone calls
  • When you apply for employment at the College
  • Enquiries from prospective parents through our Website or via email/phone
  • Surveys conducted by the College

Indirect Input

  • From a third party, such as a report provided by a medical professional or a personal reference from another organisation
  • Photographs and videos taken of students, staff and parents at College functions and events and through security cameras
  • From cookies on our College Website to record usage statistics
  • Information technology system usage and access logs

Public Input

  • Social networking services such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube to communicate with the public about our events and news. When you communicate with us using these services, we may collect your personal information; we only use the data to help us to communicate with you and the public. The social networking service will also handle your personal information for its own purposes; these services have their own privacy policies
  • Indirectly through publicly available sources such as LinkedIn, news and media, open websites

The College conducts Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) to assess the need, scope and handling methods of your personal information.

You may elect not to provide personal information in specific circumstances. You may also elect to opt out of select communications. It should be noted that when you opt out, you will no longer receive specific details that relate to your engagement with the College such as being excluded from photos in publications, removing your contact details from lists relating to your relevant year level or exclusion from important College updates.

Collection of your sensitive information

Sensitive information includes matters of health, gender, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, family court orders, financial information and any matters raised by Police checks. The College will sometimes need to collect sensitive information:

  • To provide a safe environment for our students and staff by being aware of and catering for dietary requirements, allergies, vaccination details, health care plans and any other medical conditions
  • To manage our accommodation needs at our Learning in Residence, Clunes, and Outdoor Education sites and all other overnight camps and excursions
  • In ensuring gender ratios in student classes meet our coeducational requirements
  • To be able to provide immediate first level health care to students while at the College
  • To assist employees with return-to-work plans, manage work related injuries and our obligations under Occupational Health and Safety laws
  • To provide pastoral care support to students
  • To ensure our employees, volunteers and contractors have current Police and Working With Children checks. These must be provided to the College prior to commencement and remain current during an employee’s contract with the College.
Anonymity

Where possible, we will allow you to interact with us anonymously. For example, if you contact our College enquiries number with a general question, we will not ask for your name unless we need it to adequately handle your question.

However, for most of our functions and activities we usually need your name and contact information and enough information about the matter to enable us to efficiently handle your enquiry, request, complaint, or application.

Uses for your personal information

The College uses your personal information in a variety of ways to meet its legal obligations and to provide its educational services. A full description of the data we collect, how we use it and with whom we share it, is provided in our Collection Notice. At a high level we collect personal information:

  • To enrol students and provide them with the appropriate teaching and learning, facilities, and educational and pastoral support services
  • To keep parents informed about matters related to their child's schooling, through correspondence, including assessment reports, newsletters, and magazines
  • To receive income and to meet our financial obligations
  • To promote and invite attendees to events and functions
  • To look after students' educational, social, emotional, and medical well-being
  • To be able to assess potential employees and contractors and then engage and administer their employment
Who might the College disclose personal information to?

The College may disclose personal information, including sensitive information, held about an individual. A full description of the data we collect, how we use it and with whom we share it with is provided in our Collection Notice. They include:

  • Another school
  • Government agencies and authorities
  • Medical practitioners
  • People providing services to the College, e.g., specialist visiting teachers and sports coaches
  • Recipients of College publications, like newsletters and magazines
  • College’s legal representatives
  • Financial collection agency
  • College auditors
  • College employees with injury management and injury prevention responsibilities
  • Parents and anyone to whom you authorise, in writing to the Head of Campus, the College to disclose information

The College will not send personal information about an individual outside Australia without:

  • Obtaining the consent of the individual (in some cases this consent will be implied)
  • Otherwise complying with the Australian Privacy Principle 8 concerning cross border disclosure. The College must be satisfied that any overseas recipients of personal data held by the College will be managed in line with the Australian Privacy Principles.

When you communicate with us through a social network service such as Facebook or Twitter, the social network provider and its partners may collect and hold your personal information overseas.

The Privacy Act requires the College to report and disclose any breaches of privacy that is likely to result in serious harm to any individuals the College manages personal information about. The College’s Notifiable Data Breach Response Plan will be used if a breach is suspected or occurs. The response plan is published on the College’s Staff Intranet accessible by all employees. Disclosure will be made to both the individuals affected and to the Australian Office of the Information Commissioner.

Storage and security of personal information

The College respects the confidentiality of personal information and the privacy of individuals.

The College has in place tools and practices to protect the personal information the College holds from misuse, loss, unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure. We take steps to protect the security of the personal information we hold from both internal and external threats by:

  • Regularly assessing the risk of misuse, interference, loss, and unauthorised access, modification, or disclosure of that information
  • Conducting Privacy Impact Assessments that investigate the privacy security of systems, processes, and suppliers
  • Undertaking privacy awareness briefings for College employees
  • Conducting external audits to assess whether we have adequately complied with or implemented sufficient privacy security measures
Quality of personal information

The College endeavours to ensure that the personal information it holds is accurate, complete, and current. We achieve this by:

  • Recording information in a consistent format
  • Where necessary, confirming the accuracy of information we collect from a third party or a public source
  • Promptly adding updated or new personal information to existing records
  • Regularly auditing our contact lists to check their accuracy
  • Reviewing the quality of personal information before we use or disclose it
  • Using software tools to validate key contact data
  • Encouraging the use of the self-service update capabilities of our parent and staff Intranets
Accessing and correcting your personal information

You have the right to request access to and correct personal information that we hold about you. The College must respond to you within 30 days. We must take reasonable steps to correct that personal information if we agree it is incorrect, unless there is a law that allows or requires us not to. There are some exceptions to this right set out in the Privacy Act.

We will ask you to verify your identity in writing before we give you access to your personal information or correct it, and we will make the process as simple as possible. If we refuse to give you access to, or correct, your personal information, we must notify you in writing setting out the reasons.

If we make a correction and we have disclosed the incorrect information to others, you can ask us to tell them about the correction. We must do so unless there is a valid reason not to.

How to Make a Request

Parents

  • For any personal information held about them or their child, contact the relevant Head of Campus in writing. Note, there will be occasions when access to personal information is denied. Such occasions would include where release of the information would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of others, or where the release may result in a breach of the College's duty of care to the student, or according to other exemptions stated in the Privacy or Health Records Acts.

Employees and Contractors

  • May request access to personal information the College holds about them by contacting the Director of People and Culture in writing.

Alumni of the College

Consent and rights of access to the personal information of students

Generally, the College will refer any requests for consent and notices in relation to the personal information of a student to their Parent(s). The College will treat consent given by Parent(s) as consent given on behalf of the student and notice to Parent(s) will act as notice given to the student. Such consent extends to anyone to who you authorise, in writing to the Head of Campus, access.

The College may, at its discretion, allow a student to give or withhold consent to the use of their personal information, independently of their parents. This would normally be done only when the maturity of the student and/or the student's personal circumstances so warranted.

For consent more broadly the College will always obtain your consent where personal data is being sought. This includes where photos or videos are being taken, online meetings are to be recorded, and on our documents and online forms that capture personal data.

We will not assume consent has been given, bundle consent or assume it has been granted for an indefinite period. The College will make it clear what the consent is being given for.

Breaches of this Policy

Non-compliance with this Policy by employees, contractors, volunteers will be regarded as a very serious matter and may constitute:

  • A breach of employment obligations
  • Serious misconduct
  • A criminal offence
  • Exposure to legal liability

Appropriate action in response to a breach of this policy by an employee(s) may include termination of employment.

Where there is a reasonable belief that illegal activity may have occurred, the College will report the suspected illegal activity to the Police.

Non-compliance with this Policy by any student(s) will be managed through the Student Behaviour Policy.

Any person may make a privacy-related complaint by contacting the Wesley College Privacy Officer at privacy@wesleycollege.edu.au

Data Collection Notice

The Wesley College Data Collection Notice provides information on what personal data the College collects, uses and shares. This document should be read in conjunction with our Privacy Policy.

What we collect

The College collects personal information about parents and guardians and homestay carers before and during a student’s enrolment at the College. This includes:

  • Your contact details, relationships to other family members and alumni
  • Any court orders that the College should be aware of and if you live with your child(ren)
  • Your highest educational qualifications, current occupation and primary language spoken at home
  • Additional contact information is sought for homestay arrangements
How we use your data

Data collected by the College about you is used by us to:

  • Contact you, identify you uniquely and associate your access rights accurately to the data held about you and your child(ren) to enable the College to provide education for your child(ren)
  • Where necessary to prevent unauthorised communication with one or more parents because of a Court Order in relation to a child’s education and safety at the College
  • To keep you informed about matters related to your child's schooling, through correspondence, including assessment reports and online updates
  • Day-to-day administration and correspondence
  • Include your personal contact details in a class list available to other parents with children in the same class. We will seek you direct permission via the Parent Intranet to do so
Who we share your data with
  • The College is required under legislation to report to Commonwealth and Victorian Government agencies and authorities a range of de-identified statistical data related to parents. These include:

- Your occupation, highest qualifications and language spoken at home. This data while identified with you at time of collection is not used by the College for any purpose other than reporting to government agencies upon request.

- Your address is also provided to government agencies for the purposes of assessing funding to the College. Your address details are decoupled from your name and other contact details and cannot be reconnected with you by any recipients of the data

  • The Department of Health and Human Services if a mandatory report under Child Safe Standards must be provided
  • Collection agencies, the College lawyers and courts where legal matters may be taken
  • College auditors
What we collect

The College collects personal information about students before enrolment at the College and during the years of schooling. This includes:

  • Contact details, where you live and with whom
  • Visa/passport details, gender, faith, prior school records, identity photos
  • Medical details, vaccination certificates
  • Any applicable court orders or other relevant legal information
  • Academic performance data, record of participation in events
  • School attendance
  • Pastoral care information, behavioural and welfare notes
  • Individuals Need and Counsellor/Psychologist notes
  • Records of conversations between students, staff, and parents around academic and pastoral care
  • Photos and videos taken at school events, tours, campus, and sporting fixtures
  • Technology use logs
  • Records of school bus use

We ask parents to provide medical information about you only when necessary and require them to keep the College informed of any updates.

How we use your data
  • To be able to provide immediate first aid
  • To provide pastoral care support
  • To provide a safe environment by being aware of dietary requirements and allergens
  • To manage our accommodation needs at our Learning in Residence, Clunes, Yiramalay and Outdoor Education sites and all other overnight camps, tours, and excursions
  • To manage gender ratios in student classes to meet our coeducational requirements
  • To provide academic assessment reports and feedback
  • Photographs and videos taken of you are used in class photos, news articles, publications, marketing campaigns including College social media channels and website with your permission (or permission provided by your parents)
  • To issue you information technology devices and licensed software
Who we share your data with
  • Your teachers and pastoral staff directly involved in the education and care of you
  • College staff by placing your allergy and anaphylaxis action plans in shared locations at the relevant campus to ensure staff are aware of all students who might react to allergens so immediate first aid can be rendered
  • To employers when undertaking Year 10 Work Experience
  • The public in marketing campaigns. We will always ask for consent from parents to use images or videos of students in a marketing context
  • Providers of services the College needs for tours and excursions, travel, accommodation, and catering
  • The Old Wesleyan College Association (OWCA) at graduation so you can be notified of any reunions or OWCA events
  • Emergency services personnel in the event of an emergency
  • To your parents or guardians to inform them about your progress at Wesley
  • Government agencies and auditors if by law we must provide it
What we collect

The College engages in fundraising activities and campaigns and other philanthropic endeavours. Student reunions and other events bring alumni, friends, and guests together to celebrate their time at the College.

Personal information about you is required to run events and campaigns as well as make donation appeals to you. Specifically:

  • Your name, contact details
  • Your connection to the College (such as campus, years at the College, graduation year). This information is sourced from our student management system and confirmed with you periodically
  • Your occupation and employer name
  • Images and videos of you at College functions and events
  • Your specific dietary or physical access requirements if attending a College event
How we use your data

We use the data collected to:

  • Organise like groups of alumni for events
  • Contact you about future events and make confirmations of attendance
  • Provide a safe environment at events and ensure appropriate catering and access
  • Market future College events through social media and publications (articles, photos, and videos)
  • Identify potential donors to the College for specific campaigns such as new buildings and facilities at a campus or in an area of interest
  • Forward publications and emails to you following your subscription to College communications
  • Seek feedback from you on the quality of events you may have attended at the College
Who we share your data with
  • We share your data with event organizers and caterers. We will not disclose your personal information to anyone outside of the key personnel involved in the organising and conduct of events and functions.
  • Emergency services personnel in the event of an emergency
  • The public through publications celebrating your contribution to the College, such as the Lion Magazine or on College social media channels (with your specific permission)
What we collect

To allow prospective parents to enquire, apply and enrol their child(ren) at the College we collect personal data about you and your child(ren). We collect your:

  • Basic contact details
  • Specific interests in the College and when and where you are seeking an enrolment
  • Prior connections to the College (if any)
  • Previous school reports of your child(ren)
  • Medical details about your child(ren)
  • Academic and cognitive assessments
  • External Psychologist reports

The capture of personal data is commensurate with the stage of enrolment. For example, basic levels of data are collected at the initial stage of enquiry and for booking a parent tour. More detailed information is required through the later stages of enrolment when an offer of a place at the College is being made.

We collect this data through online forms, through face to face and online video meetings, email, and telephone calls. The College understands this data is personal and confidential and treats it with the utmost care ensuring only those with a genuine need have access to the data provided.

How we use your data
  • Identifying you and your child(ren) accurately for the purposes of corresponding with you
  • To assess and process your interest, enquiry, application (including scholarships and boarding) or enrolment to the College
  • To enable the College to organise its services, resourcing, and capacity to deliver educational services for your child(ren)
  • To assess and improve the performance of our admissions processes
  • To seek feedback from you on the quality of events you may have attended at the College
  • To validate any student visas. The unique identifier on a Commonwealth issued visa you provide us with may be checked with the Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs to ensure that it remains valid through the years your child(ren) attend the College
Who we share your data with

We only share your data with the key Wesley personnel who are involved in:

  • Contacting you about your enquiry, application, or enrolment
  • Conducting parent tours
  • Assessing applications to enrol at the College including College counsellors or psychologists
  • Accounts Receivable to enable correct billing
  • School leadership to enable the initial onboarding of students into their campus and year level
What we collect

For guests, Council and Committee members, contractors, volunteers, and visitors we collect your:

  • Basic contact details
  • Working With Children Check or Police Check details
  • Covid-19 vaccination certificate
  • Driver’s licence, other identification, and resume extracts for membership of College Council

We collect this data through paper and online forms, emails, and visitor kiosks. The College understands this data is personal and confidential and treats it with the utmost care ensuring only those with a genuine need have access to the data provided.

How we use your data
  • To Identify you accurately for the purposes of corresponding with you
  • To enable in the event of an emergency a complete list of visitors and guests on site
  • To assess your nomination to College Council or Committees
  • To enable the College to validate your vaccination status against requirements of the Department of Human Services
Who we share your data with
  • Victorian Registered Qualifications Authority, Victorian Department of Education, Australian Business Registry for College Council members
  • Wesley College staff involved in site security and People and Culture
  • Third parties such as caterers and event organisers

Current parents may seek access to personal information collected about them and their child(ren) by submitting a written request to the relevant Head of Campus.

Any member of our community may request access to any personal information collected about them or a family member by contacting privacy@wesleycollege.edu.au

This document is updated from time to time in line with changing operational and government requirements.

Related Documents
  • Australian Privacy Act 1988
  • Australian Privacy Principles 2014
  • Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2009
  • Education and Care Services National Law Act 2010
  • Australian Fair Work Act 2009
  • Victorian Health Records Act 2001
  • Australian Psychological Society Code of Ethics 2007
  • European Union General Data Protection Regulation 2018