Privacy Policy

BestStart Privacy Statement

This information explains how we comply with applicable privacy requirements and sets out minimum standards for how we deal with personal information collected and used by BestStart. This information may be updated from time to time.

BestStart's system for complying with applicable privacy requirements includes:

• Our commitment to compliance with privacy requirements
• Our policy and approach to privacy, as explained in this information;
• Our resources allocated to privacy, including our technology systems and services; and
• Our people and the training and education we undertake.

Collecting Personal Information

We collect personal information for the purpose of providing early childhood education and care for your child.  This information includes names, contact details, dates of birth, ethnicity, iwi, gender, billing information, health status, medications and various permissions set out in the enrolment form.

We collect this information in our enrolment form and any subsequent advice updating that information.

The personal information we ask you to provide on your child’s enrolment form is to ensure BestStart meets the licensing requirements of the Ministry of Education. 

Accessing BestStart systems and websites will result in some information being logged including the time of access, IP address and the pages that have been viewed or accessed

Using and Disclosing Personal Information

The personal information we ask you to provide on your enrolment form is required to enable BestStart to enrol your child in our programme, provide the best possible care and education for your child, to observe and monitor your child’s progress to encourage all areas of their development.

Details of your child’s identity will be shared with the Ministry of Education so that it can allocate a national student number for your child. This unique identifier will be used for research, statistics, funding and the measurement of educational outcomes. You can find more information about national student numbers at: eli.education.govt.nz

All those staff within BestStart who have access to your personal information are bound by the terms of their employment to keep that information confidential.  The personal information we provide to the Ministry of Education is safeguarded by the protocol agreement our centre has with the Ministry of Education. With your permission we also provide information to Work and Income for parents claiming the Child Care Subsidy and to District Health Boards for child health checks.

For the purposes of conducting business processing functions, we provide personal information to our service providers under confidentiality agreements.

From time to time we provide names and contact details to third party organisations for the purpose of customer surveys and communications to improve the services we provide you and your child.
We also use personal information for a variety of statistical purposes but always ensure that no individual can be identified.