Last updated 31 December 2025

Privacy statement

Privacy Policy

What is the Purpose of this policy?

BCITO Limited (we or us) is a private enterprise and we are committed to complying with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 (Privacy Act) and any other applicable laws when collecting, using or dealing with any of your personal information.

This policy describes how we collect, hold, use, disclose and maintain your personal information, including any data you may provide to us through our website, official social media channels and learning platforms. It also describes some of your rights in relation to your personal information.

What is personal information?

Personal information is any information about an identifiable individual and so includes your name, date of birth or any information that can be linked back to you as an identifiable individual.

How do we collect personal information?

We collect personal information in a variety of ways. We may collect personal information about you:

whenever you interact with us, either in-person, through technology (for example, by email, phone or through our websites) or by other means (for example, postal mail)
from a third party such as an employer, parent and/or guardian, agents, school professional and other people who may come in contact with BCITO Ltd
from publicly available sources, such as social media
whenever you choose to make personal information available to us, including where you authorise someone else to provide us with your personal information.

How do we use personal information?

We collect personal information for various purposes to carry out our functions and activities as an educational and training institution, a workplace placement provider, and an employer. However, we will only use your personal information for legitimate reasons that are related to our functions and activities.

The purposes that we may use your personal information include:

to help us understand your preferences and interests when you seek to enrol in any of our courses or programmes
to assist you to understand your educational opportunities and the programmes and courses that we have to offer
to communicate with you, your emergency contacts or anyone that you’ve designated to act on your behalf
to provide you with support, guidance and assistance in relation to any of our activities, including pastoral care
to provide a healthy and safe environment
to send you information about programmes or industry information that may be of interest to you, or updates
to arrange and manage block course placement and job matching opportunities
to collect and recover payments, fees and charges
to provide a more tailored and/or relevant service or experience to you
for our marketing and promotional activities
for analysis (including automated analysis) and to create a profile based on your characteristics and interactions, so that we may more efficiently provide tailored and relevant communications to you (including for our marketing and promotional activities)
for helping to determine your eligibility or proficiency for any enrolment (or continued enrolment), grant, scholarship, subsidy, incentive, discount or service
to verify your qualifications, academic credentials, achievements, character or suitability
for immigration and visa purposes, including your right to work or study
for facilitating, arranging, undertaking or assessing any of our educational training, activities or other services
for assigning and providing you with unique identifiers (such as a learner or staff identification number or a ‘user name’) so that we may operate more efficiently
for arranging and undertaking events and other activities, including your participation in those, for example awards and competitions
for assessing your performance and conduct in relation to any educational, training or workplace activity
for assisting with applications and conversations that you’ve had with other organisations
to connect you with our staff, learners and potential employers
for keeping in touch with you after you’ve finished any study or training with us
for the management, administration, functioning and operation of our organisation, including any change or reorganisation to it
for our research and development purposes, such as new initiatives and/or surveys to gain your insights
for our employment, recruitment and reference checking activities
for monitoring and evaluating performance
for storage and safekeeping
for supporting and promoting equity and inclusion
to amalgamate it with other personal information that we have collected or that is made available to us
to investigate and address any complaint, grievance, concern, legal proceedings, any actual or suspected misconduct or breach of our policies or codes of conduct
for compliance with any legal or contractual obligations
to comply with any of our reasonable internal policies, including those related to record-keeping
to comply with any direction or expectation of the New Zealand Government (or any of its agencies)

In circumstances where we need to use your personal information for purposes other than those described (or directly related to the purposes described) we will only do that in accordance with applicable law.

What personal information do we collect?

We may collect the following types of personal information about you:

name, address, gender, date of birth, age
contact details, such as your address, email address, phone number, forum usernames
Iwi
country of residence, location, ethnicity, passport, visa, immigration status
details of your emergency contacts, family members or anyone who you’ve authorised to act on your behalf
language proficiency
national student number
educational records, academic records and assessment grades
employment history and details, achievements, professional qualifications, credentials
information received from reference checks, character references, professional standing, information relating to suitability
memberships and professional affiliations
health and disability information (for the purposes of better understanding your needs)
insurance information (for example, health and travel insurance information that is relevant to field trips, student exchange programmes or if you’re an international learner)
your interests, preferences, behaviours and aspirations
your voice and image (including photographs, film or recordings)
financial information, which may include bank account details (for the purposes of making payments or receiving payments from you), tax information, credit history, donations
your interactions with us, our staff, equipment, premises or technology (such as our systems and websites)
information about your conduct at other educational or training organisations
criminal convictions, where those are relevant to work, study or training. For example, if the Children’s Act 2014 (New Zealand) applies.
anything else that you choose to share with us or that you otherwise make available to us (for example, where you authorise someone else to provide us with personal information)

We might need to collect and ask you to provide a range of personal information about yourself, for the purposes outlined above. What we collect depends on the circumstances. However, any personal information that we collect is always for a legitimate reason that is related to our functions and activities. For example, we don’t sell your personal information to others.

Websites and digital systems

When you interact with our websites or digital systems we may also collect information about you through cookies and third-party technologies such as Google Analytics. This may include:

the IP or internet address of your device, server and browser
your location
search terms, queries and information inputs/outputs
the date, time and length of your visit
your operating system (for example, Windows or Mac)
the pages you view and links clicked
the type of browser and screen resolution you use
websites you visited before or after using our website
any other behaviours or interactions that you have with our website or digital system

Certain features of our websites and digital systems may also be dependent upon us making available certain information that we collect about you, how you interact with our websites and digital systems and the information that you choose to input into them, to third party technology providers. That information will be used in accordance with that third party’s privacy practices. For example, they may use that information for the purposes of making their technology available, providing outputs (that may affect user experience), ensuring quality, security, preventing misuse, bias or offensive content, for further developing and enhancing their technology and to troubleshoot and resolve technical issues.

About cookies

A cookie is a small amount of data that is sent to your browser from a web server and stored on your computer, then sent back to the server by your browser each time you access certain sections of websites and digital technologies. We may make tools available on our websites that allow you to manage your preferences regarding how we use cookies to collect data, including personal information. In addition, many commonly used browsers either contain functionality or permit third party functionality, that allow cookies to be blocked, disabled, limited or deleted. If you wish to do that, please refer to the specifications of your browser.

Other types of information

Circumstances may arise where we need to collect other types of personal information about you. Where that occurs, we will always do so in accordance with the law. We may also separately notify you of that or ask for your permission.

Like many other organisations, when you use our websites and digital technologies, those may automatically collect certain information about you or how you use those technologies. Sometimes these technologies can help us understand you better. That means that we can provide information that is more relevant to you and a better experience. However, we only ever use your personal information for legitimate reasons related to our functions and activities.

Who do we share personal information with?

We will only share your personal information:

for the purpose that it was collected (or a purpose that is directly related to that)
to enforce our legal rights against you, or investigate or defend a claim by you
for any other purpose that you have authorised, and/or
where we are permitted or required to do so by law.

We may share personal information that we collect about you for the purposes described in this Privacy Notice with:

your emergency contacts or anyone that you’ve authorised to act on your behalf
our staff and agents
our related organisations
our insurers, insurance brokers and auditors
our service providers that we have engaged to either provide a service to us or make available a service/tool to you – for example, we may share information about you with a service provider that we have engaged to provide technology services or customer support services, but we will ensure our service providers agree not to use or disclose your personal information except as necessary to provide their services to us
our providers of goods, but only to the extent necessary to enable them to deliver the goods we require
third party online advertisers (such as Google, Meta, TikTok and Snapchat). However, we will only share limited personal information with them so that they can determine whether they’ve a profile for you and to provide more personalised online advertising
your service providers, as needed to facilitate your activities with us (for example, your accommodation providers or insurers in relation to health and travel insurance maintained for field trips, student exchange programmes or where you’re an international learner)
other educational or training institutions, including institutions that you’ve previously attended
your employer or prospective employers
providers of work experience or internships
industry licensing and registration bodies
organisations that undertake moderation, accreditation or quality assurance activities
operators of Authorised Information Matching programmes and the New Zealand Birth register
iwi (if there is an affiliation)
credit checking agencies
medical providers and emergency services
law enforcement agencies
organisations that arrange or host events which you participate
agents that support particular learners though scholarships, payment of fees or other awards (if you are a recipient of one of these awards)
the New Zealand Government and its agencies including the Ministry of Education, Education New Zealand, the Tertiary Education Commission, and the National Student Index.

Where we share your personal information with others, it may be collected, held, used, disclosed and maintained in accordance with their privacy practices.

How long do we store personal information

We only keep your personal information for as long as required for the purpose for which the information may lawfully be used.

How do we store personal information

We may store personal information that we collect:

in digital or non-digital formats (for example, within physical filing systems)
on our premises or outside of our premises
either directly, with our related entities or through our service providers (including service providers that provide physical or digital data storage facilities)
within or outside of New Zealand

Security

We have in place reasonable security safeguards to protect your personal information from loss, unauthorised access, use, modification, disclosure or other misuse as required by the Privacy Act.

Your rights

Under the Privacy Act, you may request access to and correction of your personal information held by us. You may make those requests to our Privacy Officer by emailing Privacy.Officer@bcito.org.nz.

If there is a reason under applicable law for us not to comply with your request, we will notify you in writing setting out the reasons for the refusal (except to the extent it would be unreasonable or unlawful to do so) and advise you of the mechanisms available to you to complain about our response.

For more information about your rights or to make a complaint about our privacy practices, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (New Zealand).

Where we receive information about others from you

If you provide us with personal information about someone else, you must first ensure that you are authorised to disclose that information to us, have notified the individual that their information will be provided to us, and have provided the relevant individual with a copy of this Privacy Policy, so that, we may collect, use and disclose such information for the purposes that it is provided.

Updates to this Privacy Notice

We reserve the right to update this Privacy Notice from time to time. Any change that we make applies from the date that the updated Privacy Policy is posted on our website.

Privacy Concerns or Questions

If you have any concerns regarding your privacy or wish to use your rights of access or correction, please contact us at privacy@bcito.org.nz.

If you are not satisfied with our response to any privacy-related concern you may have, you can contact the Privacy Commissioner.

From time to time, we review and update this Privacy policy to take account of new laws and technology, as well as changes to our operations and practices.