Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

This policy applies to speak.ae and to the enquiries, applications and enrolments made through it. Depending on which campus you deal with, your data is controlled by one of two related companies, together trading as Speak English Institute:

Speak English Language Institute DMCC (License JLT-69341, Reg. JLT5581, Dubai Multi Commodities Centre) — Shop B01, Green Lakes S3, Cluster S, Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai, UAE. Responsible for Dubai and online courses.
Speak English Language Institute FZ-LLC (License 52000139, RAKEZ) — Unit 205, Amenity Building, Al Hamra Village, Ras Al Khaimah, UAE. Responsible for Ras Al Khaimah courses.

VAT TRN: 100589925500003.

For any question about this policy or about the data we hold on you, email info@speak.ae. If you are unsure which company holds your data, write to that address and we will tell you.

2. What we collect

Almost everything we hold is information you typed into a form yourself. We do not buy personal data, and we do not build profiles from third-party sources.

Information	Where it comes from	Where it goes
Name, email address, phone number and country code	Contact form, course enquiry, corporate quote, agency enquiry, newsletter sign-up, level test registration	See “How long we keep it” below
Course interest, preferred campus, preferred start date, study hours, nationality, whether you need a student visa	Enquiry, quote and application forms	With the enquiry or student record
Employer name, job title, team size and training requirements	Corporate training and in-company quote forms	With the enquiry record
Agency name, country and partnership details	Agency partnership enquiry	With the enquiry record
CV and qualification documents, teaching experience, work eligibility	Teacher application form	Sent to us by email as attachments; not stored on this website
English level test answers, score, percentage and assessed level	Free online level test and level test registration	Stored in our database so we can place you in the right class
Whether you asked for a callback, and whether you opted in to marketing or WhatsApp contact	Level test, quote and enquiry forms	With the enquiry record, as the record of your consent
Messages you send to our chat assistant	Website chat widget	In our student platform at app.speak.ae
Campaign attribution — the utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, utm_content and gclid values in the link you arrived from	Attached automatically to a form you submit, if you arrived from a tagged link	With the enquiry record
IP address	Every form submission, to limit how often the same source can submit	Briefly, for abuse prevention only
Email delivery events — whether a message we sent you was delivered, opened, bounced or unsubscribed	Emails we send you	With your contact record and in our email provider

Our application form is part of this website. What you enter there is sent to our student platform at app.speak.ae and to our admissions inbox; no other form provider is involved.

We do not take payment on this website, and we do not store card numbers here. Course fees are paid at the campus or through our payment provider, whose own terms cover that transaction.

We also collect anonymous usage statistics, and — only if you accept — analytics cookies. This is described in full in our Cookie Policy.

3. Why we use it

To answer you. Replying to an enquiry, sending a quote, arranging a callback, confirming a booking.
To run your course. Placing you at the right level, managing enrolment, issuing invoices and certificates, supporting a student visa application where you have asked us to.
To assess your English. Scoring your level test and keeping the result so you are not asked to sit it twice.
To follow up. If you enquire and we do not hear back, we may send a short series of automated emails about the course you asked about. You can stop these at any time — see below.
To recruit. Assessing teaching applications.
To protect the site. Blocking automated form abuse and spam.
To improve. Understanding which courses and pages people look for, and which campaigns bring genuine enquiries.

We rely on your consent for marketing emails, WhatsApp contact and analytics cookies; on the performance of our contract with you for anything needed to deliver a course you have booked; and on our legitimate interest in running and securing the school for the rest. We do not make automated decisions that produce legal effects for you. Your level test result influences which class we suggest, but a teacher confirms the placement.

4. Marketing and how to stop it

If you enquire, sit the level test or ask for a quote, we may enrol you in an automated follow-up sequence about that subject. Every one of those emails carries an unsubscribe link.

Unsubscribing takes effect immediately and for good: your address is added to a suppression list, which blocks further marketing from us and is also registered with our email provider so their system will not deliver it either. It does not stop messages you need — a booking confirmation, a schedule change, an invoice — because those are part of running your course rather than marketing.

WhatsApp contact happens only where you ticked the box asking for it. To withdraw any consent, or to be removed entirely, email info@speak.ae.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers. We use the following providers to run the school and the website. Each acts on our instructions:

Vercel — hosts the website.
Neon — the database holding level test results and our record of follow-up emails.
Mailtrap — sends our email and records delivery, opens, bounces and unsubscribes.
Sanity — stores the website’s own content. It holds no visitor data.
Anthropic — provides the language model behind our chat assistant. Messages you type in the chat are sent there to generate a reply. Please do not put passport numbers, payment details or other sensitive information into the chat.
Our student platform at app.speak.ae — holds student records and chat conversations.
Google — provides Analytics, and only where you have accepted analytics cookies.

We will also disclose data where the law, a regulator or a UAE government authority requires it — for example, information needed to support a student visa application you have asked us to make on your behalf.

6. Where your data is held

We operate in the UAE, but several of the providers listed above store and process data on servers outside it, including in the European Union and the United States. When you send us an enquiry, your data will therefore leave the UAE.

We choose established providers who commit contractually to protecting the data they process for us and to using recognised safeguards for international transfers. If you would like details of the arrangements for a particular provider, ask us.

7. How long we keep it

Student records — typically five years after your course ends, or longer where UAE law or a visa sponsorship requires it.
Enquiries that do not become enrolments — kept while the enquiry is live and for a reasonable period afterwards in case you come back to us, then deleted.
Level test results — kept so we can place you correctly on a later course, and deleted on request.
Teaching applications — kept while the role is open and for a reasonable period afterwards unless you ask us to delete them sooner.
Unsubscribe records — kept indefinitely. This is the record that stops us contacting you again, so deleting it would defeat its purpose.
Abuse-prevention IP records — a short rolling window, then discarded.
Accounting and tax records — as required by UAE law.

8. Your rights

You can ask us to:

tell you what personal data we hold about you, and give you a copy;
correct anything that is wrong or out of date;
delete your data, where we have no continuing legal or contractual reason to keep it;
stop or limit how we use it, including stopping marketing entirely;
withdraw a consent you previously gave, without affecting anything done before you withdrew it;
provide your data in a portable form, or send it to someone else.

Email info@speak.ae and we will respond within 30 days. We may ask you to confirm your identity first, so that we do not disclose your data to somebody else. Exercising these rights is free.

If you are not satisfied with our response, tell us and we will look again. You may also complain to the data protection authority in the UAE or, if you are outside the UAE, in your own country.

9. Children and young learners

Some of our courses are designed for school-age learners. Where the student is under 18, the enrolment is made by a parent or legal guardian, who provides the student’s details and gives consent on their behalf. We deal with the parent or guardian on matters of fees, attendance and progress unless they tell us otherwise.

This website is not directed at children, and we do not knowingly collect personal data directly from a child through it. If you believe a child has submitted their details to us without a parent’s involvement, email info@speak.ae and we will delete it.

10. Security

Traffic to this website is encrypted. Access to student records and to our email tools is limited to staff who need it, and our providers hold data under contract with us. Our forms are rate-limited to resist automated abuse.

No system is completely secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If a breach ever affects your data in a way likely to harm you, we will tell you and the relevant authority as the law requires.

11. Cookies

Our Cookie Policy lists everything this website stores on your device, what each item does, how long it lasts, and how to change your mind. Analytics are off until you accept them, and we place no advertising cookies.

12. Changes to this policy

We update this policy when what we do with data changes. The date at the top always reflects the current version. If a change is significant, or would need your consent, we will contact you rather than rely on your having noticed the new date.

13. Contact

Privacy questions, access requests and deletion requests all go to info@speak.ae. For anything else, please contact us.

See also our Terms & Conditions and Cookie Policy.