How Find My Nursery Handles Your Privacy

Find My Nursery is continuing to build the platform around the way parents and nursery schools actually use it, and that includes how we handle personal information.

As Find My Nursery has grown from a nursery school directory into a platform where parents can search, compare, contact schools, book tours, leave reviews and interact with school profiles, the amount of information moving through the platform has grown too.

So we've been working behind the scenes on a broader privacy and POPIA compliance update across Find My Nursery.

This isn't simply about adding another privacy policy to the footer. We're looking at the different places where personal information enters Find My Nursery, why we collect it, how it is used, how long it should be retained, and what users can do when they want to access or manage their information.

Here's what we're changing.

Why we're putting more focus on privacy

Parents use Find My Nursery to research schools and, when they're ready, to contact them directly. That can include sending an enquiry, requesting a tour or providing information through one of the forms on the platform.

School owners and staff have a different relationship with Find My Nursery. They may claim a school profile, manage their information through the school dashboard, work with enquiries or use other platform services.

These are different types of interactions, so we've been reviewing them separately rather than treating every piece of information the same way.

The goal is straightforward: personal information should be collected for a clear reason, used for that reason, and handled responsibly.

Privacy notices where information is collected

One of the changes we're making is bringing privacy information closer to the point where someone actually submits their details.

Instead of relying only on a general privacy policy, relevant Find My Nursery forms now include a short explanation of why the information is being collected before the person submits the form.

This applies to areas such as parent enquiries, tour requests, school claims, brand enquiries and school network enquiries.

The purpose is simple. When you provide your information to Find My Nursery, you should be able to understand why we're asking for it at that point.

What information Find My Nursery collects

The information we collect depends on what you are doing on the platform.

For example, a parent contacting a nursery school may provide information such as their name, contact details and the contents of their enquiry.

Someone requesting a school tour may provide information needed to arrange and respond to that request.

A school owner claiming a listing may provide their own contact information and account details so that Find My Nursery can verify the claim and provide access to the school management features.

We also receive information through reviews, business and network enquiries, subscriptions and other interactions with the platform.

The important distinction is that we are not collecting the same information for every purpose. The information requested should relate to the activity being carried out.

School owners have their own privacy notice

We're also introducing a separate privacy notice for school owners and account holders.

This is different from the general parent-facing privacy information because a school owner is not simply someone submitting a once-off enquiry. They may have an ongoing account relationship with Find My Nursery.

The owner notice explains what personal information Find My Nursery holds about the account holder, why it is needed, how it is used, and what rights the account holder has to access or request deletion of their own information.

This helps keep the distinction clear between the information belonging to the nursery school profile and the personal information belonging to the person managing that profile.

Third-party services

Some parts of Find My Nursery rely on specialist third-party services.

Depending on how you use the platform, these can include services such as Klaviyo for marketing communications, PayFast for payments, Google Analytics for website measurement and TikTok Pixel for advertising and measurement.

These services form part of the wider Find My Nursery technology stack, and our privacy documentation explains their role rather than treating Find My Nursery as though every part of the data journey happens entirely on our own servers.

Retention matters too

Privacy isn't only about what happens when information is collected.

We're also building processes around how long different categories of information should be retained and when information should be deleted, purged or anonymised where appropriate.

Some categories have already been identified for automated retention processes, including certain school claim records, claim email logs, partner and network enquiries, and raw payment notification data once it has been reconciled.

We are deliberately not assigning arbitrary retention periods simply to say that a number exists. Where a retention period still needs a business or legal decision, we determine that period first and automate it afterwards.

Your rights

POPIA gives data subjects rights in relation to their personal information.

Depending on the circumstances, this can include the right to request access to personal information, ask for correction of information that is inaccurate, and request deletion where applicable.

Our Privacy Policy & Compliance page explains these rights in more detail and provides the relevant process for making a request.

Our Privacy Policy & Compliance page

We are also moving beyond a standalone privacy document and building the relevant information into an on-site Privacy Policy & Compliance page.

This page brings together information about who Find My Nursery is, how we process personal information, the purposes for different activities, third-party services, retention, data subject rights and our cookie notice.

The full page is intended to be the main reference point for how privacy works across the Find My Nursery platform.

Why this matters

As Find My Nursery continues to grow, privacy needs to grow with it.

Parents should be able to search for a nursery school, contact a school and use the platform without having to guess what happens to the information they provide.

School owners should have a clear understanding of what information is held about them as account holders and what rights they have.

And behind the scenes, the platform itself needs processes that support the privacy commitments we make publicly.

That's the work we're putting in now.

Frequently asked questions

Building Find My Nursery properly as we grow

A lot of the work that goes into a platform happens behind the scenes.

Search filters, school profiles, dashboards and new features are the things people see. Privacy controls, retention processes and data handling rules are the things that make the platform responsible underneath it all.

This update is part of that work.

Find My Nursery is continuing to build the platform with parents, nursery schools and the wider early childhood ecosystem in mind, and that includes making privacy part of how the platform works rather than something added afterwards.