HESA record privacy notice

As a university student some of your information will be sent to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) to form your HESA record and your contact details may be passed to survey contractors.

The University of Surrey is registered as a Data Controller with the Information Commissioner’s Office (our notification number is Z6346945), and we are committed to ensuring that the data we process is handled in accordance with data protection legislation.

We have a Data Protection Officer who can be contacted via dataprotection@surrey.ac.uk.

One of our responsibilities is to tell you about the different ways we collect and use your personal data. This statement provides details about these uses. In addition to this statement, you may be given further information about the uses of your personal data when you use certain services offered by the University of Surrey.

Your HESA record

We will send some of the information we hold about you to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). This information forms your HESA record, which does not include your contact details. Please see HESA's student and staff collection notices for more information.

The HESA record is used for three broad purposes:

Your rights

Under the Data Protection Act 1998, you have rights of access to the data HESA holds about you. You will have to pay a small fee for this. Get further information about HESA's data protection. Details on university-wide measures surrounding IT security can be found in Our Data Policy Statement (PDF) (incorporating Information Security Policy).

For students on Initial Teacher Training courses at institutions in England only

If you are on an ITT course at an institution in England, HESA will also pass some or all of your HESA record to the General Teaching Council for England (GTC).

GTC is a data controller under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998. GTC will process your personal data in order to fulfil its remit and its statutory obligations, including the administration of provisional registration. Except where there is a legal obligation, GTC will not share your data with any third party, except those fulfilling a service on their behalf and under their expressed instructions.

Data for surveys

Your contact details may be passed to survey contractors to carry out the National Student Survey and surveys of student finances, on behalf of the education organisations. These organisations and their contractors will use your details only for that purpose, and will then delete them.

After you graduate you may be contacted and asked to complete one or more surveys into the outcomes of higher education and your activities after graduation. These surveys are used to create statistics to meet the public interest in the outcomes of higher education.

Information from third parties (such as your parent, or your provider if you’re in further study) might be used to complete sections of the surveys if you can’t be contacted. The surveys may be undertaken by ECC or by an organisation contracted for that purpose.

Graduate outcomes survey

We will hold your contact details after you graduate in order for you to be contacted to complete a graduate outcomes survey. Your contact details may be passed to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and/or an organisation contracted to undertake a graduate outcomes survey. The survey contractor will only use your contact details for the survey and will delete them when the survey is closed.

HESA may hold your contact details for further graduate outcomes surveys where these are in the public interest.

Surveys after you graduate

You might be included in a sample of leavers who are surveyed again a few years after they graduate. If so, we will pass your contact details to the organisation that has been contracted to carry out that survey. That organisation will use your details only for that purpose, and will then delete them.

If you do not want to take part in these surveys, please let us know.