Privacy Policy

This document is published by the operators of World Private Schools (“WPS”, the “Platform,” the “Service,” the “Directory,” or the “Website”), an online directory and comparison service accessible at worldprivateschools.com for private, independent, faith-based, and specialized schools. World Private Schools is owned and operated jointly by Orthoplex Solutions and Noetic Marketer (together with their respective affiliates, successors, assigns, officers, directors, employees, contractors, and agents, referred to in this document as “we,” “us,” “our,” the “Operators,” or the “Company”).

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, retain, and protect personal information when you use the Platform. We are committed to handling personal information in accordance with Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable provincial privacy legislation. As we expand internationally, additional privacy laws may apply, and we will update this Policy accordingly.

By using the Platform, you consent to the collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information as described in this Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Platform.

This Policy applies to personal information we handle through the Platform. It does not apply to the practices of schools, advertisers, or other third parties we do not own or control. Once your information is transmitted to a school at your request, that school’s handling of your information is governed by the school’s own privacy practices, for which we are not responsible.

3.1 Information you provide directly

• Contact and inquiry information: your name, email address, telephone number, city or region, and the details you include when you complete a form to request a meeting, tour, application information, or other contact with a school;
• Information about a prospective student: such as a child’s first name, age or grade, and educational interests, where you choose to provide it in an inquiry;
• Account information: if you register, your credentials and profile details;
• School representative information: for those who claim or manage a School Profile, your name, role, work contact details, and verification information;
• Payment-related information: for schools purchasing Promotional Services, billing details processed through our payment processor (see Section 8); and
• Communications: information you provide when you contact us for support, feedback, or other inquiries.

3.2 Information collected automatically

• Usage and device data: IP address, browser type, device identifiers, operating system, pages viewed, search and filter selections, referring URLs, and dates/times of access;
• Cookies and similar technologies: used to operate the Platform, remember preferences, measure performance, and (where permitted) support analytics and advertising, as described in Section 9.

3.3 Information about schools and public data

To build and maintain School Profiles, we collect information about schools from public and third-party sources and through automated tools and AI Systems (see Section 7). This school information is generally organizational rather than personal in nature, but it may in some cases include the names or business contact details of staff. Where such business-contact information is used solely to communicate with an individual in relation to their employment or profession, it may be exempt from certain consent requirements under applicable law.

We use personal information for the following purposes:

• To operate, provide, maintain, and improve the Platform and its search, filter, and comparison features;
• To transmit your inquiries to the schools you select and facilitate their response to you;
• To create, verify, and maintain accounts and School Profiles;
• To calculate, generate, and display the WPS Score and other informational content;
• To process payments for Promotional Services through our payment processor;
• To communicate with you, respond to requests, and send administrative or service messages;
• To send marketing communications where permitted, subject to your right to withdraw consent and to Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL);
• To detect, prevent, and address fraud, abuse, security incidents, and violations of our terms;
• To analyze usage and trends to improve the Platform; and
• To comply with legal obligations and enforce our agreements.

Under PIPEDA, we collect, use, and disclose personal information with your knowledge and consent, except where permitted or required by law. By submitting an inquiry through the Platform, you provide your express consent for us to share the information in that inquiry with the school(s) you select. In some cases consent may be implied by your voluntary provision of information for an evident purpose. You may withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice, by contacting us as described in Section 15; withdrawing consent may limit our ability to provide certain features.

The Platform allows parents to search for schools by attributes such as faith, religious affiliation, values, language, single-sex or co-educational composition, and cultural or special-needs character. These attributes describe schools, not you. We do not require you to disclose your own religion, race, ethnicity, gender, or other sensitive personal characteristics in order to use the Platform, and we ask that you not include sensitive personal information about yourself or a child in free-text fields unless it is necessary for your inquiry.

If you voluntarily choose to include information that could reveal sensitive characteristics (for example, indicating a preference for a faith-based or single-sex school), you consent to our processing that information for the limited purpose of connecting you with relevant schools. We treat any such information with appropriate care and do not use it to make judgments about you. Any descriptive information on the Platform about a school’s religious, gender-based, cultural, or similar character is provided for informational purposes only, may be inaccurate or incomplete, and is not a statement about, or endorsement of, any group of people, as further described in our Terms and Conditions.

We use AI Systems to collect and organize information about schools and to evaluate certain components of the WPS Score. In doing so, our AI Systems primarily process information about schools rather than personal information about Platform visitors. Where AI processing does involve personal information, we apply this Policy to that processing.

AI-generated or AI-assisted outputs are probabilistic and may vary depending on the model and data used and may contain errors. To promote fairness, we endeavour to apply the same model and methodology across all schools within a given evaluation cycle. The WPS Score and AI outputs are opinions and informational tools, not automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about individual Platform users. If you have questions about how AI is used in relation to your information, please contact us.

Payments for Promotional Services are processed by our third-party payment processor, Stripe, Inc. (“Stripe”). When you make a payment, your payment card and related financial details are collected and processed directly by Stripe; we do not collect or store your full card number, expiry date, or security code on our own systems. We may receive limited transaction information from Stripe, such as confirmation of payment, the last four digits of a card, and billing contact details, to manage your account and comply with our records and tax obligations.

Stripe is a PCI-DSS Level 1 certified payment provider and employs encryption and other safeguards to protect payment data in transit and at rest. Stripe processes your information in accordance with its own privacy policy, which we encourage you to review. While we rely on Stripe’s security and encryption to protect payment information, no method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

We use cookies, pixels, local storage, and similar technologies to operate the Platform, remember your preferences, understand usage, and (where permitted) support analytics and advertising. Some cookies are strictly necessary; others are optional. You can control cookies through your browser settings and, where required by law, through a consent mechanism we provide. Disabling certain cookies may affect Platform functionality.

We do not sell your personal information. We share personal information only as described below:

• With schools you select: when you submit an inquiry, we transmit your inquiry information to the school(s) you choose so they can respond to you.
• With service providers: we use trusted third parties (such as hosting, analytics, communications, AI, and payment providers, including Stripe) who process information on our behalf under contractual confidentiality and security obligations.
• For legal reasons: we may disclose information where required by law, regulation, legal process, or governmental request, or to protect our rights, safety, property, or that of others.
• In business transfers: if we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization, or sale of assets, personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction, subject to appropriate protections.
• With your consent: for any other purpose disclosed to you at the time and to which you consent.

Your personal information may be stored and processed in Canada and in other countries, including the United States, where our service providers (such as Stripe and cloud-hosting and AI providers) operate. When information is processed outside your province or country, it may be subject to the laws of those jurisdictions, including lawful access by courts, law enforcement, and government authorities. We take steps to ensure that our service providers offer a comparable level of protection for personal information as required under applicable Canadian law.

We retain personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, to provide the Platform, to comply with our legal, accounting, and tax obligations, to resolve disputes, and to enforce our agreements. When personal information is no longer required, we take reasonable steps to securely delete, anonymize, or de-identify it. Inquiry information may be retained for a reasonable period to support the connection between you and the relevant school and for our internal records.

We maintain reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect personal information against loss, theft, and unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use, or modification, appropriate to the sensitivity of the information. These may include encryption in transit, access controls, and reliance on reputable service providers such as Stripe for payment security. However, no system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. You are responsible for keeping your account credentials confidential.

Anti-abuse and contact forms. We apply commercially reasonable anti-spam and anti-abuse measures to form submissions where feasible, such as filtering, rate-limiting, and bot-deterrence. These measures are not guaranteed to be fully effective, and we are not responsible for unwanted or automated messages that may nonetheless be transmitted through the Platform.

Breach notification. In the event of a breach of security safeguards involving personal information under our control that creates a real risk of significant harm, we will notify affected individuals and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and keep records of the breach, as required by PIPEDA and other applicable law.

Subject to applicable law and certain exceptions, you have the right to:

• Access the personal information we hold about you and request information about how it has been used and disclosed;
• Request correction of inaccurate or incomplete personal information;
• Withdraw your consent to our collection, use, or disclosure of your personal information, subject to legal or contractual restrictions;
• Request deletion of your personal information where we are not required or permitted to retain it;
• Unsubscribe from marketing communications at any time using the link provided or by contacting us; and
• Make a complaint about our handling of your personal information (see Section 16).

We will respond to verifiable requests within the timeframes required by applicable law. We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request. As we expand internationally, residents of other jurisdictions (for example, the EU/UK under the GDPR or California under the CCPA/CPRA) may have additional rights, which we will honour where applicable.

The Platform is intended for use by adults — typically parents and guardians — and by authorized school representatives. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information directly from children. Where a parent or guardian provides limited information about a prospective student as part of an inquiry, that information is collected from and with the consent of the adult. If you believe a child has provided us personal information without appropriate consent, please contact us and we will take reasonable steps to delete it.

If you have questions, requests, or complaints about this Policy or our handling of your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer at: [info@worldprivateschools.com], c/o Orthoplex Solutions and Noetic Marketer, [insert mailing address].

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at www.priv.gc.ca, or the privacy regulator in your province or territory of residence.

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices, technology, or legal requirements. When we make material changes, we will revise the “Last Updated” date and, where appropriate, provide additional notice. Your continued use of the Platform after changes are posted constitutes acceptance of the revised Policy.