What is a cookie?

A cookie is a small text file that is placed on a user’s computer, usually to allow that website to track visits or to customise a user’s experience of that site.

Why do we use cookies?

We use cookies to provide our students and website visitors with a better web experience. We do not use cookies to identify you personally or to gather personal information about you, unless you give us permission to do so.

What cookies are used on this site?

Functional cookies

Name of cookie What does it do?
ASP.NET_sessionid This cookie is used to determine when a user is actively using the website. It enables the website to temporarily store information so that it can be accessed by other pages on the website to help the site function correctly.

Measuring website usage

We use Google Analytics to collect information about how people use this site. We do this to make sure it’s meeting its users’ needs and to understand how we could do it better.

Please see below for the cookies used:

Organisation setting the cookie Name of cookie What does it do? How to reject/delete these cookies?
Google Analytics _utma This cookie helps determine the number of unique visitors to the website. You may reject or delete all of the Google Analytics cookies mentioned in this table by downloading and installing the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.
  _utmz This cookie helps determine the referral method of people visiting the website. This helps to analyse the traffic arriving at the website and to determine which are the most popular routes (e.g. direct, search engine search, email link).  
  _utmb This Google Analytics cookie helps record the length of individual sessions from users on the website. Each time a user moves to a new page on the website within 30 minutes of arriving, the cookie updates so that we know that the user is still actively using the website within a single session.  
  _utmc Similar to _utmb, this Google Analytics cookie helps record the length of individual sessions on the website.  
  _ga This cookie is used to distinguish users.  
  _gat This cookie is used to throttle request rate.  
Google Adwords Doubleclick Doubleclick (part of Google) uses cookies and IP address analysis to identify unique users of the website (through the collection of non-personally identifiable information) and to track the conversion rates for particular advertising campaigns. It also helps serve advertisements which are of particular relevance to the user, and to control the frequency with which particular advertisements are displayed.

For more information about how Google use data please view Google’s Privacy Policy.

To opt-out please visit Google.

AddThis.com _atuvc, _atuvs This cookie is created and read by the AddThis social sharing site JavaScript on the client side in order to make sure the user sees the updated count if they share a page and return to it before our share count cache is updated. No data from that cookie is sent back to AddThis and removing it when disabling cookies would cause unexpected behaviour for users.  Opt out.

When do the cookies expire?

Except for essential cookies, most of the cookies on the website expire at the end of the user’s current session. However, some of the cookies have an extended lifespan which ranges from 30 minutes to 2 years.

Where can I find more information about cookies, and how do I turn cookies off or delete cookies?

Find out more about cookies including how to disable/enable and delete them at the following website www.aboutcookies.org.

Users can block most cookies (except for Flash cookies) by activating the setting on their browser that allows users to refuse the setting of all or some cookies. However, if the browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) users may not be able to access all or parts of the website, or users may experience reduced functionality when accessing certain services.

Unless users have adjusted their browser setting so that it will refuse cookies, our system will issue cookies as soon they visit the website.

If users wish to delete cookies from the browser on their mobile phone, users will need to refer to their handset manual.