Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Bright Sparks Junior School is a day and boarding kindergarten and primary school at Seguku-Katale, off Entebbe Road, Wakiso District, Kampala, Uganda. We run this website, brightsparksjunior.ac.ug, and we are responsible for the personal information described here.

This policy covers the public website only. Information the school holds about enrolled pupils and their families as part of running the school — registers, reports, health records, fees — is handled under the school’s internal records policy, which parents can request from the school office. Our Parent/Teacher Portal is a separate system with its own sign-in.

We handle personal information in line with the Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019 of Uganda.

2. What we collect, and when

We do not ask visitors to create an account, and we never buy personal information from anyone. Information reaches us only when you choose to send it, in one of the ways below.

When you submit an online application

The application form on our Admissions page asks for the parent or guardian’s name, phone number, email address and occupation; the child’s name; the class and section applied for; the reason for changing school, where that applies; and how you heard about us.

When you press Submit, that information is passed through a form-delivery service called FormSubmit (formsubmit.co), which turns it into an email and sends it to the school office. FormSubmit is operated outside Uganda and handles the message in transit. We do not keep a copy on this website — the application arrives in the school’s email inbox and is worked on from there.

When you email us, or apply for a job

The enquiry buttons and the careers application form on this site do not send anything themselves. They open your own email program with a message ready for you to check and send. Nothing reaches us until you send it, and whatever you include — including any CV or attachment — arrives directly in the school’s email inbox, which is hosted by Google (Gmail).

When you comment on a news article

To leave a comment you give a name and an email address. The name is shown with your comment once it is approved; your email address is never published. Comments are stored in the school’s own WordPress system at brightsparksjunior.ac.ug, which also records the IP address and browser details of whoever posted, as standard protection against spam. Every comment is read by a member of staff before it appears.

When you simply read the site

We keep a count of how our pages are being used. For each page view we record the page address, the website you arrived from, whether you are on a phone, tablet or computer, and a random number that ties together the pages of a single visit.

3. Children’s information

This is a primary school, so we take particular care here.

• We do not ask children for their information. The application form is written for a parent or guardian to complete, and the only detail about a child that it asks for is their name and the class being applied for.
• Photographs of pupils appear in our news and gallery pages. How we obtain permission for these, and how to ask for a picture to be taken down, is set out in our Editorial Policy.
• Comments are moderated before they appear, which is partly to make sure nothing identifying a child is published by mistake.

If you believe a child’s information has reached this website and should not have, please contact the school office and we will remove it promptly.

4. Who else sees it

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising. The only outside parties involved are the services that make the website work:

The Google Maps window on our home page only contacts Google when that page is opened. Google’s handling of what it receives is covered by Google’s own privacy policy. Our Cookies Policy explains this in more detail.

We may also share information where the law requires it, or where it is necessary to protect the safety of a child.

5. How long we keep it

• Applications and enquiries are kept for as long as they are needed to deal with the enquiry. Where a child joins the school, the information becomes part of the pupil’s admission record and is kept under the school’s records policy. Where a child does not join, the school office clears the enquiry from its inbox once it is no longer needed.
• Comments stay published alongside the article for as long as the article remains on the site, unless you ask us to remove yours.
• Visit counts hold nothing that identifies a person, so they are kept as long-term statistics.

6. Your rights

Under the Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2019, you may ask us to:

• Show you what personal information we hold about you or your child.
• Correct anything that is wrong or out of date.
• Delete information we no longer have a good reason to keep — for example, a comment you would rather was not there.
• Stop using it for a particular purpose, where you object to that use.

Write to the school office using the details at the foot of this page and tell us what you would like done. We will not charge you for it, and we will reply as quickly as we can. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to the Personal Data Protection Office of Uganda.

7. Keeping it safe

The whole website is served over an encrypted connection (HTTPS), so anything you type into a form is protected on its way to us. Access to the school’s email and to the Website Manager, where staff publish news, is limited to authorised staff and protected by passwords.

No website can promise perfect security. What we can promise is that if something goes wrong with information we hold, we will tell the people affected and the Personal Data Protection Office as the law requires.

8. Cookies and storage

This site sets no tracking or advertising cookies of its own. It stores one thing in your browser — a note that you have seen and accepted the cookie banner, so that it does not appear again on every page. Cookies may be set by Google Maps if you view the map on our home page.

Our Cookies Policy sets all of this out in full, including how to clear or block what is stored.

9. Changes to this policy

If we change how this website handles personal information, we will update this page and change the date at the top. Where a change is significant, we will say so on the news page rather than leave you to notice it.