PRIVACY POLICY

By using our site you accept the terms of our privacy policy below.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, and protect your personal data, and your rights under UK data protection law, including the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018.

For the purposes of data protection law, EIS is the data controller.

What information do we collect about you?

We collect personal information about you when you:

join the EIS as a member;
register to use the member section of our website;
update your membership record;
complete member surveys; and
provide feedback on one of our online forms.

The information we collect includes:

your name;
date of birth;
address;
contact details;
employer;
place of work;
bank or building society details;
National Insurance number; and
trade union membership.

We also collect information regarding protected characteristics for the purpose of monitoring equality and diversity.

Most of the information we collect about you is provided by you. We collect information on how you use our website using cookies.

How will we use the information about you?

The EIS uses your personal information to assist us in providing an effective and supportive trade union service. We only process your data where we have a lawful basis:

Purpose	Explanation
Managing membership and providing union services.	Processing your application and registering you as an EIS member, probationer or student teacher. Registering you to access the EIS member section. Monitoring your subscription payments. Informing you of trade union activities.
Providing representation and support	Gathering and maintaining documentation in support of employment disputes, casework and personal injury claims as set out in the EIS Case Handling Protocol. Communication with you and third parties (as authorised by you) including employers, solicitors and medical practitioners.
Communicating union activities and campaigns	To provide details of union benefits and activities. Statutory communications and ballot information.
Courses and Events	We collect your contact details to record course attendance. We will process your data for the purposes of booking events which may also include any dietary, access or other special requirements you notify us of.
Sending publications (e.g. SEJ and member diary)	To provide you with member publications.

What is our lawful basis for processing information about you?

We process your personal data on the following lawful basis:

Article 6(1)(b) – Processing is necessary for the performance of a contract (e.g. managing your membership and providing union services)
Article 6(1)(f) – Legitimate interests (e.g. communicating union activities, providing support and representation).

Where we process special category data (such as trade union membership and equality data), we rely on:

Article 9(2)(d) – Processing carried out in the course of our legitimate activities as a trade union
Article 9(2)(g) – Processing necessary for reasons of substantial public interest (e.g. equality monitoring), in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018.

Where appropriate, we may also rely on your consent, which can be withdrawn at any time.

Who has access to your personal information?

The information you provide to us can be accessed by our employees who are authorised to access our membership database. Local Association Secretaries, Local Association staff, FELA and ULA Branch Secretaries and school reps also have limited access to our membership database.

When necessary for operational purposes, we may also securely share your information with third parties, for example:

Logistics/fulfilment providers, in order to post the SEJ magazine and other communications to you.
Our external solicitors.
Our external auditors, who have a statutory right to view all data held by the Institute.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC), for the purpose of administering, delivering and managing education, training and development courses available to EIS members.
Scottish Public Pensions Agency.
EIS Benevolent Fund.

We only ever share the information which is necessary to achieve the operational purpose.

How do you protect my data?

Any information sent to the EIS is protected using robust industry-standard security methods ensuring data is safeguarded whilst being sent over unprotected communications paths such as the internet. When it reaches us, we store it securely and only provide access to those authorised. Although we safeguard your personal information once received, the EIS cannot guarantee the safety of any personal information whilst it is in transit to us.

Our security measures include:

EV SSL certificate to provide a maximum secure internet connection
Industry standard Next-Gen firewalls
Encryption of data where appropriate
Penetration testing of systems
Internal policies setting out our data security approach
Training for employees on security and privacy

How long do we retain your information?

We will only keep your personal data for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes we collected it for, including for the purposes of satisfying any legal, auditing, or reporting requirements.

We retain membership data for the duration of your membership. We will delete your record 2 years from the point your membership is cancelled. After that period, we shall retain only sufficient data to enable us to evidence your part-membership of the Institute, for the purpose of validating any post-membership entitlements.

Casework data is retained for 7 years after the final closure of the case.

Your rights

You have a number of rights with regards to your personal data. You have the right to:

access your personal data;
rectification or erasure of your personal data;
request that processing is restricted;
object to processing;
as well as in certain circumstances the right to data portability.

If you have provided consent for the processing of your data, you have the right (in certain circumstances) to withdraw that consent at any time which will not affect the lawfulness of the processing before your consent was withdrawn.

Complaints

If you consider that the Institute has infringed data protection legislation because of the manner in which your personal information has been handled, you are entitled to make a Data Protection Complaint.

Data Protection Complaints may be in relation to matters including the handling of Subject Access Requests, data security measures, and/or how personal data has been collected or maintained by us.

Data Protection Complaints should be submitted to the Data Protection Officer by post, email (dataprotection@eis.org.uk) or by telephone.

Finally, you have the right to lodge a complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office if you believe that we have not complied with the requirements of GDPR with regard to your personal data.

Cookies are text files placed on your computer to collect standard internet log information and visitor behaviour information. This information is used to track visitor use of the website and to compile statistical reports on website activity.

For further information visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

You can set your browser not to accept cookies and the above websites tell you how to remove cookies from your browser. However, in a few cases some of our website features may not function as a result.

Other websites

Our website contains links to other websites. This privacy policy only applies to this website so when you link to other websites you should read their own privacy policies.

Changes to our privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and we will place any updates on this web page. This privacy policy was last updated on 8 July 2026.

How to contact us

Please contact us if you have any questions about our privacy policy or information we hold about you:

Email: membership@eis.org.uk

Post: The Educational Institute of Scotland, 46 Moray Place, Edinburgh, EH3 6BH.

Tel: 0131 220 2268