Cookies
Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) Communities put small files (called ‘cookies’) onto your computer to collect information about how your browse our sites.
We use these cookies to:
- measure how you use our website so we can update and improve it
- remember any notifications you see so we don’t show them to you again
We do not use cookies to personally identify you.
You’ll usually get a message before we put a cookie on your computer.
Find out more about cookies on GOV.UK.
There are 3 types of cookies we use.
| Cookie type | Description |
|---|---|
| Essential cookies | Also called ‘first party cookies’ or ‘strictly necessary’ as we need them to provide the functionality to use the service. |
| Analytics cookies | These track information about visits to the service so that we can report on and improve it. This includes how you use the service, which page you came from, the number of visits and how long you spend on a page. |
| Preference cookies | We use these cookies to remember the information you give to us, such as your username, language or region. This is so you only have to select your preferences once. |
| Service | Cookie name | Cookie purpose | Cookie duration | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guide | _help_center_session | Stores unique session key for Help Center product | Session | Essential |
| All products | _pendo_accountid.PENDO_API_KEY | Analytics information | 100 days | Analytics |
| All products | _pendo_meta.PENDO_API_KEY | Analytics information | 100 days | Analytics |
| All products | _pendo_visitorld.PENDO_API_KEY | Analytics information | 100 days | Analytics |
| Guide | _zendesk_cookie | Stores settings information for various features | 20 years | Essential |
| Guide | _zendesk_session | Stores unique session key for Zendesk Classic application | Session | Essential |
| Guide | _zendesk_shared_session | Stores a unique session key for a session shared across Zendesk products | 1 day | Essential |
Cookies that measure website use
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about:
- how you got to the site
- the pages you visit on GOV.UK and government digital services, and how long you spend on each page
- what you click on when you're visiting the site
We do not allow Google to use or share the data about how use this site.