Application information
An enquiry or an application reaches the company through the admissions address, admissions@smartemis.online, and that address is read by the staff who administer admissions. The message itself is retained together with whatever the applicant chose to attach to it, which is ordinarily a curriculum vitae, a transcript or a statement of the intended research subject. Where an applicant supplies a reference, the reference is held with the application it supports.
The information is used to decide whether the applicant is prepared for post-graduate level study, to allocate a cohort start point where a place is offered, and to correspond with the applicant about that decision. Where an application is unsuccessful, the file is closed and retained under the schedule described below, so that the company can answer a later query about the decision it took.
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Enrolment and cohort records
On enrolment the company opens a cohort record for the candidate. It holds the candidate’s name, the contact details the candidate gives for correspondence, the cohort the candidate belongs to and its start point, the modules taken, the credit weight of each, and the supervisor allocated to the candidate. Where a candidate declares an adjustment needed for study or assessment, that declaration is held on the same record, and it is disclosed to the teaching staff who have to act on it.
Attendance at taught sessions is recorded against the cohort record, since attendance and the issue of session materials depend on it. Where study is suspended, the suspension and the re-dating of the remaining milestones are recorded in the same place. Cohort records are held in the company’s administrative systems and are open to the staff who teach, supervise or administer that cohort.
Assessed work and feedback
Every piece of assessed work a candidate submits is retained as submitted, along with the marginal comment made on it, the summary judgement, the provisional mark and the mark as confirmed by the assessment review. Where a submission is made after the deadline or under an extension, the record of the extension is kept with the piece it applies to.
Assessed work is read by the marker and by a second member of the teaching staff where the assessment scheme calls for a second reading. Scripts and marks are also made available to an external examiner where an external examiner is appointed to the programme, which is the ordinary condition of an award at this level. Assessed work is retained because the mark stands on it, and a challenge to a mark is answered by returning to the script.
Supervision correspondence
Supervision generates a supervisory record: the written note of each meeting, the milestones as they are reached, the drafts a candidate sends for comment and the comment the supervisor returns. Correspondence between candidate and supervisor about the independent project forms part of that record and is held with it.
Where the project involves human participants, personal records or fieldwork on a third party’s premises, the governance and ethics check produces its own file, which sets out what the candidate proposed and what the company recorded as complete before evidence was gathered. That file is retained with the supervisory record, because the two answer the same question about how the project was conducted.
Retention after completion
After a cohort closes, the company retains the enrolment record, the assessed work, the marks and the supervisory record under its academic records schedule, for the period the schedule sets and for any longer period required by law or by an examining or awarding body. Retention at this length allows the company to confirm a candidate’s enrolment and result to that candidate, or to a party the candidate authorises, long after the cohort has ended. When the schedule expires, records are destroyed securely.
A candidate may ask for a copy of the records held about that candidate, ask for a correction where a record is inaccurate, or object to a particular use of it. Such a request is made to admissions@smartemis.online, which reaches the company directly, and it is answered within the period the law allows. A candidate may also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is the supervisory authority for the United Kingdom.
The terms this statement uses
- Cohort
- The group of candidates who begin at the same start point and take the twelve teaching weeks together. A candidate’s records are organised by cohort, and a cohort is the unit the retention schedule is applied to.
- Notional hours
- The measure in which credit is expressed at post-graduate level, at ten hours for each credit, covering taught contact and independent study together. The figure is recorded against the modules on a candidate’s enrolment record.
- Supervisory record
- The written note of each supervision meeting, the milestones reached, the drafts submitted for comment and the comment returned on them. It is held for the length of the schedule because the conduct of the project is evidenced by it.
- Controller
- The person or company that decides why and how personal information is handled. For every record described in this statement, the controller is SMARTEMIS LIMITED of 12 Buttercup Close, Huntington, Cannock, WS12 4UB.