Edvantage privacy notice

This is an interim version of our privacy notice. A fuller privacy policy will replace it.

Last updated: 19 October 2026

Who we are

Edvantage is Edvantage Educational Consultancy Services Co. W.L.L., Commercial Registration No. 385438, a Kuwaiti education company. Approved by Kuwait's Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE/12/E/121).

• Address: Al Tujjar Building, 10th floor, Khalid Ibn Al Waleed Street, Sharq, Kuwait
• Phone and WhatsApp: +965 66601466
• Email: info@edvantage.me

What we collect and why

• Website enquiries: your name, email, mobile number and your answers on our forms, such as your school, IELTS band and study plans, so a counsellor can contact you. Our hosting also records your IP address and the pages you open, to keep the site secure.
• Your account (Edvantage ID): your name, email address, password (stored only in scrambled form) and language, and sign-in records (time, IP address and device) to protect your account. Signing in with Google gives us your name and email address. We email you sign-in codes, invitations and password resets.
• Tests and results: your answers, Writing essays, Speaking and Keep Talking recordings, written transcripts of what you said, and how often you left the test tab. We use them to mark your test, give you your bands, readiness report and Writing feedback, and email you about your results, tests your teacher sets and completing your profile. We also keep what you add to your profile, such as past IELTS bands. If you are also a study abroad client, your counsellor can see your platform results in your counselling file.
• Study abroad counselling: your contact details, date of birth, gender, nationality, address, school, grades, test results, study plans, how your studies will be paid for, your passport's expiry date, your counsellor's notes, details of family members you ask us to involve, and documents you send us, such as your passport, transcripts and financial or medical documents. We use them to advise you and send your applications, and a counsellor may send you a birthday greeting. Inside our systems, only Edvantage staff can open your documents; other users of our services cannot. Emails you send us are kept in Google Workspace.

We also use test answers to check our marking. We may mark past answers again with another marking service, or compare mock bands with official IELTS bands. This never changes your published band. To keep tests fair, we compare Speaking answers with other candidates' recent answers and with model answers, and look at how you speak, to spot answers that seem memorised or read aloud. These checks only advise the teachers who review marking.

How AI marks your test

Reading and Listening are marked automatically. Writing and Speaking are marked by AI against the published IELTS band descriptors, and a qualified teacher reviews any script where the marking is uncertain. We are measuring how closely our marks agree with certified IELTS examiners, and we will publish the result whatever it shows. Your Writing and Speaking bands are shown straight away. A teacher may check them after that and can change them.

• Writing essays go to Google Gemini, which marks them and writes your feedback. Until 19 October 2026, Writing was marked, and its feedback written, by OpenAI.
• Speaking and Keep Talking recordings go to OpenAI, which writes out what you said, and to Google Gemini, which judges your speaking. If Gemini is unavailable, OpenAI can judge your Speaking test instead.
• We do not use your answers or recordings to train AI, and we do not use your voice to identify you.

Who else sees your information

We do not sell your information or use it for advertising.

• Your school, if it signed you up. With the school's permission, we may read its Google Workspace user list, which includes staff, and keep it in our account system in Doha to set up accounts and classes. Only the people the school selects get accounts. Your teachers can see the tests they set you, your progress and results, and the school gets a readiness report for the year group. Your teachers can also change your Speaking band after it is published. Every change is recorded, with who made it and why.
• Other users: the leaderboard, which every signed-in user can see across the whole platform, ranks every student with a published result. It shows their nickname (or "Student #" and a number), country, bands and number of tests taken, but not their account name. You can change your nickname at any time. There is no setting to leave the leaderboard today.
• Examiners and teachers outside Edvantage, if we invite them to review marking. They can see results, essays and recordings on our IELTS platform.
• Service providers: Google Cloud (hosting), Google Gemini and OpenAI (marking), Google Workspace (our email), Twilio SendGrid (sending our emails), Twilio (text messages, and WhatsApp messages we keep in your record), Notion (our internal support tickets), Calendly (booking calls), and WhatsApp (Meta) if you message us there. We share information with them only so they can do that work for us.
• Your parent or guardian, if you are under 18, and family members you ask us to involve; Google, if you sign in with it; universities and partners you ask us to apply to; and authorities, when the law requires it.

Edvantage staff can see results across the platform, and today any staff member can technically open any student's record. Our rule is that they do so only when their job needs it.

Where it is kept

Our main systems, files and recordings are on Google Cloud in Doha, Qatar, which is outside Kuwait.

OpenAI, Twilio, Twilio SendGrid, Notion and Calendly are based in the United States. Google Gemini, WhatsApp, and the Google service that keeps some of our technical records, are not tied to one country. Google Workspace may keep our email outside Kuwait and Qatar. Universities and partners you apply to are in the countries you choose.

How long we keep it

We keep your account, results, recordings, enquiries, counselling records and the school user lists we import until we are asked to delete them. Our systems do not delete them automatically.

Some copies stay for a while after we delete something: our database backups for up to 365 days, deleted recordings and documents for up to 90 days in case of error, and full copies of our database made before system changes, which have no end date yet. Records in our counselling system are archived first, so they can be restored. Records of sign-ins and account actions stay in our account system, and OpenAI may keep data sent to its backup Speaking marker for up to 30 days.

Cookies

We use only the cookies and browser storage our services need: sign-in cookies, a region cookie on our website that lasts one year, and preferences such as your language stored in your browser. We do not use advertising or analytics cookies. Some of our emails, such as results and reminders, may record when they are opened and which links are clicked.

Students under 18

Our services are mostly for secondary school students in grades 10 to 12 (usually 15 to 18), and for their parents and teachers. If you are under 18, please use our services, and send us your details, only with your parent's or guardian's permission, and ask them to read this notice with you. Today we do not ask your age when you sign up, and we do not record a parent's agreement.

Your requests

You, or your parent or guardian, can email info@edvantage.me to see, correct or delete your information, close your account, or withdraw your consent. We may ask you to prove who you are first. When you ask us to delete your information, we remove it from our systems unless a law requires us to keep it, and if so we tell you what and why. Some copies stay for a while, as explained above.

Changes to this notice

When we change this notice, we update the date at the top, and if a change matters to you, we will tell you.