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Ofsted's Big Listen

Privacy statement and cookie policy

Privacy statement

The data controller for this website is Ofsted.

We apply the General Data Protection Regulation and other UK data protection law when handling any personal information. When we ask you for personal information we will keep to the law, and promise to:

  •     make sure you know why we need it
  •     only ask for what we need, and not to collect too much or irrelevant information
  •     protect it and make sure nobody has access to it who shouldn’t
  •     let you know if we share it with other organisations to give you better public services – and if you can say no
  •     make sure we don’t keep it longer than necessary
  •     not make your personal information available for commercial use without your permission.

To help us to keep your information reliable and up to date, please:

  • provide us with accurate information
  • tell us as soon as possible if there are any changes, such as a new address.

If you are not satisfied

If you feel Ofsted has not kept its promises about the way we handle your personal information, we ask you write to, or email, our Data Protection Officer, Neil Greenwood.

Email: informationrequest@ofsted.gov.uk

or post to:

Information management team
Ofsted
2 Rivergate
Temple Quay
Bristol
BS1 6EH
The Information Commissioner

If you believe that we are not following the law when processing your personal data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Comments and questions

We may pass your enquiries to another government department so they can fulfil your information request.

Email alerts

If you sign up to receive email alerts, we will only send you alerts when a new report is published.

If you ask us to cancel email alerts, we will remove you from our mailing list and your details will be deleted from our records.

Cookies

This website puts small files (known as ‘cookies’) onto your computer to collect information about how you browse the site.

Cookies are used to:

  • measure how you use the website so it can be updated and improved based on your needs​​​​
  • remember the notifications you’ve seen so that we don’t show them to you again.

The cookies from this website aren’t used to identify you personally.

You’ll normally see a message on the site before we store a cookie on your computer.

Find out more about how to manage cookies.

How we use cookies

Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)

We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use this sites. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements.

Google Analytics stores information about:

  • the pages you visit on this website
  • how long you spend on each of our pages
  • how you got to this website
  • what you click on while you’re visiting this website.

We don’t collect or store your personal information (for example your name or address), so this information can’t be used to identify who you are.

We don’t allow Google to use or share our analytics data.

Google Analytics sets the following cookies:

Universal Analytics (Google)

Name

Purpose

Expires

_ga

This helps us count how many people visit this website by tracking if you’ve visited before

2 years

_gid

This helps us count how many people visit this website by tracking if you’ve visited before

24 hours

_gat

Used to manage the rate at which page view requests are made

10 minutes

You can opt out of Google Analytics cookies.

Government services

Most services we link to are run by different government departments. These services may set additional cookies and, if so, will have their own cookies policy.

Cookie notice

We save a cookie that lets us know you have dismissed the cookie notice so that it doesn’t show again the next time you visit the website.

Name

Purpose

Expires

bannerDismissed

Saves a message to let us know you’ve seen and dismissed the cookie notice

Session

Our performance survey

We use Qualaroo software to collect information about how you use the site through short surveys and polls. You can tell us about your satisfaction with our site and help us make improvements.

Name

Purpose

Exipiry

ki_r, ki_s, ki_t, ki_u

We use Qualaroo for the customer satisfaction survey. For more information, please see Qualaroo’s privacy information

5 years

Understanding how you use our website

We use Hotjar software to collect information about how you use the site through heatmaps, recordings, funnels, surveys and polls. We do this to help us make improvements.

Name

Purpose

Expiry

hjClosedSurveyInvites, _hjDonePolls, _hjMinimizedPolls, _hjDoneTestersWidgets_hjMinimizedTestersWidgets, _hjDoneSurveys, _hjIncludedInSample, _hjShownFeedbackMessage

We use Hotjar for the customer satisfaction survey. For more information, please see Hotjar’s privacy information.

365 days

Cookies from other websites

During your visit to this website you may notice some cookies that are not related to the Ofsted website. This happens when you visit a page with content embedded from a third party (for example YouTube videos) or use some of the links to social networking sites (for example Twitter). These websites may place cookies on your computer.

Ofsted does not control how a third party uses their cookies. If you are concerned about this, you should check the third party websites' privacy policies for more information about their cookies.