We are committed to meeting your expectations and will comply with all applicable privacy and data protection legislation in relation to your Personal Information and Sensitive Information.
We know you love the small print, but here’s a summary of how we protect your privacy:
The rest of this policy provides you with more detail of our Privacy and Personal Information handling practices.
Definitions of terms referred to in this Policy can be found in the ‘Glossary’ at the end of this document.
IELTS Australia Pty Ltd is a subsidiary of IDP Education Limited. You can find the IDP Group privacy policy here:
https://www.idp.com/global/privacy-policy/
IELTS Australia
Level 8
535 Bourke Street
MELBOURNE 3000
Victoria
Australia
Contact our DPO or Privacy Officer via email to: privacyofficer@idp.com
We will endeavour to respond to you within a reasonable time.
Collection of Personal Information by IELTS Australia allows us to:
IELTS test centres operate in more than 140 countries, across Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, North America, South America, Africa and the Middle East. IELTS Australia operates and manages some of these IELTS test centres and the British Council operates and manages others, to which you may be referred.
IELTS Australia is a joint Data Controller with the other IELTS Owners (British Council, IDP Education and Cambridge Assessment English) for the purposes of conducting the IELTS Test.
If you apply to take, or have taken, an IELTS Test we will collect personal details such as name, postal and email addresses, date of birth, gender, contact details, languages, country of nationality, residency status, education qualifications, national identity card number, passport details, employment history occupation, information required for visa application and professional memberships.
This will include copies of documents you provide to us as proof of identity – e.g. copies of your passport or national identity card, proof of citizenship or photographs of you when you apply to sit the IELTS test.
We will also hold results achieved by you.
We may also hold Sensitive Information about you including:
An IELTS Owner may share any relevant information from your IELTS application or test with the other IELTS Owners for purposes such as administering the IELTS test, reviewing IELTS test results for statistical and fraud detection purposes, or accommodating changes in your preference as to test centre location;
You can refer to the privacy policies for them by following these links:
The British Council’s is found at:
http://www.britishcouncil.org/privacy-cookies/data-protection
Cambridge Assessment English ’s is found at:
http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/footer/data-protection/
The IELTS Privacy Policy and the Test Terms and Conditions provide more details on Privacy and Personal Information handling practices related to IELTS Testing.
https://www.ielts.org/policy/privacy-policy
We provide services to support you in preparing to take the IELTS test including support tools, practice tests, seminars and IDP Masterclasses.
Collection of your Personal Information allows us to:
Other ways you may deal with IELTS Australia include:
We will provide specific notice at the point your information is collected. Any unsolicited personal information will be securely destroyed.
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 contained in a Commonwealth record.
If we collect your information for IELTS testing or test preparation purposes, we will retain it for up to 3 years after taking the IELTS test or participating in the service, or after your last activity with us.
Finger scan data is only retained as a binary large object file for 60 days after your test date.
We may also retain certain records for other legitimate reasons (including after your relationship with the IELTS Owner(s) has ended), for example to resolve any potential disputes, to comply with other reporting and retention obligations, or for the prevention of fraud.
We will only collect your 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 representative 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 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.
Information disclosed by us to overseas recipients for the purposes of providing IELTS Testing services to you may be transferred offshore to the other IELTS Owners (British Council and Cambridge Assessment English). These recipients are United Kingdom based entities, subject to the Data Protection Act (UK). Where we transfer data to offshore recipients, the data is subject to use restrictions and safeguards against unauthorised access.
Some IELTS Australia IT systems and data are hosted on servers in countries outside Australia or the UK and we may send your information to one of those servers as part of our business.
IELTS Australia may hold or transfer the data we collect in or to the following countries (in addition to your home country):
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. IELTS Australia 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.
You have the right to seek access to any of your Personal Information held by us unless there is a valid reason under the Privacy Act or Data Protection Act for us to withhold the information.
Valid reasons include:
If your personal details change, or you believe the information we hold about you is incorrect, incomplete or out-of-date, please contact us so that we can correct our records.
At your request, we will remove all the data we have for you which we are not required legally to retain.
You have the right to restrict processing when you have exercised one of the above rights and it may take some time to process that request. For example: when you contact us to update your details you have the right to request restriction until your details are being updated.
For the processing activities where we have asked you for consent, you have the right to withdraw this consent at any point by unsubscribing from a message from us, or by contacting privacyofficer@idp.com.
You can object to the processing of your personal data.
None of our processing activities are purely automated and no decisions are made without human intervention. There are instances where we process data to analyse or predict behaviour but we will ask you for explicit consent when this processing will involve your personal data.
If you have provided us with your personal data with consent or under the contact obligations, you have the right to request the data you have provided to us in a machine-readable format should you decide to move to another data controller.
Requests for access or correction to your Personal Information or other privacy rights described above should be addressed to The IDP Privacy Officer by emailing privacyofficer@idp.com. All requests will be responded to in writing within a reasonable period of time. As part of this process we will verify the identity of the individual requesting the information prior to providing access or making any changes. If we cannot fulfil your request, we will respond provide you with an explanation.
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 privacyofficer@idp.com.
If you fell we have intruded on your privacy or misused your data, you are able to complain.
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s (OAIC) website at www.oaic.gov.au
The contact details for the OAIC are:
Office address: Level 3, 175 Pitt Street, Sydney 2000
Postal address (Sydney): GPO Box 5218 Sydney NSW 2001
Postal address (Canberra): GPO Box 2999 Canberra ACT 2601
Phone: 1300 363 992
Fax: + 61 2 9284 9666
Email: enquiries@oaic.gov.au
Information Commissioners Office
This version of the policy was published on 29 August 2018. From time to time we may update this privacy policy. We encourage you to take the time to review it any time you provide us with personal information.
We aim for there to be ‘no surprises’ in our dealings with your personal information. If we make significant changes to the policy and we have your email address, we will send you an email information you of these changes, how they may impact you, and remind you of your privacy rights.
1. Applicable Privacy laws means:
2. IDP refers to IDP Education Limited (ACN 117 676 463).
3. GDPR means the European General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679;
4. IELTS refers to the International English Language Testing System.
5. IELTS Australia refers to IELTS Australia Pty Ltd (ACN 008 664 766) which is a subsidiary of IDP.
6. IELTS Owners refers to the British Council, Cambridge Assessment English and IDP Education Ltd (through its subsidiary IELTS Australia Pty Ltd), who together own the IELTS test. The British Council and Cambridge Assessment English are United Kingdom based entities.
7. 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.
8. Privacy Act means the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
9. 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.
