You are here

NZCER Assist - Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

NZCER Assist Terms and Conditions

  1. Application:  These terms and conditions ("Terms"), as well as our Privacy Policy (see below) apply to any person who uses ("you") the NZCER Assist platform (the "Platform") and its associated services and products.  By creating an account and using the Platform and its associated services and products, you agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy and if you are agreeing to these Terms and Privacy Policy on behalf of an organisation, entity or other person, you warrant that you are authorised to agree to these on such organisation, entity or other person's behalf.  Please read this information carefully.
  2. Who we are:  The Platform is operated by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (referred to in these Terms as "we" "us" and "our"). You can contact us at assessmentservices@nzcer.org.nz.
  3. The Platform:  When you create an account for the Platform, you may have the option to purchase a range of services and products to suit your school or organisation.  The types of services and products that apply to you will differ depending on what you select through your account and/or the permissions that your school or organisation have assigned to you.  You can manage your selections via the Platform and we may change the services and products offered from time to time.  When you select different services and products through the Platform, we will tell you any extra terms that may apply on top of these Terms (and you must comply with these). 
  4. Third party providers:  We may have arrangements with third parties to provide certain services and products offered through the Platform. Where a third party provider is involved in providing certain services or products, different or additional terms may apply.  Please ask the third party provider for more details.  We are not liable to you for any services or products you utilise from these third parties and your use of those products or services is between you and the relevant supplier.
  5. Fees and payment:  Generally speaking, in order to use the Platform, you will pay an annual subscription fee, as well as any fees that apply to the products or services that you order through the Platform.  Some services and products on the Platform are provided on a free of charge basis. You will be informed of the subscription fee when you register to use the Platform, and the fees that apply to a product or service, when you are ordering and/or signing up to use that product or service. Unless otherwise stated, all fees listed include GST. Payment of fees will be due within 21 days of receipt of an invoice. 
  6. Cancelling all or part of a subscription:  Within 10 working days from the time of signing up to your subscription of the Platform, you may cancel your subscription by giving us written notice within those 10 working days. If you sign up to any additional products or services in addition to your general subscription, you may cancel those additional products or services within 10 working days from the time of first signing up to such products or services by giving us written notice within those 10 working days.  If you cancel within these timeframes, we will cancel your subscription and/or additional products or services (as applicable) and you will not be required to pay for the applicable subscription fee and/or other applicable fees for products and services ordered through the Platform that your cancellation relates to.  If notice of cancellation is not provided within 10 working days, you will be invoiced for the entire annual subscription fee and/or any other applicable fees for products and services ordered through the Platform.  
  7. We may cancel a subscription:  We may cancel all or part of your subscription to the Platform at any time by giving notice to you if we or the relevant third party service provider cannot offer a product or service to you for any reason (eg because of availability).  If we cancel all or part of your subscription, we will refund your payment for the subscription and for any products or services ordered through the Platform (unless cancellation is due to an issue with your payment for the subscription, including due to any credit issues, or as otherwise provided for under clause 15 below).
  8. Changes:  We may make changes to the Platform (including associated services and products), the price of the subscription and/or the price of any products or services and/or these Terms from time to time.  We may also cancel or phase out certain products or services.  We will give you advance notice of:
  • (a) any changes to these Terms that apply to you;
  • (b) any increase to your ongoing fees that apply to you (we will try to give at least 30 days' notice of this); and
  • (c) any major change we make to the Platform, products or services, where we think the change may have a negative impact on a significant portion of affected users (we will try to give at least 30 days' notice of this, where practicable).

We may not give notice of changes that happen in the ordinary course of things, such as changes to our products and services (which happens all the time as our rights, relationships, and user interests change), or changes that we think will have a neutral or positive impact on affected users.

  1. Notice:  Where we notify you of changes, we may do so by emailing you and/or publishing the change on the Platform.  If you are unhappy with any change we have made, you may choose to disable your account as described in clause 14 and stop using the Platform and our products and services.
  2. Content and Intellectual Property:  All intellectual property and other rights in the Platform, associated products and services, and any content included on the Platform and in those products and services, are owned by us or our licensors.  Provided that you comply with these Terms and other applicable laws, we grant you a limited, non-transferable and revocable licence to use the content that we have made available to you via the Platform, in the manner that such content is provided to you, for educational and teaching purposes only for your school or organisation that your subscription of the Platform is registered to.  This includes the limited ability to save an electronic copy and/or print out such content for your own information and for teaching purposes at your school or organisation (as applicable) provided that you do not modify the copy in any way, send the copy to any unauthorised person, use such copy for any purposes other than for educational and teaching purposes, and that you maintain the copyright notice "© NZCER, Wellington, New Zealand" on that copy.  We do not grant you any other licence to our content and intellectual property and this licence will come to an end when your subscription comes to an end and/or your account is disabled.  Further, you must not, and you must not attempt or assist, authorise, enable or permit anyone else, to:access the Platform or any of our products, services or content without permission;
    • (a) copy, adapt, publish, show, or otherwise communicate in public or outside your school or organisation, any part of the Platform or any of its associated products, services or content;
    • (b) otherwise transmit, redistribute, resupply, retransmit, reproduce, reverse-engineer, decode, decompile, reformat, modify, on-sell or interfere with the Platform, or its associated products, services or content; or
    • (c) remove, circumvent, or interfere with any of the copyright notices or attributions, content protection, rights management, encryption or security technologies used for the Platform, its associated products, services or content.
  3. Your general responsibilities and certain functionalities:  All users of the Platform must:
    • (a) follow our reasonable instructions and directions about using the Platform and associated services, and only use the Platform and its associated products and services for lawful purposes;
    • (b) not interfere with your or anyone else's account, or use of the Platform or associated products and services;
    • (c) take all reasonable precautions to prevent unauthorised access to or use of the Platform and its associated products and services (including ensuring all usernames and passwords are kept secure and confidential); and
    • (d) comply with all applicable laws and not breach our or anyone else's rights.

In addition, depending on the permissions that are assigned to your account, there may be additional responsibilities and certain functionalities that apply to your use and management on the Platform. For example, if you are an administrator for your school or organisation, during your subscription period you will need to ensure that each user who accesses and is assigned to your school or organisation (as applicable) is authorised to do so and that there are no unauthorised users accessing your school or organisation's content (including any content of a learner of your school or organisation).  Further functionalities and other responsibilities that may apply to you are set out on the Platforms FAQ's on the website and you may be asked to confirm your compliance with these with certain prompts when logging into the Platform from time to time.

  1. Your account, and letting other people use it:  To use the Platform you will need to create an account on the Platform and be an authorised user on that account.  If you create an account on the Platform and/or are a user on that account, you agree to keep it secure, for example by keeping your username and account passwords secret.  You should also make sure that you keep your account information updated, as we will use this information to contact you if we need to.  If you think someone has had access to your account without permission or there has been another security breach, you need to tell us straight away.  Whenever someone other than you uses your account, you must:
    • (a) supervise them appropriately;
    • (b) pay any fees that apply, regardless of who incurs the fees; and
    • (c) make sure they comply with the law and these Terms.
  2. Information that you submit:  Without limiting our rights (including as to ownership of our intellectual property under clause 10), in relation to any data, information or other material that you submit to us via our Platform, we may use this data, information or other material, and any other non-personally identifiable data we have collected from you for:
    • (a) assisting us to provide the Platform and its associated products and services in accordance with these Terms;
    • (b) better understanding how our users are using the Platform and to improve, maintain and support the Platform (and associated products and services);
    • (c) complying with the law, regulations and educational industry requirements;
    • (d) our testing and development purposes including checking, scaling, comparing and benchmarking results from your school or organisation (which we may populate and create our own aggregated data from); and
    • (e) our research purposes to understand system/sector level data (which we may use to populate, create and publish our own aggregated reporting).

You warrant that you have the rights necessary to provide, use and submit any data, information or material provided to us in relation to your use of the Platform and our use in accordance with these Terms, and you have all appropriate consents and clearances to provide us with such data, information and material.   Any personal information submitted or collected by us from you will be dealt with in accordance with our Privacy Policy.  

  1. Disabling your account:  You can disable your account at any time by contacting our support team at assessmentservices@nzcer.org.nz.  If you disable your account, you will still be responsible for, and will have to pay, any applicable fees owing on your account at the time of such disabling.
  2. We may cancel, disable or suspend your account:  We may cancel, disable or suspend your account at any time by giving written notice via the Platform or contacting you using the contact details registered to your account.  We may also immediately cancel, disable or suspend your account or access to any service (without limiting our other rights) if:
    • (a) it is reasonably necessary for operational, technical or security reasons;
    • (b) we have reasonable grounds to believe that you are in breach of these Terms or your account is being used fraudulently or to break the law;
    • (c) we are informed that, if you are a learner, you are no longer a learner at the school or organisation that your account relates to, or in the case of an assist user (or teacher), you are no longer employed at the school or organisation; or
    • (d) you, or the school or organisation that your account relates to, does not pay any applicable fees by the due date or there is money owing on your account or applicable subscriptions.

When your account is disabled and/or your subscription otherwise comes to an end, your rights under these Terms will also come to an end and you will need to delete, destroy and/or return (as requested by us) all content and intellectual property that you may still hold, and we may require you provide us evidence that you have done this. You will also need to pay any applicable fees owing on your account at the time of disabling or at the end of your subscription (as applicable).

16. After your account is cancelled or disabled:  When your account is cancelled or disabled, you will no longer have access to the Platform, or the products and services provided through it.  We may (but are not obligated to)  keep your account open but in an inactive state where your information cannot be accessed (in case you want to active a subscription in the near future) and, if we decide to do this, any personal information will be held in accordance with our Privacy Policy.  If you would like us to delete your account permanently, please email assessmentservices@nzcer.org.nz.

17. Platform limitations:  We use our best endeavours to ensure that the Platform and its products and services are reliable, and that the content on the Platform is correct and current.  But we cannot promise that the content, Platform or its products and services will always be available or completely error free or that defects will always be corrected, especially because we rely on the internet and other third party networks, products and services.  If you notice a fault with the Platform or a product or service, please let us know and we will try to fix it.  But please be aware that:

  • (a) the performance of the Platform may depend on what kind of device and connection you have, and what else is running on your device at the time;
  • (b) we have regular maintenance windows where the Platform may not be available.  We try to schedule these for low-demand times;
  • (c) although we use industry standard security tools, the internet is never completely secure and we don't guarantee security;
  • (d) the availability of the Platform, and/or features and functionality, may vary depending on where you are located;
  • (e) we aren't liable for any errors or omissions in any content you contribute or for any damage or loss that you may suffer in connection with that content or other content submitted by third parties or other users;
  • (f) where the Platform, products or services link to third party websites, products or services, we are not responsible for the content, availability or security of such third party websites, products or services; and
  • (g) we are not responsible for third party outages, or any other cause or event beyond our reasonable control. 

18. Indemnity:  By agreeing to these Terms, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, its affiliates, third party providers, employees and agents against any and all claims, suits, actions, liabilities, costs and expenses arising out of a breach by you or any user of your account of these Terms or arising out of a breach of your obligations under these Terms (including any third party terms that may apply to you pursuant to clause 4), unless your breach is directly caused by our own breach of the Terms.

19.Liability:  Nothing in these Terms affects your rights under mandatory provisions of applicable law that cannot be excluded.  Except for liability under those laws (and any other liability that cannot be limited by law):

  • (a) if you do not have a current account with us, then we have no liability to you whatsoever (whether in contract, tort including negligence, under statute, in equity or otherwise) in connection with the Platform, these Terms or our products and services; and
  • (b) if you do have a current account with us, then your total liability to us and our total liability to you (whether in contract, tort including negligence, under statute, in equity or otherwise) in connection with the Platform, these Terms and/or our products and services will not exceed the amount that is payable by you during the applicable subscription period that relates to the event in which the liability relates to.

This liability cap will not apply to:

  • (a) either of our fraud, intentional breach or intentional damage; or 
  • (b) non-payment, breach of clause 10, intellectual property infringement, or criminal activity by you or someone else using your account.

We will not be liable for any loss that is caused by you or by your failure to take reasonable steps to avoid or minimise your loss.

20.General

  • (a) These Terms are governed by New Zealand law, and you submit to the jurisdiction of the New Zealand courts.
  • (b) To the extent permitted by law, you acknowledge that the Platform (and associated products and services) are being acquired for the purposes of trade and you agree that the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 ("CGA") does not apply to these Terms and the parties are contracting out of the CGA and sections 9, 12A and 13 of the Fair Trading Act 1986, and this is fair and reasonable in the circumstances.
  • (c) We may at any time assign your account, the products, services or this contract to a third party, so long as this does not materially affect your rights.  You must not assign or otherwise transfer your rights or obligations under this contract without our prior written consent.
  • (d) If any part of these Terms is held to be invalid, unenforceable or illegal, then the rest of these Terms will continue in full force and effect.
  • (e) If our contract ends for any reason, it does not affect any rights and responsibilities that are intended to continue or come into force afterwards.

 

Privacy policy for New Zealand Council for Educational Research Assist Platform

This privacy policy gives you information on how we collect and process your personal information through our platform NZCER Assist at NZCER (nzcerassist.org.nz).   

We need to collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information in order to provide NZCER Assist and its associated services to you.  This privacy policy explains how, when collecting, holding, using and disclosing your personal information, we comply with our obligations under the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020 ("the Privacy Act").

You can click through to the specific areas that you are interested in below.

1. Who we are

2. The information we collect

3. How we collect information

4. How we use information

5. Security

6. How long we keep information for

7. Your rights

1. WHO WE ARE  

New Zealand Council for Educational Research is an independent research and development organisation. We operate under the New Zealand Council for Educational Research Act 1972.  We offer a range of educational tools and services to inform teaching and improve learning, including NZCER Assist.  You can find more information about us here. 

In order to use NZCER Assist and its associated services and products, you must create an account and provide certain types of personal information (described in section 2 below) which we need to collect, hold, use and disclose in order to provide access to the platform and the associated services and products, as further explained in section 4 below.

Changes to this privacy policy

We keep our privacy policy under regular review and will provide notice of changes to this privacy policy on our website. The changes will apply from the date that we upload the revised policy to our website.

This version was last updated on 14 February 2022.            

2. THE INFORMATION WE COLLECT

Personal information means any information about an individual from which that individual can be identified.

The types of personal information that we may collect through NZCER Assist are:

  • School or organisation information: including name of school or organisation, location of school or organisation, number and type of users who will be using the platform from the applicable school or organisation.
  • Learner information: including first name, last name, nationality, username or similar identifier, year level, gender, email and identifying school or organisation that the learner applies to.  
  • Assist user information: including first name, last name, identifying school or organisation that the assist user is employed by and/or related to and the type of role such user has (ie whether it is an administration role and/or an assessor/teacher role for the purposes of the NZCER Assist platform). 
  • Contact information: including billing address, delivery address, email address and telephone numbers for relevant school or organisation contact person(s).   
  • Financial information: including bank account and payment card details. 
  • Transaction information:  details about payments to and from you and other details of services and products you have purchased from us through your account. 
  • Technical information: including internet protocol (IP) address, your login data, browser type and version, time zone setting and location, browser plug-in types and versions, operating system and platform, and other technology on the devices you use to access this website.
  • Profile information: including usernames and passwords, purchases or orders, assessments/tests taken, preferences, feedback and survey responses. 
  • Assessment information: including assessments taken, results, comments and feedback.
  • Usage information: including information about how you use our platform, products and services.
  • Communications information: including your communications with us or other account holders in relation to our services, and your communication preferences.
  • Marketing information: including your preferences in receiving marketing from us and our third parties.
  • Other information: including information you provide to us, eg by email or in other formats, such as providing feedback on our services, filling in a form, responding to surveys, participating in promotions, or uploading content to the portal.

You can choose not to provide personal information to us, but that may impact on our ability to provide NZCER Assist and the associated services and products to you.

3. HOW WE COLLECT INFORMATION

 We use different methods to collect personal information from and about you:

  • You may give us your personal information by filling in the information requested when creating your account and by corresponding with us by post, phone, email or otherwise.
  • When learners complete assessments via the portal and submit those to be marked.
  • When an assist user manually enters learner assessment data based on paper assessment records.
  • When an assist user uploads learner demographic information into the portal in preparation for online assessments.
  • As you interact with the portal, we will automatically collect information about your equipment, browsing actions and patterns.  We collect this personal information by using cookies, server logs and other similar technologies.  Please see section 4 below for further details about how we use cookies.

4. HOW WE USE INFORMATION  

We will use your personal information to:

  • provide you with access to NZCER Assist and associated services and products;
  • contact you about your account and activity, for example, when supporting you to setup or administer assessments;
  • work with your school or organisation to support your use of NZCER Assist; 
  • comply with our legal, regulatory, tax and/or accounting requirements;
  • continually improve NZCER Assist and the services and products that we provide;
  • contact you about services, products and items that we think may be of interest to you. You can unsubscribe from any marketing communications from us by following the instructions on any communications sent to you.  You can also exercise this right at any time by contacting us using the details at the end of this privacy policy;
  • carry out marketing and product analysis; and
  • assist with any queries, requests or complaints that you may have and investigate any such complaints.

We may need to share your personal information with:

  • our service providers and suppliers where necessary for us to be able to provide NZCER Assist and services and products to you;
  • other account holders or persons who share your account who may need access to your assessments and/or results (eg teachers from the same school or organisation as the learner);
  • anyone you consent to us sharing your personal information with;
  • credit reference agencies;
  • debt collection agencies to collect any money that you may owe us;
  • potential purchasers of our business; and
  • anyone who we need to share information with by reason of law or to address any complaints you make to a third party or regulator (such as the Privacy Commissioner,  law enforcement agencies and/or where we are required to disclose and comply with Official Information Act requests).   

We may also use aggregated and non-personally identifiable data that we have collected from you for the purposes set out in our NZCER Assist Terms and Conditions (as set out here [insert link to website]) This includes conducting our own research to understand system/sector level data and we may use that data to populate, create, and publish  our own aggregated reporting. 

Cookies  

We may use cookies and other interactive techniques such as web beacons to collect information about how you use our website to:

  • provide you with a more enjoyable, customised service and experience on our website;
  • enable you to use certain services on our website;
  • help us develop and deliver better services and products which are customised to our customers' interests; and
  • help us manage security and fraud risks.    

We may also use persistent cookies so that you can set your preferences for using our website (for example, to remember your log in details). 

You can usually set the settings on your browser to let you know when you are offered cookies so that you can decide whether or not to accept them.  However, if you disable or refuse cookies, please be aware that some parts of this website may not function properly.

Third-Party Links  

This platform may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins and applications. Clicking on those links or enabling those connections may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for how they may use your personal information.

5. SECURITY  

Information transmitted over the internet is not always secure, but we will use reasonable security safeguards to protect information we hold against loss, access, use, modification and unauthorised disclosure.   We have procedures to deal with any suspected privacy breach and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where required by law.

6. HOW LONG WE KEEP INFORMATION FOR 

We may retain your personal information for a period after you have disabled your account for as long as we legitimately need it, or for as long as we are legally required to.  We will de-identify and aggregate information wherever possible.

7. YOUR RIGHTS  

You have rights to see and request the correction of any personal information we hold about you.  If you want to exercise these rights or to ask us questions about this privacy policy, please contact us using the following details:

New Zealand Council for Educational Research

Email address: privacy@nzcer.org.nz

Postal address:  

NZCER
PO Box3237
Wellington 6140

Attention: Privacy Officer| Kaiwhakahaere Matatapu

Telephone number: (04) 384-7939

This privacy policy is governed by New Zealand law.  For more information about privacy issues in New Zealand and protecting your privacy, visit the New Zealand Privacy Commissioner's website .