We collect, use, and share personal information in different ways depending on what we are doing or the service we are providing.

You can expect to see a specific privacy statement at the time of collection.

The Role of Te Tāhuhu Ministry of Education

We are the Government’s lead education advisor and regulator in Aotearoa New Zealand, including early childhood education, primary and secondary education, and tertiary education. We shape an education system that delivers equitable and excellent outcomes.

To do this, we collect, use, and share personal information in line with the Privacy Act to carry out our role under the Education and Training Act.

Personal information

Personal information is any information about an identifiable individual. The type of information we collect will depend on the service we are providing or the function we are carrying out. It can include:

• contact information
• demographics
• feedback and opinions
• financial information
• employment information
• achievement and attendance data
• enrolment information
• health information.

Find out more about some of our services and the information we collect.

ELI privacy information

ENROL privacy information

Learner Identity Broker privacy statement

Te Rito privacy statement

Why we collect personal information

There are a variety of reasons why we collect personal information, including:

• administering legislative and regulatory controls
• making sure education providers and students receive the right funding, resources, and support
• monitoring and ensuring student rights around enrolment and attendance
• informing policy, legislation change, and decision-making
• administering services that support education providers’ governance, management and operation.

Collecting information from other sources

We may collect your information from other sources, instead of directly from you. This could include collecting ākonga and learner, or education workforce information from schools and kura, NZQA, and the Tertiary Education Commission.

We will only collect personal information indirectly where the Privacy Act allows us to.

How we collect your information

We collect information in a number of different ways. Examples include:

• surveys
• forms submitted manually by education providers
• automated transfer from student management systems
• tools and online services, through the Education Sector Log-on.

Find more information about our tools and applications.

Catalogue of tools and online services

How we keep your information safe

We regularly review our systems to make sure that they have appropriate security safety safeguards in place to protect personal information.

Who we share your information with

We only share personal information where the Privacy Act allows us to. Who we share information with includes:

• schools, kura, and other education providers
• other agencies, such as Oranga Tamariki and NZ Police.

Your rights

Under the Privacy Act, you have the right to ask for a copy of any information the Ministry holds about you, and to ask for it to be corrected if you think it’s wrong.

You can request a copy of information we hold about you by emailing [email protected].

Use of National Student Numbers

In accordance with Schedule 24 of the Education and Training Act 2020, we use National Student Numbers for:

• monitoring and ensuring student enrolment and attendance
• encouraging attendance at early childhood services
• ensuring education providers and students receive appropriate resourcing
• statistical purposes
• research purposes
• ensuring student’s educational records are accurately maintained.

Information collected on this website

We use cookies for the purpose of monitoring website use. A cookie is a piece of code that creates a file on your computer to track the pages that you view on our websites. Cookies from the Ministry website do not collect any personally identifiable information.

The information they collect includes the date and time you visited the site, your IP address, the pages you accessed on our site, the search terms you used, details about your operating system (for example, Windows 7, Mac OSX) and your web browser (for example, Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or Internet Explorer).

The data is collected and aggregated for the Ministry by Google Analytics, a measurement and research service. You can find out about Google Analytics' privacy policy in their Privacy Centre.

You can opt-out from Google Analytics collecting your information by disabling cookies or clearing them from your web browser without affecting your ability to use the Ministry’s websites, or by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on

Google Analytics privacy policy

Unsolicited email

Publication of email addresses on the education.govt.nz website should not be taken as deemed consent to receiving unsolicited email.

Persons or organisations wishing to send email material to individuals or organisations whose email addresses appear on this website must comply with the requirements of the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007.