Privacy Policy and Protection of Personal Information

Newberry House Montessori School (“we”, “us”, “the school”) is the responsible party for the personal information we process. Our office is located at Lourensford Estate, Somerset West, and our information officer can be contacted at secretary@newberry.co.za.

We only collect personal information that is necessary for running the school and communicating with our community. Depending on the reason you are in contact with us, this may include:

• Enquiry and tour information: name, email address, phone number, child’s first name and date of birth, and the programme you are interested in.
• Admissions information: parent and child full names, ID numbers, residential and postal addresses, employment details, medical and allergy information, prior school reports and any special educational needs.
• Enrolled family information: billing details, emergency contacts, authorised collection persons, and ongoing academic and pastoral records.
• Website information: technical data such as IP address, browser type and pages visited, collected through cookies and analytics. See our Cookies Policy.

We process personal information for specific, lawful purposes:

• responding to enquiries and arranging school tours;
• managing the admissions, placement and enrolment processes;
• providing education, pastoral care and aftercare to enrolled children;
• issuing invoices, collecting fees and maintaining financial records;
• communicating with parents about their child, school events and important notices;
• complying with our legal and regulatory obligations, including those under POPIA, tax law and the Children’s Act.

We take particular care with information relating to children. Personal information about a child is only collected from a parent or legal guardian, or directly from the child where appropriate and with consent. We use this information strictly for the education, welfare, safety and pastoral care of the child.

Photographs and video taken at school events are only published externally, for example on our website or social media, where parents have given explicit consent on the relevant admissions or media-consent form. You may withdraw that consent at any time by writing to the school office.

We do not sell, rent or trade personal information. We only share information with third parties where it is necessary and lawful to do so, including:

• trusted service providers who help us run the school (for example, our school management system, email and file-hosting providers, and payment processors), under written confidentiality and data protection obligations;
• accreditation and examination bodies such as Cambridge International and the Association Montessori Internationale, where required for assessment and reporting;
• medical professionals in an emergency, where this is necessary to protect a child’s life or health;
• law enforcement, regulators or courts where we are legally required to do so.

Personal information is stored on secure, access-controlled systems, both paper-based in the school office and electronically in our management system. We apply reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect information against loss, unauthorised access, alteration or disclosure. These include role-based access, password protection, secure backups and staff training.

Some of the service providers we use may process data outside South Africa. Where this happens, we only work with providers whose protections are comparable to POPIA.

We keep personal information only for as long as it is needed for the purpose it was collected, or as required by law. Admissions enquiry data is held for up to twenty-four months after your last contact with us. Records of enrolled children are kept for the duration of their time at the school and, where required by educational and financial regulations, for a period after they leave.

Under POPIA you have the right to:

• ask us to confirm whether we hold personal information about you or your child;
• request a copy of that information and ask for corrections where it is inaccurate;
• ask us to delete information we are no longer entitled to hold;
• object to certain processing, including direct marketing;
• withdraw consent you previously gave, at any time, without affecting the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal;
• lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa.

To exercise any of these rights, please email secretary@newberry.co.za. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.

We review this policy from time to time. The most recent version will always be published on this page, with the date it was last updated. Significant changes will be communicated to enrolled families by email.

If you have any questions about this policy or about how we handle personal information, please contact our information officer: