Privacy

Who we are

[company name to be added before launch] runs The Teacher Insider and is the controller of your data under UK data protection law. Contact: [email to be added before launch].

What we collect, and why

• Reviews: the school, your ratings and what you wrote, whether you work there now, your role group (teacher, leader or support staff) and the year you left. We record the month a review arrives, not the date or time, which makes it hard to match to anything else you send. Published reviews show your role group only once a school has several reviews, and the year you left as a two-year band. Never your name.
• Questions and answers: what you wrote, the school, whether you say you worked there, and the month it arrived. Only the year is shown.
• Removal codes: after posting you're shown a code, once. We keep only a scrambled version (a hash), which lets us check the code if you use it, but can't be turned back into the code or linked to you.
• Packages you share: school, city and country; role, experience band, contract year and length; salary, currency and months paid; housing, flights, medical, school places and end-of-service benefits; any notes you add; and optionally your household (adults, number of children, bedrooms) and what you pay for rent, food and utilities. We record the month it arrived. Salaries are only ever published as rounded, combined ranges once at least 5 teachers have reported. Living costs will only be published as combined figures for a whole city.
• Your email, if you give it with a package: used to send your free Pro (once Pro launches) and to apply the once-a-year limit. It's kept in a separate table from your package. A random reference links the two only until your reward is sent or your package is declined; then the link is deleted. The person who sends rewards sees only a list of emails, never the packages they came with.
• Reports and complaints: which post, what you tell us, who you are (e.g. a reader or the school), and your name and email if you give them. These are required for some legal complaints, such as defamation. If you report your own post using your removal code, we don't keep your contact details. Used only to deal with your report and as our record of how we handled it. Never shared with the person who wrote the post.
• Founding list: your email, whether you're job-hunting, and optionally your country. We use the email to tell you once when Pro opens, and the other answers to understand who the site is for.
• Technical logs: like every website, our hosting providers record IP addresses, browser details and the pages requested, for a short time, to keep the site running and secure. We don't use them to identify people who post. To stop floods of spam, the site briefly counts submissions per IP address in memory; this is never saved.
• Cookies: only one, for moderators who sign in to the admin area. It's strictly necessary, so it doesn't need consent. Visitors get no cookies, no analytics and no advertising trackers.

If a post mentions you

Reviews, questions and answers are about working at a school, and our guidelines don't allow names or anything that identifies a person. If you think a post identifies you or is unfair to you, use the Report link on it, or email us. You can also ask us to stop using any data about you. We'll weigh that against the interest of teachers in honest information about where they work, and tell you what we decided.

Our legal basis

• Publishing reviews, questions, answers and package ranges, and moderating them: our legitimate interest, and that of teachers, in honest information about international schools. We balance it against the rights of the people involved, which is why we don't publish names or anything that identifies a person, and why everything is checked first.
• Your email for free Pro: to give you the reward you asked for, and our legitimate interest in limiting it to once a year.
• Reports and complaints: to meet our legal obligations to handle them, and our legitimate interest in keeping a record of how we did.
• Founding list: your consent, which you can withdraw at any time by emailing us.

Posts sometimes touch on sensitive matters such as health, or on allegations of wrongdoing. Our guidelines don't allow these about identifiable people, and moderators decline such posts. Declined posts are deleted after twelve months.

Who else handles it

• Supabase stores our database, on servers in London.
• Vercel hosts the website.
• Our email provider carries any emails we send or receive, such as replies to complaints or your free Pro.

Supabase and Vercel are US companies, and some data, such as technical logs, may be handled in the US. Where that happens, it's protected by the safeguards UK law requires: the UK–US data bridge where the provider is certified, or the UK International Data Transfer Addendum.

We don't sell your data, share it with schools or recruiters, or use it for advertising.

If someone asks who wrote a post

We don't ask for a name, email or account to post, so we hold very little that could identify a writer. We'll only release information where the law requires it, for example under a UK court order, and only what's required. Where the law allows, we'll say publicly that we received such a request.

How long we keep it

Deletion happens automatically, every night, on these timings:

• Published reviews, questions, answers and packages: while they're useful to teachers, or until removed.
• Declined or removed posts and declined packages: twelve months after the decision (the time limit for most legal claims about them), then deleted.
• Reports and complaints, including contact details: two years after the report is closed.
• Contributor emails: until the end of the calendar year after the year you shared your package.
• Founding list: until Pro opens and we've emailed you, or until you ask to leave.
• Database backups are kept for a short time by Supabase and then overwritten.

Your rights

You can ask to see, correct or delete your data, object to how we use it, or withdraw consent, by emailing [email to be added before launch]. We'll reply within one month. Because posts aren't linked to you, we can only find yours if you describe it (the school, roughly when, and what it said). The quickest way to take down your own post is the Report link on it with your removal code: see complaints. A removed post is hidden straight away and deleted on the timings above, or sooner if you ask.

If you're unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk), or to the data protection authority where you live.