Many of the people who learn on Tutorio are children. This policy explains the extra care we take with learners under 18, what parents and guardians can see and do, and how tutors and organisations may involve children on Tutorio. It supplements our Privacy Policy and Safeguarding Policy.
Our approach
We design Tutorio in line with the ICO's Age Appropriate Design Code (the Children's Code) and the UK GDPR. That means:
- The best interests of the child guide our design decisions.
- High-privacy defaults. Profiles are private, activity is visible only to the learner and their own tutors or parents, and location is never collected precisely.
- Data minimisation. We ask only for what we need to provide the learning experience.
- No behavioural advertising and no sale of children's data, ever.
- No dark patterns. We do not nudge children into sharing more, lowering privacy settings or spending money. Streaks and rewards are designed to encourage learning, not compulsive use, and can be turned off.
- Plain language. We explain what happens with data in words a young person can understand, and we show a short summary at the top of every policy.
- Parental tools. Parents and guardians can view progress, manage notifications and request deletion.
Age and accounts
- Under 13. Children under 13 cannot create their own Tutorio account. They can use Tutorio as a guest on a device supervised by a parent, or through an account or class created for them by a parent, guardian, tutor or organisation that holds the appropriate authority. In those cases the adult or organisation is responsible for the account.
- 13 to 17. Young people may create their own account. We ask that a parent or guardian reviews our terms with them. Parents can be linked to the account to see progress.
- Age assurance. We ask for age or year group at sign-up and infer age from the qualification level where reasonable. Where we believe an account belongs to a younger child than declared we may restrict features or ask a parent to verify.
What we collect from children
The same categories described in the Privacy Policy, limited to what the learning experience needs: display name, email or username, age band or year group, learning activity, device identifier and notification tokens, and the content the child creates (answers, notes, drawings). We do not ask children for phone numbers, addresses or photographs, and we do not collect precise location.
Rio, our AI study companion, is designed for educational conversation. Children's prompts are sent to our AI provider only to generate the answer, are never used to train models, and are subject to content filtering. See the AI Transparency Statement.
Who can see a child's data
- The child, on their own devices.
- Linked parents or guardians - progress, streaks, assignments, results and time spent. Parents do not see the content of a child's private notes unless the child shares them.
- Tutors of classes the child has joined, and colleagues in the tutor's organisation where sharing is enabled - class progress, answers, scores, screening results and live lesson participation for that class only.
- Tutorio staff - only when needed for support, safety or security, and always logged.
- Nobody else. Other learners see a child's name and score only where a tutor chooses to display a class leaderboard or reveal answers during a live lesson, and tutors can anonymise leaderboards.
Communication with children
Tutors communicate with learners through the Service - assignments, feedback, class notices and live lesson prompts. Tutorio does not provide private one-to-one chat between a tutor and a child. Notifications to children are limited to learning and account matters. We do not send marketing to anyone we know to be under 18.
Tutors, schools and organisations
Before adding a child to a class, a tutor or organisation must have the authority to do so: for a school, its statutory duty and its own privacy notice; for an independent tutor, the parent's or guardian's agreement. Organisations are the data controller for the children they bring to Tutorio and we act under their instructions (see the Schools & Organisations Agreement). All adults teaching on Tutorio agree to our Safeguarding Policy and Tutoring & Live Lessons Terms.
What parents and guardians can do
- See progress through the parents area once linked to a learner.
- Manage notifications sent to the child's device and to you.
- Turn off streak reminders and other engagement features.
- Request access to, correction of, or deletion of your child's data by emailing [email protected]. We will verify that you are the parent or guardian before acting. Where the child is old enough to understand their rights (normally 13+) we may also ask for their view.
- Remove your child from a class at any time, or ask us to.
- Raise a concern about a tutor, another learner or content at [email protected].
Retention
Children's learning data is kept while the account is active and deleted or anonymised within 30 days of the account being deleted, subject to the retention periods in the Privacy Policy for payment, safeguarding and legal records. Guest data on unmanaged devices is deleted after 24 months of inactivity.
Changes
If we make a material change to how we handle children's data we will tell parents and organisations before it takes effect, and where appropriate explain the change to children inside the app.
Contact
Privacy: [email protected]. Safeguarding: [email protected]. You can also contact the ICO at ico.org.uk.