This page and any pages it links to explains www.instituteforapprenticeships.org, which will be referred to as our website, terms of use. You must agree to these to use our website.
Who we are
Our website is managed by the Institute, a crown non-departmental public body and will be referred to as ‘we’ from now on.
Using our website
You agree to use our website only for lawful purposes. You must also use it in a way that doesn’t infringe the rights of, or restrict or inhibit the use and enjoyment of, this website by anyone else.
We update our website frequently. We may change or remove content us at any time without notice.
Linking to our website
We welcome and encourage other websites to link to our website. You must contact us for permission if you want to either:
Linking from our website
Our website links to websites that are managed by other government departments and agencies, service providers or other organisations. We don’t have any control over the content on these websites.
We are not responsible for:
You agree to release us from any claims or disputes that may come from using these websites.
You should read all terms and conditions, privacy policies and end-user licences that relate to these websites before you use them.
Using our website content
Most content on our website is subject to Crown copyright protection and is published under the Open Government Licence (OGL).
Some content is exempt from the OGL - check the list of exemptions.
Our logo is exempt from the OGL, except when they form an integral part of a document or dataset.
If any content isn’t subject to Crown copyright protection or published under the OGL, we’ll usually credit the author or copyright holder.
You can reproduce content published on our website under the OGL as long as you follow the licence’s conditions.
Contact us if you want to reproduce a piece of content but aren’t sure if it’s covered by Crown copyright or the OGL.
We make content on our website available through feeds for other websites and applications to use. The websites and applications that use our feeds aren’t our products, and they might use versions of our content that have been edited and stored for later use (‘cached’).
We don’t give any guarantees, conditions or warranties about the accuracy or completeness of any content used by these products. We’re not liable for any loss or damage that may come from your use of these products.
The most up to date version of our content will always be on our website.
Disclaimer
While we make every effort to keep our website up to date, we don’t provide any guarantees, conditions or warranties that the information will be:
We publish guidance on matters related to our statutory functions but do not give specific advice on our website. You should get professional or specialist advice before doing anything on the basis of the content.
We’re not liable for any loss or damage that may come from using our website. This includes:
This applies if the loss or damage was foreseeable, arose in the normal course of things or you advised us that it might happen.
This includes (but isn’t limited to) the loss of your:
Requests to remove content
You can ask for content to be removed from our website. We’ll only do this in certain cases, e.g. if it breaches copyright laws, contains sensitive personal data or material that may be considered obscene or defamatory.
Contact us to ask for content to be removed. You’ll need to send us the web address (URL) of the content and explain why you think it should be removed. We’ll reply to let you know whether we’ll remove it.
Information about you and your visits to our website
We collect information about you in accordance with our privacy policy and our cookie policy. By using our website, you agree to us collecting this information and confirm that any data you provide is accurate.
Virus protection
We make every effort to check and test our website for viruses at every stage of production.
You must make sure that the way you use our website doesn’t expose you to the risk of viruses, malicious computer code or other forms of interference which can damage your computer system.
We’re not responsible for any loss, disruption or damage to your data or computer system that might happen when you use our website.
Viruses, hacking and other offences
When using our website, you must not introduce viruses, trojans, worms, logic bombs or any other material that’s malicious or technologically harmful.
You must not try to gain unauthorised access to our website, the server on which it’s stored or any server, computer or database connected to it.
You must not attack our website in any way. This includes denial-of-service attacks.
We’ll report any attacks or attempts to gain unauthorised access to our website to the relevant law enforcement authorities and share information about you with them.
For more information on reporting vulnerabilities please review our Vulnerability Disclosure policy.
Governing law
These terms and conditions are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales.
Any dispute you have which relates to these terms and conditions, or your use of our website (whether it be contractual or non-contractual), will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.
Changes to these terms and conditions
Please check these terms and conditions regularly. We may update them at any time without notice.
You’ll agree to any changes if you continue to use our website after the terms and conditions have been updated.
Instituteforapprenticeships.org is provided by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, a Non-Departmental Public Body.
The Institute is the data controller for pages starting with www.instituteforapprenticeships.org - for example, www.instituteforapprenticeships.org/apprenticeship-standards.
A data controller determines how and why personal data is processed.
What data we collect
We collect certain information or data about you when you use our website.
We collect:
If you create an account for the trailblazer portal or Onboard, we collect:
This data can be viewed by authorised people in the Institute and our suppliers, to:
Where your data is stored
We store your data on secure servers in the European Economic Area (EEA) except for data collected on Cognito Forms and MailChimp which are stored in data centres in the United States.
Data is stored for the following services and purposes:
Keeping your data secure
Sending information over the internet is generally not completely secure, and we can’t guarantee the security of your data while it’s in transit.
Any data you send is at your own risk.
We have procedures and security features in place to keep your data secure once we receive it.
Disclosing your information
We may pass on your personal information if we have a legal obligation to do so, or if we have to enforce or apply our terms of use and other agreements. This may include exchanging information with other government departments for legal reasons.
We won’t share your information with any other organisations for marketing, market research or commercial purposes, and we don’t pass on your details to other websites, with the exception of being a named contact for a trailblazer group.
Your rights
You can find out what information we hold about you, and ask us not to use any of the information we collect.
If you’ve signed up for our newsletters, you can unsubscribe or change your settings at any time.
If you’ve created an account for the trailblazer portal or onboard, you can delete your account and your personal information at any time. Personal information associated with the deleted account will be removed from our systems. To delete your account, please contact the IFATE.
You can read more about your rights in our Personal Information Charter.
Links to other websites
Our website contains links to other websites.
This privacy policy only applies to our website, and doesn’t cover other government services and transactions that we link to.
Following a link to another website
If you go to another website from this one, read the privacy policy on that website to find out what it does with your information.
Following a link to our website from another website
If you come to our website from another website, we may receive information from the other website. You should read the privacy policy of the website you came from to find out more about this.
Contact us
The Institute’s Data Protection Officer (DPO) is Elizabeth Youard.
If you want to view your personal data, you should make a ‘subject access request’. If you want more information about how we process your personal data or have any questions or concerns relating to your data, then please contact the data protection officer using the following email address: Enquiries.IFA@education.gov.uk.
Changes to this policy
We may change this privacy policy. In that case, the ‘last updated' date at the bottom of this page will also change. Any changes to this privacy policy will apply to you and your data immediately.
If these changes affect how your personal data is processed, we will take reasonable steps to let you know.
Last updated 19 May 2022
Our website puts small files (known as ‘cookies’) onto your computer to collect information about how you browse the site.
Cookies are used to:
Our website cookies 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 cookies are used on our website
| Cookie name | Purpose | Expiry | |
|---|---|---|---|
| CookieNoticeAcknoledged | Set by us when a user closes the cookie message to ensure it isn't needlessly displayed again. | 12 months | |
| ARRAffinity |
A Microsoft Azure cookie, which looks to ensure all traffic is sent to the correct server for each request (commonly used for load balancing, but not in use here). |
Session (until browser window closed) | |
| AI_Session, and AI_User | Both used for Azure Application Insights, server and performance monitoring to ensure we can keep an eye on the site performance and any issues that may arise. Currently in the testing environment - could be disabled for production but we would recommend it stays in place if possible. | 12 months | |
| __RequestVerificationToken |
This is in place to mitigate against CSRF attacks (cross-site request forgery), to ensure that when forms are submitted, they are being sent from the same location that loaded the page, and not from a 3rd party location. |
Session (until browser window closed) | |
| XSRF-Token/XSRF-V |
Used if a user is on a page with a form. |
Session (until browser window closed) |
Measuring website usage (Google Analytics)
We use Google Analytics software to collect information about how you use our website. We do this to help make sure the site is meeting the needs of its users and to help us make improvements, for example improving site search.
Google Analytics stores information about:
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:
| Cookie name | Purpose | Expiry |
|---|---|---|
| _ga | This helps us count how many people visit our website by tracking if you’ve visited before | 12 months |
| _gid | This helps us count how many people visit our website by tracking if you’ve visited before | 1 day |