Privacy Policy

NCA Privacy Policy

Version 7.4 | 26 July 2021

Introduction

National College Australia (NCA) is committed to managing personal information in accordance with the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and other applicable Australian state and territory privacy laws.


This document, referred to as our Privacy Policy, sets out our policies for managing personal information. National College Australia respects the personal information of the people it deals with, including current and prospective students and current and prospective employees of National College Australia. This policy also applies to visitors to our websites, social media platforms and any related third-party systems used when dealing with National College Australia.


In this Privacy Policy, "we" and "us" refers to National College Australia (NCA) and "you" refers to any individual about whom we collect personal information.

Purpose

National College Australia respects the importance of securing any form of personal information which is collected from the student(s) and/or other Stakeholders. Information collected from students is only utilised for the purpose gathering information on the student as part of their enquiry, enrolment, training, and assessment and certification process. All data is filed electronically within a password protected database.


National College Australia has an obligation under Commonwealth and State legislation to provide information to certain government departments for the purpose of reporting data to the government. On occasion, the government regulatory body will require access to student records for the purpose of auditing the RTO against the Standards for RTO’s. No student files will be removed from the RTO’s site, unless a student is notified beforehand.

Policy

Information collected by National College Australia


As a registered training organisation (RTO), we collect your personal information so we can process and manage your enrolment in a vocational education and training (VET) course with us. The type of personal information which we may collect and hold about you depends on the way you interact with us and our dealings with you. The information we collect about you can be electronic or in hard copy and includes information that personally identifies individual users. This includes collecting information when you contact us, utilise our products or services, visit our websites and social media platforms or use any of our facilities or systems. National College Australia may also record communication between individuals via call recording or a LiveChat transcript.


Depending on the circumstances, personal information collected by National College Australia may include (but is not limited to) the following:


  • Name
  • Address
  • Date of birth
  • Email address
  • Telephone numbers (landline and mobile)
  • Education history
  • Course and unit enrolment details
  • Payment arrangements
  • Background checks; including National Police Checks and Working with Children Checks
  • Working within Australia checks, e.g. Visa checks
  • Information about your education and other related information if you are a student registering with us, including your Unique Student Identifier (USI) number and details about your previous courses
  • Information from your resume or job application if you apply for a job with us
  • Location information, including IP addresses, social media and any third-party sites you access whilst using National College Australia systems and facilities.

Why does National College Australia collect personal information about students?


As a registered training organisation (RTO), we collect your personal information so we can process and manage your enrolment in a vocational education and training (VET) course with us. If you do not supply the relevant documentation you will not be able to enrol into your qualification. If you have any concerns about any personal information we have asked you to provide, please let us know.

Use of personal information


We use your personal information to enable us to deliver VET courses to you, and otherwise, as needed, to comply with our obligations as an RTO.


National College Australia may use and disclose your personal information to:

 

  • Assess and respond to any enquiry that you send to us
  • Assess and process any application for enrolment you submit to us
  • Support and progress you through your studies
  • Ascertain or confirm your identity and conduct appropriate credit and background checks
  • Communicate with you or your authorised representatives, including any nominated parent or guardian
  • Facilitate any work placements with our customers or business partners
  • Provide our products and services to you, including related information
  • Assist you with your enquiries or to investigate any complaints
  • Improve our service and product delivery to you, such as performing research and analysis or to conduct surveys
  • Administer and manage our business, including the products and services we provide to you and for billing, payments, collection and account purposes which may be via third-party providers
  • Quality assurance and improvement activities, such as internal and external audits
  • Internal and/or statistical analysis and reporting
  • Staff or contractor training 
  • Risk management and management of legal liabilities and claims (for example, liaising with insurers and legal representatives)
  • Obtaining advice from consultants and other professional advisers
  • Assist law enforcement, government agencies and regulatory authorities, responding to subpoenas and other legal orders (as permitted or required by law)

Disclosure of student personal information

National College Australia are required by law (under the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Act 2011 (Cth) (NVETR Act)) to disclose the personal information we collect about you to the National VET Data Collection kept by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research Ltd (NCVER).


The NCVER is responsible for collecting, managing, analysing and communicating research and statistics about the Australian VET sector.


We are also authorised by law (under the NVETR Act) to disclose your personal information to the relevant state or territory training authority.


National College Australia will only use or disclose your personal information with your consent. We may sometimes ask to do this so that our business partners and third-party service providers can promote services, offers, industry updates and any other information we believe will be of interest to you.



This marketing by our business partners and third-party providers can occur via email, SMS, MMS, social media or the National College Australia websites, and may continue after you are no longer a student of National College Australia, until you ‘opt out’ of the communication. You can do this by:


  • following the instructions in the relevant marketing communication to ‘unsubscribe’ or stop receiving the information
  • contacting us and letting us know that you would like to opt out, either of a particular marketing channel or, from all direct marketing communication from us.


International disclosure of personal information by National College Australia


National College Australia does not commonly disclose personal information about our students to overseas recipients. We will only disclose your personal information to overseas recipients with your consent or where an exemption applies under the Australian Privacy Principles, or where we have taken reasonable steps to ensure that the overseas recipient does not breach the Australian Privacy Principles regarding your personal information.

How the NCVER and other bodies handle your personal information


The NCVER will collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information in accordance with the law, including the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act) and the NVETR Act. Your personal information may be used and disclosed by NCVER for purposes that include populating authenticated VET transcripts; administration of VET; facilitation of statistics and research relating to education, including surveys and data linkage; and understanding the VET market.


The NCVER is authorised to disclose information to the Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE), Commonwealth authorities, State and Territory authorities (other than registered training organisations) that deal with matters relating to VET and VET regulators for the purposes of those bodies, including to enable:


  • administration of VET, including program administration, regulation, monitoring and evaluation
  • facilitation of statistics and research relating to education, including surveys and data linkage
  • understanding how the VET market operates, for policy, workforce planning and consumer information.


The NCVER may also disclose personal information to persons engaged by NCVER to conduct research on NCVER’s behalf. The NCVER does not intend to disclose your personal information to any overseas recipients. For more information about how the NCVER will handle your personal information please refer to the NCVER’s Privacy Policy at www.ncver.edu.au/privacy.


If you would like to seek access to or correct your information, in the first instance, please contact your RTO using the contact details listed below.


DESE is authorised by law, including the Privacy Act and the NVETR Act, to collect, use and disclose your personal information to fulfil specified functions and activities. 

For more information about how the DESE will handle your personal information, please refer to the DESE VET Privacy Notice at https://www.dese.gov.au/national-vet-data/vet-privacy-notice.

Accessing and requesting amendment of personal information held by National College Australia


You have the right to request access personal information held about you by National College Australia. To request access to your personal information, please contact us using the contact details contained on the last page of this policy.


National College Australia takes reasonable steps to ensure that any student personal information is accurate, up-to-date and complete. You can help us do this by letting us know if you notice errors or discrepancies in information we hold about you and also by letting us know if any of your personal details change.


If you consider that any personal information we hold about you is inaccurate, out-of-date, incomplete or irrelevant, you have a right to request we correct the information.

Enrolling with National College Australia


When you enrol in a course, you become a ‘student’ with National College Australia. The details you provide at the time of enrolment are entered into the Student Management System (SMS), which is a database containing personal and enrolment information of all of our students. The SMS is kept securely on servers and computer systems located in our Head Office.


Some of your information is collected and held in hard copy documents such as administrative forms. Information which is retained in hard copy is held securely at our premises or in offsite facilities within Australia.


All National College Australia registered Training and Assessors and administration staff will have access to this data.


National College Australia maintain physical security of electronic and hard copy stores, such as locks and security systems at our premises. We also maintain computer and network security by using firewalls, user identifiers and passwords to control access to our computer systems.

Collection of Video Evidence


National College Australia may require students, such as in rural or remote locations and work placement, to provide evidence of demonstration of practical skills in the form of a video. Any video images of people will only be used for the purpose of assessment and will be treated in accordance with this Privacy Policy.


Where a video or photograph requires the appearance of people other than the student, for example, colleagues, carers, and customers, etc. the person(s) must provide prior written or video recorded verbal consent to appear in the video or photograph. Video evidence will be stored securely on the National College Australia computer network for the period of time dictated to all forms of evidence.

Mandatory information provision requirements for Registered Training Organisations (RTOs)


Each year, RTOs are required to provide information to the Australian Quality Skills Authority (ASQA) about their students, courses and training outcomes. National College Australia will collect, store and provide information to ASQA about course registrations, internal data analysis according to the mandatory information provision requirements.


RTOs may also be required to provide information about students to government funding bodies, external auditors or other regulatory agencies.


National College Australia will not share your personal data with any party without your written consent unless compelled to do so by law. This does not apply to National College Australia employee records.

How long will National College Australia hold personal information?


The period for which we hold student personal information and course outcomes is determined by the Standards for Registered Training Organisations 2015 , The Australian Tax Office (ATO) and (where applicable) the conditions of a funding contract.


National College Australia maintains student assessment outcome information for thirty (30) years.

Personal Information on our websites


When accessing the National College Australia website, you can do so anonymously or provide your details using the ‘Enquiry’ section of our website.  Any personal information you provide to National College Australia via our website will be managed in accordance with this Privacy Policy.


National College Australia’s websites uses cookies.  A ‘cookie’ is a small file which is placed on your computer or device when you visit our website.  Cookies allow us to recognise your computer or device and are required to enable our website to function correctly.


When you visit our websites, we use cookies to collect certain information such as your device type, browser type, IP address, date and time of your visits, pages you accessed on our website and on any third-party websites.  In general, this information will only identify your device and will not identify you personally.


We may also place cookies (called ‘persistent’ cookies) on your computer or device.  We and other third-parties use these cookies to display personalised advertisements (or ‘targeted’ advertisements) on websites you visit or social media platforms you use.  For example, if you visit our website you may see advertisements for National College Australia on other websites you visit.  Advertisers can use these cookies to build up a profile of your behaviour online (including websites you visit).


We also use cookies to allow our service providers – such as Google Analytics – to monitor and analyse how users interact with our website.  Details about how Google uses information are available at https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.


You can change the settings on your computer or device to disable cookies (or certain kinds of cookies).  This may affect how our and other websites  function.


You can also ‘opt-out’ of personalised advertisements by visiting Google’s Ad Settings at https://www.google.com/settings/ads.  Websites such as youronlinechoices.com.au also allow you to opt-out of personalised advertisements.  You may also be able to change your settings on websites or social media platforms if you are seeing personalised advertisements.


Our websites may include secure payment facilities to process financial transactions online.  The secure payment facilities are encrypted and maintained by third-party providers. 


Except for our secure payment facilities, our websites do not use encryption or other technologies to ensure the secure transmission of information via the internet.  Users of our websites are encouraged to exercise care in sending personal information via the internet.


Our websites may contain links to third-party websites or applications (apps). These third-party websites or applications themselves may facilitate collection of information by those third parties. National College Australia is not responsible for the content or privacy practices employed by websites or applications that are linked from our websites. You should read the privacy statements associated with those third party websites and applications.


How will student personal information be used on the learning platform?


Student personal data will be stored in our third-party learning platform. Information stored in our learning platform includes:


  • Name
  • Course
  • Workplace supervisor details
  • Assessment outcomes
  • Assessment feedback


All National College Australia registered Training and Assessors and administration staff will have access to this data.

The National College Australia third-party user help desk also has access to the student information such as:


  • Enrolment details
  • Gender
  • Login name
  • Password
  • Online activity


How National College Australia protects student privacy in the assessment process


To ensure we protect the privacy of students during the assessment process, students are required to de-identify documents where they contain information about others which may identify them. De-identifying means removing any information before submitting assessments which might identify another person. Refer to your Assessment Guide located on the learning portal’s course overview for instructions on how to de-identify documents

Concerns about the handling of your personal information?


You have the right to contact National College Australia if you have any questions or concerns about this Privacy Policy or about the way in which your personal information has been used by National College Australia.   You also have the right to make a complaint about any privacy issues to the National College Australia Principal Executive Officer (PEO), using the contact details below.


The Head of Education Operations will initially consider all complaints to determine whether there are any immediate actions which could be taken to resolve the complaint as per the Complaints and Appeals Policy.

How are the changes to this Privacy Policy made?


This Privacy Policy may be reviewed or amended from time to time. You are able to access the most up to date copy of this policy by visiting our website

(www.nationalcollege.edu.au).


Contact Details


The contact details for National College Australia are:


Mail:

 

The Principal Executive Officer

PO Box 7607

BAULKHAM HILLS BC, NSW 2153

Street address:

Building A, Level 2, Suite 211,

20 Lexington Drive,

Norwest Business Park, Bella Vista NSW 2153


Telephone:       1300 83 53 73


Email:                info@nca.edu.au