Version 1.1 · Published 2 October 2026
Privacy notice
BM Schools Academic Quiz privacy notice
Version 1.1. Effective date: 2 October 2026.
Who we are
BM Schools Academic Quiz (BMSAQ) is operated by Ben Patrick-James Mooney, a sole trader, at 3 Desert Road, Newry, BT34 2JB, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. Contact info@bmsaq.com about privacy, rights or complaints. This notice covers bmsaq.com, organiser.bmsaq.com, challenge.bmsaq.com, our competition administration, practice resources and related communications in the UK and Republic of Ireland.
BMSAQ and your school
We decide how to run our competitions, mark answers, provide results and maintain official competition records. For those activities BMSAQ is a data controller. Schools separately decide who participates, retain their pupil-to-ID mapping and use results for their own educational purposes. Ask your school about its own handling of your information. Any service we perform solely on a school's documented instructions is covered by the separate processing arrangement for that service; this does not make all competition processing a processor service.
Information, purposes and legal reasons
| Activity | Information and source | Purpose and basis |
|---|---|---|
| Organiser registration and verification | Staff name, work contact, school/organisation, account and authority-check records; supplied by you and checked against official school information | Verify authority and protect school records: legitimate interests. Deliver an agreement with an individual customer: contract; staff acting for a school: legitimate interests |
| Competition participation | School/competition reference, BMSAQ-generated competition pupil ID, access credentials, answers, attempt timing, submission state, scores and certificates; from the school, participant and service | Deliver a fair educational competition, issue results and resolve marking issues: legitimate interests, with children's interests assessed |
| Paper marking | Scans/PDFs may include pupil names, IDs and answers; schools send them to us for capture and marking | Same competition purpose. ZipGrade is used to mark/capture paper submissions; BMSAQ’s own system delivers pupil access/results. Local results files support administration |
| Optional personal results account | Username, account credentials handled by authentication services, linked attempts/results, age band, account activity and optional eligible recovery email | Provide the separate optional account under the consent/approval route explained at signup. A username linked to results is personal information. School-managed accounts are assessed separately |
| Orders and practice delivery | Adult contact, delivery email, order, product, invoice and payment reference; from the purchaser and payment providers | Deliver what you request: contract; prevent fraud and abuse: legitimate interests; necessary accounting records: legal obligation |
| Support and security | Messages, minimum identity-check information, account/access and security events; from you and service providers | Answer requests, recover access, investigate incidents and protect the service: legitimate interests; comply with applicable legal duties where required |
| Benji | Adult organiser/admin chat and limited account/workspace context; authorised orders, entries and aggregate result context if sharing is enabled | Provide optional assistance and protect the workspace: legitimate interests, using the relevant underlying basis for authorised context. Sharing permission does not itself supply a legal basis for pupil information |
| Adult email marketing | Opt-in and confirmation records, professional school/homeschool contact, preferences and objections | Consented resource-lead emails: consent. Eligible targeted school-business outreach: legitimate interests where electronic-marketing law permits; otherwise consent is required |
| Technical information | Session/authentication records, operational/security events and any approved optional storage or tracking | Essential operation/security: legitimate interests or the service contract as appropriate. Optional technologies requiring consent: consent. See the cookie notice |
Our legitimate interests are running a fair and secure academic competition, supporting participants and schools, maintaining necessary results, and informing appropriate adult school contacts about relevant competitions. We balance these purposes against individuals' interests, particularly children's privacy. We do not use pupil participation details to build marketing lists.
Online participation generally uses BMSAQ-generated competition IDs, not schools’ persistent pupil identifiers, rather than mandatory names or dates of birth. Paper sheets can contain names. Avoid sending diagnoses, medical reports or other unnecessary sensitive information. If an adjustment is needed, the school should contact us using the minimum information needed; any health information requires an additional applicable legal condition before we process it.
Optional pupil accounts
An account is optional and is not needed to take the school Challenge. A pupil can use a username without a real name or email. The separate account route must explain who must approve it, what is retained and how to close it. Contact info@bmsaq.com if the required authorisation route is unclear; do not assume a school approval is parental authorisation. Where we rely on consent for an online service offered directly to a child, children below 13 in the UK or below 16 in Ireland need authorisation from a person with parental responsibility. A school approval is not automatically parental consent. School-managed participation is a different activity and is not subject to a blanket minimum age of 13 or 16.
Benji and marking
Benji is for authorised adults, not pupils. Chat text and limited context are sent to the OpenAI API even when result/order sharing is off. Saved sharing switches cover school profile, orders/credit, Challenge entries, aggregate results and student-account counts. Individual pupil results, student IDs and credentials are excluded from this automatic context. Permission to share further authorised context can persist between chats and can be switched off. Switching it off stops future sharing through that permission; it does not erase data already sent. Do not enter pupil names, health information or confidential records unnecessarily. AI responses can be wrong and must be checked. Competition marking uses programmed marking rules; Benji does not decide pupil awards or disqualification. Contact us for a human review of a suspected marking or administrative error.
Marketing
Resource access and purchases do not require marketing consent. Optional adult resource-lead emails concern relevant BMSAQ Challenges, normally once a year at the start of the campaign. Historical practice contacts are not automatically subscribed. A public email address, a verified address or an intended-use dropdown is not consent.
Separately, we may send relevant invitations and limited follow-ups to eligible school-business contacts where the applicable law permits. We may obtain professional contacts from the school's published website or an existing school relationship. A first-contact message identifies the source and links to this notice. We do not contact pupils for marketing. Unsubscribe or reply asking us to stop, or email info@bmsaq.com. We honour marketing objections and retain only the minimum suppression record necessary to avoid contacting you again.
Who receives information
Authorised school organisers receive their school's competition records and results; participants can receive their own results through the relevant release process. We use contracted infrastructure, email, payment and support suppliers. These include Google Firebase/Cloud and managed Google Workspace, Stripe, OpenAI for Benji, and ZipGrade for paper-submission marking/capture. Google Analytics is currently embedded on the organiser sign-in and registration pages; see the cookie notice for its purpose and controls. Revolut Pro receives banking/payment information. Saleshandy is the intended targeted-outreach provider and may process adult contact and campaign information when that service is activated. Financial providers also process some information for their own legal, fraud-prevention and banking purposes.
We may disclose necessary information to professional advisers, regulators or authorities when lawfully required. We do not authorise suppliers to use pupil data for their own advertising. We restrict access by role and school; we do not give practice purchasers access to pupil results. See the separate pupil notice for a shorter explanation.
International processing
Our active Firestore database is in the eur3 European location, Realtime Database is in Belgium, the Functions reviewed are in London, and the production Cloud Storage resource is in us-central1 in the United States. Other supplier processing and support may take place internationally. Location alone does not describe all supplier access.
For covered Google infrastructure/email, OpenAI API and Stripe services, the applicable published processing agreements contain international-transfer provisions, including standard contractual clauses and UK provisions where applicable. A copy or explanation of the safeguards relevant to your records can be requested from info@bmsaq.com. These arrangements are service-specific; they do not establish a guarantee that all processing remains in Europe.
ZipGrade currently receives identifiable paper submissions for marking, rather than providing our pupil Challenge platform or results login. Its AWS vendor is public, but BMSAQ has not yet established the applicable complete processor contract or transfer safeguard for this flow. This is under review; no claim of an adequate or completed arrangement is made here. Saleshandy’s remaining processor/transfer documentation must be established before it receives real outreach contact records; no real outreach has been sent through the verified Communications implementation. Google Analytics has its own applicable processing/transfer terms, separate from Firebase infrastructure terms.
BMSAQ has not yet designated the EU representative required for its continuing Irish service on the facts assessed. Representative contact details will be added when designation is completed. Our current direct contact remains info@bmsaq.com. This interim disclosure does not replace that appointment requirement.
How long we retain information
Our adopted retention policy sets the following limits, with exceptions only where a documented dispute, incident or legal duty justifies them. Detailed answers, attempt records and paper scans: normally 12 months after final results. Minimal official scores/certificates without a personal account: six years after the Challenge. Personal accounts and linked minimal results: while active, with a policy of closure after five years without login or a new linked Challenge and advance warning where a safe contact route exists. These limits require operational deletion through the relevant systems, including manual handling where necessary; they are not a claim that every automatic deletion job is already deployed. Adjustment records: normally 90 days after final results.
Free practice delivery contacts without marketing: 90 days after fulfilment. Unconfirmed marketing requests: seven days. Consented marketing leads: 24 months from consent or renewed explicit interest. Routine support: 24 months after resolution. Benji chat history and routine operational logs: normally 90 days; material security audit records: 12 months. Shorter security-token limits apply. We retain tax records for at least five years after the relevant 31 January filing deadline where required, and minimum opt-out records while necessary to prevent further marketing, reviewing them annually.
School-contact and outreach records are reviewed for continuing relevance and removed when the campaign or relationship no longer requires them, apart from necessary consent, objection and compliance evidence. Supplier residual copies and backups may expire later under bounded provider schedules. Our policy excludes restricted backups from ordinary marketing or account access and requires deletion instructions to be reapplied before a restored backup is used.
Your choices and rights
Providing participation identifiers and answers is needed to administer the Challenge; order/delivery details are needed to supply a requested product. Optional marketing and optional personal accounts can be declined. Depending on the activity and applicable law, you can request access, correction, deletion, restriction or portability, object to processing based on legitimate interests, and withdraw consent. Withdrawing consent does not change the lawfulness of earlier processing. Some information must be retained for legal obligations or necessary claims; we explain any applicable exception.
Children have rights over their own information. A parent or representative may act where authorised and appropriate to the child's interests; we verify this proportionately. You do not need legal wording to make a request. Email info@bmsaq.com or write to our address. We normally respond to rights requests within one calendar month; any lawful extension will be explained within that month.
You can also make a privacy complaint through the same channels. We acknowledge complaints within 30 days, investigate without undue delay, keep you informed and explain the outcome. You may complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office or, for Irish data-protection matters, the Irish Data Protection Commission. You do not have to waive your right to complain to a regulator by contacting us.
We version this notice and communicate material changes appropriately. A privacy notice explains processing; using the site does not mean you consent to every activity described here.
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