Delete Your Data

This page is Pemberton Academy's data deletion instructions. It explains how a parent, guardian, student, tutor or applicant can ask the Academy to delete the personal data we hold about them, including a Premium waiting-list record and messages exchanged with us on WhatsApp. Anyone can use it: you do not need an account and you do not need to be signed in.

For the full description of what we collect and why, read our Privacy Policy.

How to request deletion

Use whichever route is easiest. They all reach the same team, and you only need one.

1. Message the Academy on WhatsApp. Open the Academy's WhatsApp conversation and ask us to delete your data. Sending the message from the number you normally use with us is the quickest way for us to find your records, and it is the right route if you want your WhatsApp history with us removed.
2. Email the Academy. Write to support@pembertonacademy.com with "Data deletion request" in the subject line. This is also the address that receives your replies to any email the Academy has sent you, so replying to an existing message works just as well.
3. Use the contact page. Every route on our contact page reaches the same team. Say clearly that you are making a data deletion request.

If you already have an account, signing in first makes you easier to identify: your account, lessons and materials are all listed in your dashboard. There is no self-service delete button. Deletion is carried out by the Academy team once we have confirmed who you are.

What to tell us

• The name of the account holder, normally the parent or guardian.
• The email address and, if you have used it, the WhatsApp number you contacted us on.
• The student's name, if the request concerns a child.
• If the request concerns the Premium waiting list, the market, level, exam board or subjects you selected.
• Whether you want everything deleted, or only part of it, such as your WhatsApp conversation with us.

We will ask you to confirm your identity before deleting anything. That check exists to stop somebody else erasing a family's records.

What a deletion request covers

Unless you ask for something narrower, a request covers all of the following.

• Account and identity. Your sign-in account and contact details, your parent or guardian record, and the student profiles attached to it, including name, date of birth, school, exam board, qualification and target grade, together with your language, currency, timezone and consent records.
• Premium waiting-list record. The parent email, market, level, exam board and subjects recorded when the Premium waiting list was joined, together with its source and update dates. The Academy reviews inactive waiting-list records after 12 months and deletes or anonymises them when no longer needed.
• Bookings and lesson records. Requested, confirmed, completed and cancelled lessons, the recurring timetable behind a tuition plan, rescheduling requests, the topics you asked for, the tutor's post-lesson summary and handover notes, and the lesson-note documents prepared for the student.
• WhatsApp messages. This is the data our WhatsApp Business integration with Meta creates. It covers the contact record we hold for you, the history of the phone numbers and WhatsApp identifiers we have seen for that contact, every inbound and outbound message we have logged and the delivery statuses Meta reports back. For inbound messages, it also includes the text and message payload Meta delivers to us. It covers the internal processing records raised for each message and the older WhatsApp booking assistant, which stores a transcript of your chat and any draft booking taken from it.
• Website assistant conversations. The transcript of anything you typed to the Academy's AI assistant on the website, the assistant's replies, and the record of any action it took for you.
• Lesson transcripts. Where transcription of Google Meet lessons is switched on, the Academy's copy of the transcript text and its speaker-by-speaker entries. See the section below.
• Payment records. Orders, invoices, refunds and the reference linking your account to Stripe, our payment processor. We never hold your card number; Stripe does. Please read the retention rules below, because accounting records cannot simply be erased.
• Messages we sent you. The log of emails and notifications issued to your account.
• Files. Documents held in private storage for your account, such as lesson-note PDFs and, for a tutor applicant, the CV you uploaded.
• Tutors and applicants. A tutor's profile, application, CV, subject capabilities, credentials, availability and interview records. Payout records are subject to the financial retention rules below.

Google Meet lesson transcripts

Transcription of lessons is an optional feature. It stays switched off unless the Academy has both enabled it and recorded the required privacy acknowledgement, so most families have no transcripts at all.

Where it is enabled, transcripts already delete themselves. The Academy keeps its copy for a fixed retention window, 30 days unless the Academy has configured a different period, after which an automatic purge erases the transcript text and the speaker-by-speaker entries and marks the record expired. A short lifecycle record remains, showing which lesson it belonged to, when it was captured and when it was purged; it contains none of the conversation. A deletion request brings that erasure forward.

What we cannot delete, and why

Some records have to survive a deletion request. We keep them to the minimum required, and we will tell you which of them applied to your request.

• Financial and tax records. Invoices, payments and refunds are accounting records and must be retained for the statutory period that applies to the Academy. Stripe also keeps its own transaction records under its own obligations. We reduce the personal detail attached to these records wherever we can, but the transactions themselves stay.
• Safeguarding records. The Academy teaches children. Where a safeguarding concern has been recorded, the associated record is retained for as long as our child protection obligations require. A deletion request cannot override that.
• Audit and security logs. We keep an audit trail of administrative and security-relevant actions on the platform. It is the evidence that the service was operated correctly, including the evidence that your deletion was actually carried out.
• Anything needed for a live dispute or legal claim. If a payment dispute, complaint or legal claim is open, the records it depends on are held until it is resolved.
• Anonymised and aggregated information. Once information can no longer identify anyone, such as lesson counts, subject demand and service statistics, it is no longer personal data. It is not deleted, and it cannot be traced back to you.
• Routine backups. Deleted data may persist in encrypted system backups until those backups expire on their normal cycle. Backups are used only for service recovery; if a backup is restored, deletion controls are reapplied where required.

We would rather tell you that something has to be kept than claim a deletion we cannot perform.

How long it takes

We handle verified deletion requests within the period required by applicable data protection law.

• We may ask for information needed to confirm your identity and locate the relevant records.
• If applicable law permits more time for a complex request, we will explain the reason and the revised timeframe.
• When the request is complete, we will confirm the outcome and explain any information that we had to retain.

Deleting an account can affect upcoming lessons, released materials, payments and refunds. Before we proceed, we will explain the effect on your account and any steps that must happen first. Save anything you want to keep before confirming the request.

Requests about a child's data

Pemberton Academy's students are usually minors, and a student does not hold their own login. The account belongs to the parent or guardian, who registers the student, gives consent and manages the tuition. A deletion request for a child's data should therefore be made by the parent or guardian who holds the account, and we will accept it from them. A request to delete the parent's account will normally cover the student profiles attached to it, subject to the retention rules described above.

If a student is old enough to make the request themselves, contact us and we will handle it with them and the account holder, subject to our safeguarding duties.

Contact

Questions about this page, or about a request already in progress, go to the same place. Email support@pembertonacademy.com, message us on WhatsApp, or use the contact page. If you are unhappy with how we handled your request, tell us first so we can put it right; you also keep the right to complain to your local data protection authority.

To withdraw from the Premium waiting list without deleting anything else, ask through the contact page, WhatsApp or the configured email route. We will mark the waiting-list record withdrawn and stop the requested waiting-list and availability updates. Ask for deletion separately if you also want the verified waiting-list record removed, subject to any record we must retain by law.

Our Privacy Policy lists everything we hold and why we hold it.