Cookie Policy

What are cookies?

‘Cookies’ are small text files that are stored by the browser on your computer or mobile phone. Websites are able to read and write these files, allowing them store things like personalisation details or user preferences. You can think of cookies as providing a “memory” for the website, enabling it to recognise a user and respond appropriately. Some cookies also provide meaningful reports about a website’s visitors.

Cookies are used by almost all websites, for a variety of purposes:
– Analysis of visitor behaviour (known as ‘analytics’)
– To personalise pages and remember visitor preferences.
– To manage shopping carts in online stores

Cookies may be either “persistent” cookies or “session” cookies.  A persistent cookie consists of a text file sent by a web server to a web browser, which will be stored by the browser and will remain valid until its set expiry date (unless deleted by the user before the expiry date). A session cookie, on the other hand, will expire at the end of the user session, when the web browser is closed.
For more information, please take a look at these two sites;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/guides/about-cookies
http://www.whatarecookies.com/

 

How does www.skinnersacademy.org.uk use cookies?

Any area which requires you to log in requires cookies in order for it to remember who you are. 

Other parts of the website which don’t require you to log in only use Google Analytics cookies. These cookies do not identify people, but instead just record web traffic, allowing us to see which areas of the site are most popular and to tailor our content accordingly.

 

Can cookies threaten my privacy?

Cookies are stored on the computer’s hard drive. They cannot access the hard drive – so a cookie can’t read other information saved on the hard drive, or get a user’s e-mail address etc. They only contain and transfer to the server as much information as the users themselves have disclosed to a certain web site.

A server cannot set a cookie for a domain that it is not a member of. In spite of this, users quite often find in their computer files cookies from web sites that they have never visited. These cookies are usually set by companies that sell internet advertising on behalf of other web sites. Therefore it may be possible that users’ information is passed to third party web sites without the users’ knowledge or consent, such as information on surfing habits. Skinners’ Academy explicitly does not use this type of cookie.

 

How do I turn cookies off?

All modern browsers allow you to change your cookie settings – these will usually be found in the ‘options’ or ‘preferences’ menu of your browser.
Cookie settings in Internet Explorer
Cookie settings in Firefox
Cookie settings in Chrome

We do not recommend turning cookies off if you intend to log in to the Parents’ Portal.

However, in order to turn off the tracking cookies (Google Analytics), please go to
http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.