Privacy Policy - Atlantichouse International School

Last updated: 14 September 2026

Atlantichouse International School ("the School", "we", "us") is committed to protecting the privacy of applicants, students, parents/guardians, staff, and visitors to this website and its Admin, Parent, and Student portals (together, "the Platform"). This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, how it is used and protected, and the choices and rights available to you.

1. Who we are

Atlantichouse International School is the data controller responsible for personal information processed through the Platform. For any privacy question or request, contact us at the School office.

2. Information we collect

We only collect what we need to run the admissions process, deliver school services, and operate the portals securely. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising.

Admissions applications. When you submit the public Apply Now form, we collect the applicant's name, date of birth, gender, grade applied for, and any notes you choose to add; the parent/guardian's name, email, phone number, relationship to the applicant, and home address; and the supporting documents you upload for the grade applied for (which may include a birth certificate, a copy of a government-issued ID, prior school records, and a medical form). Medical information and ID copies are sensitive personal data — we collect them only where required for admission and safeguarding, and access to them is restricted to authorised admissions and school staff.
Portal accounts. Once a student is admitted, the School creates staff, parent, and student portal accounts using the information already on file (name, school-issued or personal email, role). The Platform does not offer public self-registration — accounts are created and managed by the School.
School records. Academic records (grades, attendance, timetables, report cards), e-learning activity (courses, assignments, quiz results, discussion posts), fee and billing records, and staff HR/payroll-adjacent records are entered and maintained by School staff in the course of providing education and administration services.
Technical and security information. Like most websites, our servers automatically log standard technical data (IP address, browser type, pages requested, timestamps) for security, troubleshooting, and abuse prevention. See our Cookie Policy for what we store in the browser itself.

We deliberately do not ask for information we don't need — for example, the Apply Now form does not request national ID/passport numbers, financial account details, or religious or political affiliation.

3. Children's information

Much of what we process is a minor's personal information. It is provided to us by a parent or legal guardian (or by School staff acting on the School's behalf), not collected directly from a child online, and it is processed only for legitimate educational administration and safeguarding purposes — never for marketing or profiling. Parents/guardians remain the point of contact for exercising rights on a minor applicant or student's behalf.

4. Why we process your information

To assess and process admissions applications you submit to us.
To deliver education services — teaching, assessment, reporting, e-learning, and communication with parents/guardians.
To operate the portals securely — authentication, access control, and audit logging.
To meet legal and regulatory obligations — including education record-keeping requirements.
To safeguard students — including using medical information where relevant to a child's care and safety at school.

5. Who we share information with

We do not sell or rent personal information. We share it only where necessary:

School staff who need it to do their jobs (teachers, administrators, bursary/finance staff), governed by role-based access controls within the Platform.
Service providers who process data on our behalf under confidentiality obligations — for example, our hosting provider, and our transactional email delivery provider (used to send account, admissions, and notification emails).
Map display. If the School has configured a campus location, the Contact page loads map tiles from OpenStreetMap's tile servers to display it. Loading those tiles may expose your IP address to OpenStreetMap under its own privacy terms; no account or portal data is sent to them.
Legal and safeguarding obligations — where disclosure is required by law, by a court, or to protect the safety of a student or others.

6. How we protect your information

All traffic to this site is encrypted in transit (HTTPS).
Portal passwords are never stored in plain text.
Login sessions use secure, HTTP-only cookies that cannot be read by page scripts.
Access to student and applicant records is restricted by role — staff only see what their role requires.
Uploaded documents are stored in access-controlled storage, not publicly browsable.

No system is completely immune to risk, but we take reasonable, industry-standard technical and organisational measures to protect personal information against unauthorised access, loss, or misuse.

7. How long we keep information

We retain admissions applications for as long as reasonably needed to process them and for a limited period afterwards in case of appeal or re-application. Enrolled student and academic records are kept for the duration of enrolment and thereafter for as long as required by applicable education record-keeping obligations. You may ask us about the retention period for a specific record at any time using the contact details above.

8. Your rights

Depending on where you are located, you may have rights to access, correct, export, or request deletion of personal information we hold about you, to object to or restrict certain processing, and to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority. This includes rights available under Zimbabwe's Cyber and Data Protection Act, and equivalent rights under other data protection laws (such as the EU/UK GDPR or South Africa's POPIA) where they apply to you. To exercise any of these rights, contact us using the details in Section 1 — we will respond within a reasonable time and may need to verify your identity, or a guardian's authority to act for a minor, before actioning a request.

9. Cookies

The Platform uses only the cookies strictly necessary to keep you securely signed in and to protect forms against forgery — never advertising or cross-site tracking cookies. Full details are in our Cookie Policy.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time — for example, if we start using a new service provider. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page will always reflect the latest version. Material changes affecting how we handle student or applicant data will be communicated to parents/guardians directly.

11. Contact us

Questions about this policy or how your information is handled? Contact the School office.