Aim: BSC Education Ltd (‘the Company’) is committed to protecting the rights and freedoms of data subjects and safely and securely processing their data in accordance with all of our legal obligations. We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy and this Policy sets out the basis on which we use Cookies and to fully inform visitors of our website of their rights.

Purpose: This policy sets out how we seek to ensure that all visitors to our website understand how we use cookies and what individual rights you have in relation to your data and how to make changes to our Cookies usage.

Scope: This policy applies to all visitors to our Company website www.british-study.com, who should make themselves familiar with this policy and its terms prior to accepting use of our Cookies.

Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your data and how we will treat it. By visiting our websites and accepting our Cookies, you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.

This policy supplements our other policies relating to our website usage and GDPR. The Company reserves the right to supplement or amend this policy by additional policies and guidelines from time to time.

Owner: Our appointed Data Protection Officer (DPO) has overall responsibility for this policy, in conjunction with our Head of Marketing. Please contact our DPO or Head of Marketing for further information about this policy if necessary. The Data Controller is BSC Education Ltd.

Website visitor experience

British Study Centres wish all visitors to our websites to have a personal experience with us. By delivering a customised service to our website visitors, it means that we are able show you information which is more relevant to your interests and ensure that we deal with your data in an appropriate manner considering your age. It also means that missing information can be highlighted to us, and lead us to create information to
benefit other visitors in future.

Our websites use cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our websites and also allows us to improve our site.

What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer and/or mobile device, if you agree. Cookies contain identifiable data to help us recognise your device.

Cookies are useful for providing us with information such as:

  • Whether you have used our website before
  • How long you spend looking at one page on our website
  • What you have looked at on our website

There are different types of Cookies which have varying lifespans.

  • Session or temporary cookies: these cookies expire when you close your browser or when the session times out.
  • Persistent or permanent cookies: these are usually stored on your hard disk, survive across multiple sessions and have a longer expiration date.

Cookies can also be owned by a first party or third party. First party cookies are cookies set by a website the user visits. Third party cookies, are cookies that are set by a domain other than the website being visited by the user. For example, if a user visits a website and a separate company sets a cookie through that website this would be a third party cookie.

Cookies are commonly used by numerous websites, for the guidance of this Policy we define the term ‘Cookie’ to refer to cookies and similar technologies covered by the GDPR and Data Act. This could include, for example, Local Shared Objects (commonly referred to as “Flash Cookies”), web beacons or bugs (including transparent or clear GIFs).

What cookies we use

We use the following cookies:

  • Strictly necessary cookies: These are cookies that are required for the operation of our website. They include, for example, cookies that enable you to log into secure areas of our website, use a shopping cart or make use of e-billing services.
  • Performance / analytical cookies: They allow us to recognise and count the number of visitors and to see how visitors move around our website when they are using it. This helps us to improve the way our website works, for example, by ensuring that users are finding what they are looking for easily.
  • Functionality cookies: These are used to recognise you when you return to our website. This enables us to personalise our content for you, greet you by name and remember your preferences (for example, your choice of language or region).
  • Targeting cookies: These cookies record your visit to our website, the pages you have visited and the links you have followed. We will use this information to make our website and the advertising displayed on it more relevant to your interests. We may also share this information with third parties for this purpose.

Our website contains third party cookies from external suppliers, such as Google, Facebook and LiveChat, which provide us with extra website functionality; information to improve our website; and to inform our online advertising campaigns and strategies. An example of this could be how to direct traffic to our website.

Please note that third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical / performance cookies or targeting cookies. Please check the relevant third party website and Cookies Policy for more information.

You can find more information about the cookies we use and the purposes for which we use them in the table below:

First party cookies

Company Classification Expiry Purpose
BSC Education Ltd Strictly necessary Session Preserves user session state across page requests.
BSC Education Ltd Functionality Persistent Allows to store user preferences, e.g. acceptance of this Cookie Policy, interface language, etc.

Third party cookies

Company Classification Expiry Purpose
Cloudflare Strictly necessary Persistent Used by the content network to identify trusted web traffic.
DoubleClick Targeting Persistent Allows to measure advertising performance.
Facebook Targeting Persistent Allows to measure advertising performance.
Feefo Functionality Persistent Provides user review functionality.
Google Performance Persistent Allows to measure web performance.
LiveChat Functionality Persistent Provides online chat functionality.
Microsoft Targeting Persistent Allows to measure advertising performance.
New Relic Performance Persistent Used to provide real-time performance data.
Wisepops Targeting Persistent Used for Wisepops advertising platform popups.
Yandex Performance Persistent Allows to measure web performance.
YouTube Targeting Persistent Allows to keep statistics of what videos from YouTube the user has seen.

Controlling or deleting cookies

Some website visitors may be unaware of how they accept and consent to cookies. When a user visits our websites, a banner appears at the bottom of the website page that informs the user about the purpose of our cookies, refers to this Policy for full details, and provides a ‘Continue browsing’ button that makes the banner disappear.

The cookies mentioned in the table in section 3 of this Policy are downloaded onto the device the user is using to access the website. The cookies will remain on the user’s device until the expiry time outlined within each cookie’s file settings.

Should you wish to remove the cookies from your device at any time, this action is called ‘blocking a cookie(s)’. You can block cookies by:

  • Activating the setting on your browser that allows you to refuse the setting of all or some cookies.
  • Removing selected cookie(s) via your browser’s privacy and security settings

If you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site, as some cookies as essential for us to fulfil our regulations and for us to deliver a service to you.

Contact us

British Study Centres is committed to providing transparent information on the use of its Cookies. If you require any further information regarding this Policy, please contact our Data Protection Officer or Head of Marketing.

Last Updated: September 2021