Data Protection Notice
1. Who we are
Zhihua Education Pte. Ltd. (UEN 202631027D) ("Zhihua", "we", "us") provides Chinese language tuition to primary school students in Singapore. We are responsible for the personal data described in this notice.
2. Whose data we handle
- Parents and guardians who enquire about, or enrol a child in, our programmes
- Students enrolled in our classes
- People who apply to work with us
- Visitors to our centres, who appear on CCTV
3. What we collect
From a parent or guardian: name, mobile number, email address, the branch and class chosen, payment records, and the content of your messages and calls with us.
About a student: name, primary school, level and stream, attendance, tuition join date, work submitted, marks and assessment results, vocabulary pool, our observations of a student's strengths and weaknesses, and our teachers' written comments on progress.
From a job applicant: the information in your application, your employment history, your resume, your responses to our interview questions, your post-interview assignments, and references you provide or ask us to contact.
We do not collect NRIC numbers, Birth Certificate numbers, FIN numbers, or copies of any identity card, from parents or students. If you are asked for one, it is an error — please tell our Data Protection Officer.
4. How we collect it
- Directly from you — when you message us on WhatsApp, call us, visit a centre, or complete a form
- From your child, in the ordinary course of teaching — work submitted, questions asked, assessments taken, homework being marked.
- Automatically, from CCTV cameras at our centres
- From someone who refers you to us, where they confirm that they have your permission or that you expect us to contact you.
5. Messages and calls
Zhihua conducts parent communication through one WhatsApp number, 8710 7000, operated on the WhatsApp Business Platform. We do this so that everything about your child sits in one place, is visible to the staff responsible for your child, and does not depend on an individual teacher's personal phone.
Calls and messages with us may be recorded. We record for staff training, service quality, and to resolve any dispute about what was said or agreed. You are told this in the first message you receive from us, before any call takes place. If you would rather not be recorded, tell us and we will arrange the conversation another way.
6. CCTV
Our centres are fitted with CCTV in classrooms, at reception, in corridors and at entrances. Cameras record image only — they do not record sound. There are no cameras in toilets or in any changing area, and none in the staff room.
We operate CCTV to keep children safe, to secure the premises, to assure the quality of our teaching, and to establish what happened when an incident is reported. Recordings are kept for 30 days and are then overwritten automatically. Access is restricted to our Data Protection Officer, our Academic Head for the purpose of assuring teaching quality, and Branch Managers for their own branch with the Data Protection Officer's approval. Our CCTV provider may access the system as necessary to maintain it, under contract. We disclose footage to the police or other authorities where the law requires it.
7. Why we use it
| Purpose | What this covers |
|---|---|
| Providing the service you enrolled in | Placing your child in a class, teaching, assessment, attendance, and communicating with you about your child's progress |
| Administering the relationship | Fees, receipts, refunds, scheduling, make-up lessons, and keeping our records accurate |
| Safety and security | Supervising children on our premises, and investigating incidents |
| Quality of teaching | Reviewing lessons, and reviewing how our staff communicate with parents |
| Legal obligations | Tax and accounting records, and responding to lawful requests from authorities |
| Telling you about our own programmes | For enrolled families, about their own child — see section 11 |
8. Who we share it with
We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with other tuition providers. We share it only with:
- Service providers who run the systems we operate on — our messaging platform, payment gateway, file storage, accounting software and CCTV provider. Each is bound by contract to use the data only for the service it provides to us.
- Government authorities where the law requires it, including the Ministry of Education in connection with the registration of our centres.
- Our professional advisers, where necessary, under a duty of confidence.
9. Transfers out of Singapore
Some of our service providers store data outside Singapore. Where that happens we require by contract that the data receives a standard of protection comparable to the PDPA. A current list is available from our Data Protection Officer on request.
10. How long we keep it
Only as long as we need it, or as long as the law requires. In summary: CCTV for 30 days; call recordings for 12 months; the record of an enquiry that did not lead to enrolment for 12 months; a student's records for 3 years after the student leaves; financial records for 5 years, as tax law requires.
11. Messages about our programmes, and how to stop them
While your child is enrolled with us, we may send you messages about our own programmes for your child — renewal for the coming term, holiday bootcamps, workshops and similar. These relate to the service you are already receiving from us, and every one of them carries a way to stop it.
To stop them, reply STOP to any such message or write to our Data Protection Officer. We will act within ten working days, at no cost to you, and it has no effect on your child's place or on anything you need to know about your child's classes.
If you enquired about our classes and did not enrol, we will not send you promotional messages afterwards. Where you have asked us to tell you when a place opens in a particular class, we will do that, and nothing else.
12. Photographs and video of students
Photographs and video we use in our own marketing are taken so that no student is identifiable — work and hands, wide shots of a room, or students seen from behind. Where we would like to use an image in which your child is identifiable, we will send you that specific image and ask you first. You may say no, and you may change your mind later, in which case we will remove it from everything we control.
13. Children's data
Our students are primary school children. We take instructions about a student's personal data from the parent or guardian who enrolled the child, and we deal with requests about a student's data through that parent or guardian.
14. Keeping it safe
We restrict access to the staff who need it for their work: a teacher sees the parents of the children she teaches, not the rest. Contact numbers are masked from staff who have no need to dial them. Records sit in access-controlled systems, physical files are locked, and every staff member signs a data protection undertaking before starting work.
15. Your rights
You may ask what personal data we hold about you or your child and how we have used it; ask us to correct anything inaccurate; and withdraw a consent you have given. Write to our Data Protection Officer. We will respond within 30 days, and if we need longer we will tell you when to expect our answer. There is no fee. If we cannot give you something you have asked for, we will tell you why.
16. Changes
We update this notice when our practices change. The current version is always the one published at https://www.zhihua.com.sg.
17. Contact
Data Protection Officer, Zhihua Education Pte. Ltd.
Email: admin@zhihua.com.sg
WhatsApp or telephone: 97720259
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Personal Data Protection Commission at pdpc.gov.sg.