Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Courup School ("Courup", "we", "us") is an online American high school serving students in grades 9–12 in the United States and internationally. For questions about this policy or about the personal information we hold, contact us at admission@courup.com.

Courup School is operated by Courup School LLC, a limited liability company registered in the State of California, and operates under California law. Our registered postal address is stated in the enrollment agreement each family signs and is available on request. Data protection contact: the Head of School, at admission@courup.com.

2. Information we collect

We collect only what we need to assess an application, deliver schooling, and meet our record-keeping obligations.

From prospective families

• Student and parent or guardian names, email addresses, country of residence, and time zone
• Current school, grade level, and enrollment interest
• Student records — date of birth, current school, grade level, transcripts or report cards, and any translations provided
• Entrance examination responses and results, the writing sample, and interview notes
• English proficiency evidence, including test scores where supplied
• Anything else you choose to tell us in an inquiry or conversation

From enrolled students

• Coursework, assignments, assessments, grades, and transcripts
• Attendance and participation in live seminars
• Advisor and counselor notes relating to academic progress and wellbeing
• Recordings of live seminars in which the student may appear or be heard
• Platform usage data — sign-ins, submission times, and material accessed
• Billing and payment information, processed by our payment provider

Automatically, when you use this website

• IP address, browser type, device type, and pages visited
• Cookies and similar technologies, as described in section 8

3. How we use information

• To assess applications, place students in courses, and make admission decisions
• To deliver teaching, assess work, and issue transcripts and diplomas
• To operate our learning platform, including the progress signals that alert an academic advisor when a student is falling behind or moving ahead
• To communicate with students and families about schooling, scheduling, and school events
• To provide advising, college counseling, and wellbeing support
• To bill for tuition and fees
• To meet legal, accreditation, and safeguarding obligations
• To improve our courses, platform, and services

We do not sell personal information. We do not use student data to serve targeted advertising, and we do not permit our vendors to do so.

4. Automated processing

Our learning platform analyzes attendance, submission timing, and assessment results to flag students who may be struggling or who may be ready for more challenging work. These flags are reviewed by a member of staff — an academic advisor or instructor — who decides what to do. No decision that materially affects a student is made by automated means alone. Families may ask what a flag was based on and may contest any resulting decision.

5. Legal bases for processing

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, we rely on: performance of a contract (delivering the education a family has enrolled in); legitimate interests (operating and improving the school, provided those interests are not overridden by a student's rights); legal obligation (record retention, safeguarding); and consent (marketing communications, and any optional use of seminar recordings). Consent may be withdrawn at any time.

6. Students under 18 and under 13

Our students are minors, and we treat their information accordingly. Accounts for students under 18 are established with the involvement of a parent or guardian. Where we collect personal information from a child under 13, we obtain verifiable parental consent as required by the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and a parent may review that information, ask us to delete it, or refuse further collection by writing to admission@courup.com.

Education records are handled consistently with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Parents and eligible students have the right to inspect and review education records, to request correction of records they believe to be inaccurate, and to control the disclosure of personally identifiable information, subject to the exceptions FERPA permits.

7. Sharing information

We share personal information only in these circumstances:

• Service providers who host our platform, deliver video seminars, process payments, or administer assessments — each bound by contract to protect the information and use it only for the service they provide
• Universities and schools, where a family asks us to send a transcript or a counselor recommendation
• Accrediting bodies, as part of accreditation review
• Legal authorities, where we are required by law, or where disclosure is necessary to protect a student's safety

We use service providers in four categories: a learning management platform, a video conferencing provider for live seminars, a payment processor, and a remote proctoring provider for examinations. Each is contractually bound to process personal information only on our instructions and is prohibited from using student data for advertising or for training its own models. The current list of named vendors is available to enrolled families on request from admission@courup.com, and we notify families before adding a vendor that will handle student data.

8. Cookies

This website uses only cookies strictly necessary for it to function — it sets no advertising cookies and runs no third-party advertising trackers. If we later add analytics cookies we will request consent before setting them and will update this section first. Our learning platform sets a session cookie to keep signed-in users authenticated. Most browsers let you refuse or delete cookies; refusing necessary cookies may stop parts of the platform from working.

9. International transfers

Courup serves students across many countries, and information may be stored or processed in the United States and in other countries where our service providers operate. Where information is transferred out of the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses, together with the UK International Data Transfer Addendum for transfers from the United Kingdom, and we carry out a transfer risk assessment for each vendor.

10. How long we keep information

• Academic transcripts and diplomas — retained permanently, so graduates can request records years later
• Application materials from applicants who do not enroll — 2 years from the decision, then deleted
• Seminar recordings — 12 months from the date of the session, then deleted
• Platform usage data — 3 years from the end of the academic year in which it was generated
• Billing records — as required by tax and accounting law

11. Your rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access the personal information we hold, to have inaccurate information corrected, to have information deleted, to restrict or object to certain processing, to receive your information in a portable format, and to withdraw consent. To exercise any of these, write to admission@courup.com. We will respond within the period the applicable law requires.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom you may also complain to your national data protection authority.

12. Security

We use access controls, encryption in transit, and vendor due diligence to protect personal information. No system is perfectly secure, and we do not claim otherwise. If a breach affects your information, we will notify you and the relevant regulator where the law requires it.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. When we make a material change we will update the date at the top of this page and notify enrolled families by email.

14. Contact

Questions, requests, or complaints about privacy: admission@courup.com.