Privacy notice
Version PN-2026-11
Draft wording, pending review by our data-protection solicitor on 8 January 2027.
Teacup English runs this website and the course apps on it. This notice covers your sign-in account. Each school, company or agency that uses a portal here has its own notice, linked from inside that portal, because they decide how your learning or assessment data is used.
Who is responsible
For your sign-in account: Teacup English is the controller. Contact: privacy@teacupenglish.com.
Inside a client portal: the school, company or agency is the controller and Teacup English is their processor, acting only on their written instructions under a data processing agreement.
What we collect
Your email address, the name you give us, when you signed in, which portals you belong to, and what you do in them (progress, answers, marks, notes from your tutor or consultant). We do not collect payment details, location, or device fingerprints. We do not use advertising or analytics cookies. The only cookie is a sign-in cookie, which is strictly necessary.
Website enquiries
If you use a contact form on our website, we receive your name, email address and what you tell us by email, and use them only to reply to you and to follow up on your enquiry (legitimate interests, or steps before a contract). The form's contents are not stored on the website. We keep enquiry emails for up to 24 months after our last contact, unless you become a client.
Skills Gap Check links from tutors
A tutor can share a public Skills Gap Check link. You can take the check without an account; your answers stay in your browser. Only if you choose to send your result to that tutor, confirm you are 18 or over and agree to be contacted, we store your name, email and result for that tutor, who is the controller for it (we host it for them as processor). Only that tutor sees it. You get a link to delete it at any time, and it is deleted automatically after the period the tutor set (at most 24 months). Each link has its own privacy notice.
Tutors' own lessons
If you are a tutor, lessons and role-play scenarios you write in the lesson builder are stored with your account, visible only to you, and deleted with your account.
Why and on what basis
To give you the service you or your organisation signed up for (contract), to keep the service secure (legitimate interests), and to meet legal duties such as answering data requests (legal obligation).
How long we keep it
Sign-in links expire after 15 minutes. Sessions expire after 14 days. If you stop using a portal, the portal's retention period applies (usually 12 months), after which your data in that portal is deleted automatically. Accounts unused for 24 months are deleted automatically. Security logs use a pseudonymous code instead of your email and are deleted after 90 days.
Where it is stored
On our own server in United Kingdom (DigitalOcean London data centre). Sign-in emails pass through our email provider. We do not sell or share your data, and we do not use it to train AI.
Automated decisions
Nothing on this site makes decisions about you automatically. Scores and levels are guidance for you and your tutor or consultant; a person always makes any decision that affects you.
Age
You must be 16 or over to have an account. Learners aged 16 and 17 can only use portals that a school or tutor has set up as an under-18 workspace, after a parent or guardian has agreed. In those workspaces no AI is used for marking, nothing is used to train AI, and staff must be adults. We do not ask for your date of birth, only whether you are 18 or over, or 16 or 17.
Your rights
You can see, download, correct and delete your data yourself from Your account. You can also object, ask us to restrict use, or complain. Use the complaints and requests form; we acknowledge within 5 working days and reply within one month. You can also complain to your data protection regulator.