At GCS Education, we understand that your privacy is important to you. We are committed to meeting your expectations and we will comply with all applicable privacy and data protection legislation in relation to your personal information and sensitive information.

Here’s a summary of how we protect your privacy:

• 1. We only collect what we need to help you with your request or provide you with information that you ask for, personalizing it to your interests.
• 2. We won’t hang on to your information. If we don’t need it, and you don’t want us to keep it, we’ll delete it.
• 3. We want you to understand everything we do with your information, so we’ll try our best to explain with no nonsense.
• 4. No surprises — you decide what and how you hear from us.
• 5. That goes for everyone. We do not pass your information to third parties for marketing purposes without your knowledge.
The rest of this policy provides you with more detail of our privacy and personal information handling practices.

Who We Are

We are a trusted education body, specializing in A Level Foundation, Undergraduate, Postgraduate and PhD programs.

We represent many world leading Institutions, Colleges, and Universities offering various courses at Undergraduate, Postgraduate Diploma/Degrees and Research in Life Sciences, Business,Management, Finance and Engineering mainly in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, Germany, Holland, Mauritius etc.

International Education Information, Advice and Counselling

The services we offer to help you study abroad include counselling, application assistance, visa assistance, English language test registration, student exhibitions and seminars.

If you register on our website: www.gcseducation.com/apply or register to participate in an event we will collect personal information such as your name, email address, contact details, country of residence, nationality, preferred study destination, and when you intend to study.

If you enquire about study opportunities directly with an GCS Education counsellor, or we assist you with your application to study, we may also request additional information such as education qualifications, employment history, occupation, areas of interest and professional membership, copies of documents as proof of identity – e.g. copies of passport, proof of citizenship or photographs, marital status and how you will fund your studies.

Collecting your personal information allows us to:

• 1. assist you to pursue the opportunity to undertake studies in an education institution outside your home country;
• 2. provide you with relevant information on your study options;
• 3. present you as a candidate to your preferred institutions across all education sectors, which are seeking to recruit international students who want to study in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Canada, Germany, Holland, Mauritius etc
• 4. assist you to further your career after completing your studies at an overseas education institution;
• 5. provide opportunities to provide feedback and testimonials on your experience
• 6. conduct research for statistical, analytical and training purposes;
• 7. manage our internal business operations and events; and
• 8. respond to your questions.

Visa Application Services

We provide visa application services including guiding you through the application process and helping you prepare the necessary documents for your visa application.

Collection of your personal information and sensitive information (such as information from your medical examination) allows us to:

• 1. assist you in your application for a student visa
• 2. keep you updated with the progress of your visa application and advise you of the outcome of your application.

Retention

GCS Education’s vision is to build a global community of connected students from classroom to career. This means we would like to stay in touch for as long as you would like to hear from us, but we will only retain your information as long as is necessary for the purpose it was given to us. As a guide we will keep your personal information for up to 7 years after commencing your studies or your last activity with us so that we can continue to support you through your journey, unless required to retain it for legal or regulatory purposes

TOEFL stands for Test of English as a Foreign Language. The test is designed to measure the English Proficiency of non-English speaking people. We make IELTS, TOEFL and PTE registration easier in Nigeria for our clients who need an urgent TOEFL Registration in other to meet up with their TOEFL TEST score wherever they are within 24 hours either by visiting our office or by registering online.

In your dealings with us for conferences and events

GCS Education organises various events and conferences related to international education and English language teaching and assessment which may be managed or presented by GCS Education, whether in our own right, or under contract for another organisation. The information we collect is relevant to your attendance and participation.

In registering for, or participating in an event we collect your personal details such as name, email addresses, date of birth, contact details, residency status, education qualifications, employment history, occupation, areas of interest and professional memberships. Collection of your personal information allows us to:

• 1. register you to attend the event;
• 2. respond to enquiries from you pre and post the event;
• 3. keep you informed about the event you registered for and/or future events
• 4. manage our operations for the event, including the fulfilment of any legal requirements;
• 5. collect customer views on our services with a view to developing new and/or improved services;
• 6. obtain website usage data to monitor our website performance; and

We will only collect personal information by lawful and fair means. Personal information may be collected directly from you or your authorised representative, or may be collected from a third party such as a licensee or re presentative authorised by us to provide services to you. You may supply your personal information to us when communicating with us via social networks and other online channels, e.g. through your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter identity.

We do not collect personal and sensitive information unless the information is reasonably necessary for our business functions or activities. We will obtain your consent before collecting any sensitive information. When you deal with us, you will need to identify yourself in order for us to provide our services to you, as such we do not accept the use of pseudonyms. If you access our websites, we may collect additional personal information about you in the form of your IP address and/or domain name. For more details please see our Website Cookie Policy for further information.

We will use or disclose your personal information only for the purposes for which it was collected. We will use or disclose your information for another purpose only if you have consented, or if you would reasonably expect us to do so or as required by law. We may use your personal information for the purposes of our own direct marketing, however we will ensure you have the ability to opt out of future such communications.

Disclosure to others

We may disclose your personal information to overseas recipients such as education institutions located outside your home country, overseas visa agencies, professional bodies and commercial organisations, or regulatory authorities when you have sought our assistance to apply for study at those institutions or where disclosure is required for verification purposes. As such, the location of these overseas recipients would depend on the specific institutions to which you apply or where such verification is required.

GCS Education may hold or transfer the data we collect in or to the following countries (in addition to your home country):

• 1. Australia
• 2. Canada
• 3. Ireland
• 4. Germany
• 5. Holland
• 6. Mauritius
• 7. UK
• Etc.

This information is stored and accessed only as required to provide our services to you. Where we transfer data to offshore servers, the data is subject to use restrictions and safeguards against unauthorised access.

The information disclosed to overseas recipients consists of any information you have given us to provide the relevant services. By accepting services from us, you consent to us providing your personal information to the relevant overseas recipient as mentioned above. IDP takes appropriate steps to ensure there are adequate safeguards in place for the transfer of your personal information including standard protection clauses in our contracts and an IDP Group Data Transfer agreement.

We take reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect the personal information we hold against interference, loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure, and other misuse.

The steps we take include:

• 1. maintenance of computer technology, people and process-based security measures for example firewalls, network security configurations, encryption, use of passwords and other appropriate measures where information is held in electronic form;
• 2. regular updates to security systems and configurations to protect our systems from malicious activity;
• 3. restriction of access to data to only those staff that need access to carry out our business activities;
• 4. training and ensuring that all our employees are required, as a condition of employment, to treat personal information held by us as confidential.

However, you should be aware that if you submit information to us electronically the internet is not a secure environment. We take reasonable steps to provide a secure channel for receiving information but cannot absolutely protect personal information before it reaches us.

Retention

When the personal information that we collect is no longer required, we will destroy, delete it in a secure manner, or ensure that the information is de-identified in accordance with our information destruction and de-identification policy, unless we are required by law to retain a copy of the personal information or the information is ntained in a Commonwealth record.

We have procedures in place to deal with your inquiries or complaints. If you have any questions about our policy or any complaint regarding the treatment of your privacy by us, please contact info@gcseducation.com

• 1. GCS stands for Gateway Career Services
• 2. IELTS refers to the International English Language Testing System.
• 3. Personal information means information or an opinion about an identified individual, or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether the information or opinion is true or not, and whether the information or opinion is recorded in a material form or not.
• 4. Sensitive information includes information or an opinion about an individual’s racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, membership of a professional or trade association or criminal record that is also personal information, or health information about an individual, or biometric information used for the purpose of automated biometric verification or identification, or biometric templates.
• 5. “We”, “us” and “our” refers to members of the GCS Education Team.