Children’s data and safety

Our position

This service exists to help families make a decision about a child. That means we hold information about children, and it means we have to be more careful than an ordinary website.

The rules we hold ourselves to

• No advertising to children. No advertisement appears on any page about a child, in any assessment, in any report or plan, or anywhere at all to a signed-in student. This is enforced in the software, not left to a setting.
• No permanent labels. For a child in Classes 6 to 8 we will not name a career. We suggest areas to explore. A single questionnaire cannot and should not decide a child’s future, and we say so on the result page.
• The child’s own voice is recorded separately. We ask the child what they want, and the parent what they hope for, in two separate places — so a family can see where they actually differ instead of the child simply agreeing.
• Minimum data. We ask for a first name, not a full name. A birth year, not a date of birth. Bands, not exact figures.
• No sharing with institutions. A child’s profile is never passed to a college, coaching centre or agent, for any payment.
• Parental control. Below 13 there is no child login at all. Above it, a linked student account can see and fill their own things but cannot change the family’s financial answers or delete their record.
• Human review. Any automatically generated wording that a family reports as harmful or wrong is reviewed by a person, and the feature can be switched off.

If something is wrong

Every page that carries a fact has a way to report it. If you believe a child’s data has been handled badly, write to us directly and we will respond.