Terms of service

Please read the following Terms of Service and Privacy Policy carefully, as they contain important information about your rights and responsibilities. By registering on the STEM School Label website, you will be asked to consent to these policies.

Introduction

European Schoolnet has developed this website as part of the STEM School Label initiative (Grant Agreement: 2017-1-BE02-KA201-034748), a 36-month project funded by the Erasmus+ programme (KA2), coordinated by European Schoolnet. The project ended on 31/08/2020. The website is currently managed and maintained by European Schoolnet as a private initiative. Contact information of European Schoolnet can be found below.

European Schoolnet is based in Brussels, Belgium, and, as such, Belgian laws apply to any use of the website.

Content and Liability Disclaimer

Although European Schoolnet has made every reasonable effort to ensure that the contents are both timely and accurate, the information provided via this website is:

• of a general informational nature only and not intended to address the specific circumstances of any particular individual or entity;
• not necessarily comprehensive, accurate, complete or up to date;
• sometimes linked to external sites over which European Schoolnet has no control and for which European Schoolnet assumes no responsibility;
• not professional or legal advice (if you need specific advice, you should always consult a suitably qualified professional).

European Schoolnet reserves the right, at its discretion, to suspend, change, modify, add or remove (portions of) the website at any time, including any materials which may have been made available by content contributors.

European Schoolnet is not responsible or liable in any way for the contents of any document, information, or materials that have been uploaded, linked to, or otherwise made available by the users. By submitting any content, the user represents and warrants that such content does not infringe any copyright, trademark, database right, moral right, or any other intellectual property or proprietary rights of any third party. The user further confirms that all necessary permissions, consents, licenses, or usage rights have been obtained from the relevant rights holders prior to uploading or using any third-party materials, and that all required credits or attributions have been properly included.

 Furthermore, it is the duty of each user to verify the legality of their use of such materials before making them available and, in particular, to ensure that they do not infringe upon any applicable privacy, data protection, criminal, tort, or civil liability laws, whether at the European or national level. Users should also comply with any code of conduct or good practice guide which may be instituted by European Schoolnet covering content contributions.

European Schoolnet assumes no liability in relation to any of the points above, except as required under applicable law.

This disclaimer is not intended to limit the liability of European Schoolnet in contravention of any requirements laid down in applicable national law nor to exclude its liability for matters which may not be excluded under that law.

Intellectual Property Rights

European Schoolnet takes all reasonable measures to ensure that the intellectual property rights of third parties are respected in the administration of this website. However, European Schoolnet cannot verify or guarantee the rights status of content uploaded by users and does not accept liability for any infringement arising from user-submitted materials. Users acknowledge and agree that they remain fully liable for any claims, damages, losses, or proceedings resulting from a breach of intellectual property laws related to their submitted content. If you believe that any material on this website infringes your copyright or other intellectual property rights, please notify European Schoolnet without delay by providing sufficient details to enable us to investigate and take appropriate action.

Copyright notice

© - All rights reserved. Copyright protection applies. Except where otherwise stated, content made available by European Schoolnet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). Licensing under Creative Commons licenses does not affect the ownership of the copyright itself. Content from third-party websites (i.e. content providers) and from users publishing their own content on this website is subject to its own copyright restrictions; please refer to the site of origin or the copyright notice on the content for more information.

Trademarks and Logos

Please note that use of the website does not imply any right or licence to use any of the logos or trademarks that appear on the site. Such usage is always subject to the express written approval of the owner of the logo or trademark. Breach of this requirement may involve the imposition of penalties or damages against the infringer.

Contacting European Schoolnet

For any questions related to the STEM School Label website, you can contact us:

• via email: stemschoollabel@eun.org
• via post: EUN Partnership aisbl; Rue de Trèves 61; B-1040 Brussels; Belgium

Privacy policy

1. Introduction

European Schoolnet has developed this website as part of the STEM School Label initiative (Grant Agreement: 2017-1-BE02-KA201-034748), a 36-month project funded by the Erasmus+ programme (KA2), coordinated by European Schoolnet. The project ended on 31/08/2020. The website is currently managed and maintained by European Schoolnet as a private initiative.

European Schoolnet takes the protection of your privacy seriously. We exclusively collect, store and retain our users’ personal data to provide the best possible service and treat this data with the utmost care. In this policy, we explain the data we collect, why we collect it, how we collect and store it, and how users of the website can exercise their rights. Personal data processed through this website by European Schoolnet, as the data controller, will be in accordance with the requirements of the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27th April 2016 (GDPR).   

This website is organised in three parts:

• Public website, with public information on the initiative and the project, for guest users
• Private platform, hosting the community and the STEM School Label accreditation tools, for registered members.
• Admin community, hosting the management tools, for registered administrators and Language Coordinators.

2. When do we collect and process your personal data?

You directly provide European Schoolnet with most of the personal data we collect through STEM School Label website when you:

• Visit the STEM School Label website.
• Voluntarily register for the STEM School Label private community.
• Apply for the STEM School Labels
• Collect and disseminate your School Practice Evidence.
• Voluntarily register for events/webinars announced on the STEM School Label website from time to time.
• Post on STEM School Label Forum or leave a response to a published forum topic.
• Contact us directly via contact forms, social media, phone, or e-mail.

3. What personal data do we collect and why?

We will collect and use your personal data to:

• Improve the SSL website’s content and the overall user experience.
• Detect security incidents, protect against malicious activity, and fix system errors.
• Allow you to sign up for the private community.
• Allow you to submit your application to obtain the STEM School Labels.
• To disseminate your School Practice Evidence.
• Allow you to publish your good practices, experiences and ideas in the STEM School Label Forum.
• Assist you in the registration for events and webinars.
• Facilitate communication between you and us.

1.  Website visits

As a general policy, you are not required to disclose your personal data as a condition of using the STEM School Label website. No basic identity information, such as your name, postal address, or email address is automatically collected from your visit to the website. However, we may automatically collect personal data, including technical information and information about your visit, from each of your visits to our website, as detailed in Section 3.e) below.

2. Private community

To join the STEM School Label private community, to access the functionalities offered by the websites and to connect with other registered users, you must register here: STEM School Label. When you create an account on the STEM School Label website to become a user of the private community, you will be requested to consent to this Privacy policy, and hence to the processing of your personal data as detailed below:

• Obligational: First name, Family name, Email address, username
• Voluntary: Role in the organization, picture, country, mother tongue, other spoken languages, description of yourself; organisation/School data (name, address, country, website, email etc.).

During the registration process, you will be asked to specify a unique username and corresponding password. Using this username/password combination, you may access your account and use the restricted area of the site. You can edit or delete your profile information at any time

Registered users can actively contribute to the STEM School Label website through the following features:

b. I) STEM School Labels

Registered users can apply for the STEM School Labels. To do so, users are invited to fill in the self-assessment form. The self-assessment form consists of 21 questions, each offering four answer options and one open text field for any additional comments.

No personal data is collected from the user through the said form, other than the types of data already described in point 3.b) above, and any personal data you voluntarily share in the open text box for additional comments..  Personal data processing related to third-party data shared by the user with European Schoolnet when submitting the self-assessment form, as well as through subsequent steps for obtaining the label, is subject to the user’s prior confirmation that they have obtained all required consents from the data subjects concerned and complied with the transparency data sharing principles and requirements outlined in the GDPR and/or applicable local data protection laws. .

b. II) School Practice Evidence

Registered users can upload their School Practice Evidence on the STEM School Label website.

When you fill in the website form to upload School Practice Evidence, your submission will be associated with your user account profile, which contains the personal data collected at the time of your registration. In addition to that, you need to submit the following personal data: the authors’ names (which it could refer to your name or a third-party’s name).

This form includes a free-text field and options to upload attachments. Any personal data, including images of yourself or a third party that you voluntarily provide in these fields will be processed. Personal data processing related to third-party data shared by you with European Schoolnet  when submitting School Practice Evidence is subject to your prior confirmation that you have obtained all required consents from the data subjects concerned and complied with the transparency data sharing principles and requirements outlined in the GDPR and/or applicable local data protection laws.

b. IV) STEM School Label Forum

The STEM School Label Forum allows registered users to share good practices, experiences and ideas (“thread”) related to STEM strategies at the school level. Moreover, registered users can publish articles on the STEM School Label Forum. To do this, users should fill in the online form under “Post New Thread”.

This form contains free text fields and any type of personal data you voluntarily insert in the fields will be collected and further published on the STEM School Label website.

In addition, registered users have the possibility to comment on good practices, experiences and ideas.

Any personal data voluntarily inputted in any comment, or images uploaded voluntarily by a registered user is subject to the user’s prior confirmation that they have obtained all required consents from the data subjects concerned and complied with the transparency data sharing principles and requirements outlined in the GDPR and/or applicable local data protection laws.

3.c. Register for events/webinars

Registered and non-registered users can participate to project events, like webinars. Each event has its own privacy statement, provided to the participants prior to registration.

The processing of participant’s personal data for the purposes of participating in the events will be subject to the privacy statement of each event.

3.d. Contacting European Schoolnet

We also collect personal data such as your full name, email, professional title, organization name, and any other personal data you choose to share when you communicate with us through social media, phone or e-mail. If you choose to contact us directly, we will only use the personal data you have provided us with for the purpose of responding to your message and, in case, providing the service you require.

3.e. Other forms of collection/Technical data collected by automated means

Personal data such as your IP address, internet service provider (ISP), web browser, operating system, approximate times of use, referring site, specific user interactions with the systems functionality and any similar data exchanged between a user's computer and the servers of the STEM School Label website will be collected. These will not be linked to specific user accounts. We use Matomo for this (see Sections 8 and 9 below). This information is accessible only to the systems administrators of European Schoolnet and is used only to ensure the broadest compatibility and connectivity between users and the STEM School Label website, and to take appropriate action in case of unlawful or inappropriate behaviour.

Aggregated statistics will be also retrieved regularly on the data collected through the website, including, but not limited to, the number of users and organisations during a specific period, the Labels assigned (number, type, country etc.), the average scores in assessment forms (for example by year and country), the usage of the private community (for example, number of posts, subjects etc.).

We use the reCAPTCHA, a service provided by Google,  service on our website to protect against spam and unauthorized automated activity. This service analyzes hardware and software information, such as device data, IP addresses, user interaction data to determine if a user is human.This processing is carried out on our behalf by Google as a third-party service provider ( i.e. data processor0 in accordance with the Google Cloud Data Processing Addendum which can be found at Cloud Data Processing Addendum  |  Google Cloud

4. Who do we share your data with?

Please note that the STEM School Label project is a collective effort in which organisations from multiple countries participate.

This network includes:

• The STEM School Label Language Coordinators, which coordinate the activities at national level and manage the submissions for the Label accreditation.

Your personal data is shared between the subjects of the network listed above, in so far as this is necessary:

• to manage the STEM School Label services (STEM School Label accreditation process and Label assignment, community content management and notifications to community users about the service and the community content, and the Expertise program)
• to respond to you and to provide the service you require
• to process your participation in events.

If you register in the private community:

• your First name, Last name, Country, Mother tongue, email, description, role, , as recorded in your Profile (User and Organisation) will be accessible and displayed for all users of the private community.

If a registered users submits Forum posts in the private community:

• the data submitted in the shared posts will be displayed for all users of the community
• authors’ name of this content will be also available and displayed for all user of the community
• if you add any comment in the forum, your comments will be displayed together with your name and surname. Any personal data mentioned in any comment voluntarily made by a registered user will be visible to other private community users when viewing the commented or reviewed item and also retrievable through search engines.

If a registered user submits School Practice Evidence in the private community:

• the data submitted may be displayed for all registered users of the community if the website administrators and/or the Language Coordinators consider it as of value for the community (Publication in the community galleries of good practices)
• authors of School Practice Evidence will also be displayed for all users of the community.

If a registered user obtains a STEM School Label:

• the data submitted throughout the application process may be disseminated with their consent on the SSL website and European Schoolnet’s social media channels ( including Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube) for all visitors and the public.

If a registered user applies to a STEM School Expertise in the private community:

• the data submitted may be displayed for all registered users of the community if the website administrators and/or the Language Coordinators consider it as of value for the community.

5. International Data transfers

Where images or other types of personal data as explained in Section 3 of this Privacy Policy are uploaded to third-party social media platforms such as Linkedin, YouTube, Facebook, international transfers occur through these platforms acting as independent data controllers located outside the EU/EEA.

Your personal data may be transferred to and stored at a destination outside the European Union (‘’EU’’)/European Economic Area (‘’EEA’’) in which our third-party service providers specified in this Privacy Notice are located or have servers.

Your personal data may also be accessible to parties outside the EU/EEA in cases where the language coordinators and project partners are located outside EU. Also, it is possible that where you are located outside the EU/ EEA, we need to follow up with you regarding your submission via social media channels . Apart from the above-mentioned circumstances, your personal data is not sent outside the EU/EEA.

6. The legal basis of data processing

In terms of personal data processing activities for the purpose of facilitating communication between you and us, we rely on our legitimate interest to be able to respond to requests, questions, or remarks when you contact us via the website, social media, phone or e-mail.

In terms of personal data processing activities for the purpose of improving the STEM School Label website’s content and the overall experience, we rely on our own legitimate interest in providing an interesting online space to our visitors.

In terms of personal data processing activities for the purposes of detecting and preventing malware, illegal content, and other types of misuse, we rely on our legitimate interest to keep our online presence safe.

When you register to the STEM School Label private community, to any event/webinar promoted on this website, contribute to the STEM School label Forum, apply to the STEM School labels, submit School Practice Evidence, your consent serves as the legal basis for our processing of your personal data.

If you consent to us processing your personal information, please note that you may withdraw this consent at any time. If you have problems withdrawing your earlier given consent, you can contact us as indicated in Section 14 below. 

Please note that your consent can only be withdrawn with future effect and such a withdrawal does not have any influence on the lawfulness of past processing. In some cases, we may be entitled despite your withdrawal to continue to process your personal information on a different legal basis —to perform a contract, for example.

7. How long do we store your data?

Your personal data are retained by European Schoolnet for as long as needed to achieve the purposes which are described above or, when we asked for your consent, up until such time when you withdraw your consent. As a general rule, we will de-identify your personal data when they are no longer necessary for the purposes outlined above or when the retention period as explained in this section has expired.

All personal data we collect through our interactions with you via the SSL website, social media channels, and e-mails will be kept for as long as required to communicate with you, but also to keep an historical archive of our communications. This allows us to revert back to earlier communications if you return to us with new questions, requests, or other input.

Concerning the personal data we collect from the registered users of the STEM School Label website including its features as explained under Section 3 above, these will be kept for until you contact us to terminate your account(s) and/or request us to delete your personal data you submitted earlier, which will result in the deletion of the personal data that you have provided. Personal data collected from the registered users upon registration will in any case not be retained longer than three years after the user’s last use of the website.

For the events, the period of retention is indicated in the separate privacy statement for the processing activity concerned.

Retention periods applicable to certain technical data collected by automated means are described in Section 9

Beyond this period, your data won’t be retained except in an anonymised form, or insofar as required:

• to show that we've performed the activities in accordance with applicable laws and the EU's audit regulations.
• for research purposes and publication.

8. Matomo

Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform. A website owner uses a web analytics platform to measure, collect, analyse, and report visitors’ data for understanding and optimising their website. If you would like to see what Matomo looks like, you can access a demo version at: https://demo.matomo.cloud. Matomo is used to analyse the behaviour of website visitors to identify potential pitfalls, such as unfound pages, search engine indexing issues, and which content is most appreciated. Once the data is processed (e.g., the number of visitors reaching a 'not found' page, viewing only one page, etc.), Matomo generates reports that enable us to take action, such as changing the layout of the pages or publishing fresh content. Matomo collects information without identifying you directly.  

9. Cookies

To ensure this site functions correctly, we occasionally place small data files called cookies on your device. Most big websites do this too.

1. What are cookies?

A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. It enables the website to remember your actions and preferences (such as your active user session ID, language, font size, and other display preferences) over a period of time, so you don't have to keep re-entering them whenever you return to the site or browse from one page to another.

2. How do we use cookies?

On our site, we only use a minimal number of cookies:

• User preferences: These cookies help to improve a user's experience of a website by providing a more personalised service, without having to ask you every time again; more specifically, our Liferay Portal stores a limited number of user preferences, such as language.

More detailed information about the type of cookies we are using can be found in the following table:

NAME	TYPE	PURPOSE
COOKIE_SUPPORT	Liferay cookie support	Indicates if the website supports cookies.
GUEST_LANGUAGE_ID	Liferay language	Indicates your language preference.
JSESSIONID	JESSIONID	Used to create and maintain your (anonymous) user session by the server.
LFR_SESSION_STATE	Liferay ID cookies	Used for controlling the timestamp of user session expiration: a JavaScript warning is displayed to the user when their session is about to expire or has expired, without sending any request to the Liferay server.
_pk_id	Matomo	Used to distinguish users (expiration time: 13 months)
_pk_ses	Matomo	Temporarily stores data for the visit (expiration time: 30 minutes)
_pk_ref	Matomo	Attribution information (how users were referred to the website) (expiration time: 6 months)
_pk_testcookie	Matomo	Temporary cookie to check if a visitor’s browser supports cookies (set in Internet Explorer only). (Expires almost immediately).
_atrfs	AddThis	Associated with Add. This social sharing widget is commonly embedded on websites to enable visitors to share content with various networking and sharing platforms. It is used to collect anonymous statistical data.
_atuvc	AddThis	Stores an updated page share count.
_atuvs	AddThis	Stores performed actions on the website.
awt	Cookie preference setting	Keeps track of the user's consent to enable non-essential cookies on the website (ex, tracking cookies).

3. How to control cookies?

You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish – for details, see aboutcookies.org. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer, and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed. If you do this, however, you may need to adjust some preferences each time you visit a site manually, and particular services and functionalities may not function properly.

10. What are your data protection rights?

European Schoolnet would like to make sure you are fully aware of all your data protection rights. Every STEM School Label website user is entitled to the following:

The right to access – You have the right to request copies of the personal data we hold about you from European Schoolnet. However, please note that you must specify which processing activities you would like to have access to your personal data for.

The right to rectification – You have the right to request that European Schoolnet correct any information you believe is inaccurate. You also have the right to request that European Schoolnet complete the information you believe is incomplete. Please specify the context in which we use your personal data (e.g., to send you newsletters or to register for an event), so that we may assess your request swiftly and accurately.

The right to erasure – You have the right to request that European Schoolnet erases your personal data, if these personal data are no longer needed for the purposes for which we collected them in the first place, if our collection of them was illegitimate or if you have successfully exercised your right to withdraw your consent or your right to object to the processing of your personal data. When one of these circumstances applies, we will immediately delete your personal data, unless the law, regulatory obligations, or administrative or judicial orders prohibit us from doing so.

The right to restrict processing – You can ask that we restrict the processing of your personal data:

• during the time we are assessing your request for the correction of your personal data;
• during the time we are assessing your objection to the processing of your personal data;
• when such processing was unlawful, but you prefer restriction to erasure.

The right to object to processing – You have the right to object to European Schoolnet's processing of your personal data, when we process your personal data based on our own legitimate interests, i.e., you have not given us your consent. We do not need them for the execution or performance of an agreement nor to comply with legal obligations.

The right to data portability – You have the right to request that European Schoolnet transfer the data that we have collected to another organisation, or directly to you, under certain conditions.

Whenever we process your personal data based on your consent, you also have the right to withdraw your consent at any time.

If you would like to exercise any of these rights, please send us an email. You can reach us at privacy@eun.org. Rest assured that we will not interpret an email from you requesting to exercise a right as your consent with any processing of your personal data beyond what is required for handling your request. A request should clearly state and specify which right you wish to exercise. Your request should also be dated and signed. We will notify you as soon as reasonably possible, and at the latest, thirty (30) days after receiving the request. Please note that whenever you wish to exercise a right, we may ask you to provide proof of identity. We do this to avoid a data breach, e.g., if an unauthorised person pretends to be you and exercises a right in your name.

11. Data security

European Schoolnet has put in place appropriate technical and security measures to protect our infrastructure, systems, applications, premises, and processes where your personal data is stored, from accidental loss, alteration, disclosure or use or access in an unauthorised way. We process only the personal data required to achieve the purposes we have communicated to you, and we restrict access to your personal data to European Schoolnet designated staff and specified third parties with a legitimate business need to know.

We have also established procedures to address any suspected personal data breach/security incident and will notify you and any applicable regulator of a breach where required by law.

12. Changes within this Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy may be updated periodically and without prior notice to you to reflect changes in our personal data practices. Any changes to this Privacy Policy will take effect upon their publication on this website. Your further use of this website will be subject to the updated Privacy Policy. This Privacy Policy was last updated on 01/02/2026. If you have any questions or concerns about this privacy policy, please do not hesitate to contact us at privacy@eun.org at any time.

13. Privacy Policies of other websites

This Privacy Policy does not apply to European Schoolnet's private projects/spaces, as well as to current and past projects carried out by European Schoolnet, whose links are shared on our website and which have their own privacy statements. 

The STEM School Label website includes links to third-party websites, including our social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as the websites of our STEM School Label partners, among others. Clicking on those links may allow third parties to collect or share data about you. We do not control these third-party websites and are not responsible for their use of your data. We recommend that you carefully read any privacy policies on their websites. Additionally, you linked to our website from a third-party website. In that case, we cannot be responsible for the privacy policies and practices of the owners and operators of that third-party website. We recommend that you check the privacy policy of that third-party website.

14. Contacting European Schoolnet

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or the processing of your personal data, please do not hesitate to contact us. In that case, if you would like to exercise one of your data protection rights, or if you have any complaint regarding the processing of your personal data by European Schoolnet, you can always contact us:

Via e-mail:

Data controller: privacy@eun.org

Via post:

Data controller

EUN Partnership aisbl

Rue de Trèves 61

B-1040 Brussels

Belgium

Via telephone:

+32 2 790 75 75

15. Making an Official Complaint

If you feel that we have infringed your data protection rights, you may make an official complaint to the data protection authorities where you are resident or the Belgian Data Protection Authorities at the following address:

Belgian Data Protection Authority

Rue de la Presse 35

B-1000 Bruxelles

Rue de la Presse 35

B-1000 Bruxelles