Privacy policy

Rook Learning is run by Rook Learning, which decides how your information is used and is responsible for it (the “data controller” under UK data protection law). You can reach us at a.hmeid@gmail.com about anything on this page.

• Your name, email address and password when you create an account. The password is stored scrambled, so nobody can read it, us included.
• Who you are linked to: the children on your account, a second parent you invite, and a tutor you link by their email address.
• What you do for your child: books and writing you set, scores you change and the comments you add, and safeguarding notices you mark as seen.

Tutor accounts are opened by us, with the same details.

You, the parent, set up your child’s account and give us:

• A first name, so the site can greet them.
• A username, chosen from a list of made-up pairs like RedBadger, so it never contains their real name.
• A PIN. We never store the PIN itself, only a scrambled version of it that cannot be turned back into the PIN.
• Their school year, so the questions and marking suit their age.

Then, as your child uses the site, we keep:

• Their writing: every answer and redraft, with the marks and feedback on it.
• Their reading: the books they choose, how far they have got, their check-ins and notes, and any book they add by its ISBN.
• School work they bring: the subject, the question and any notes. Notes can be typed, taken from a web page, or read from a photo. We keep only the text. A photo is read once and never stored, and for a web page we keep just the text and its address.
• Sign-in attempts: the username and time of each PIN sign-in, so we can lock an account after too many wrong guesses.

We do not collect a child’s email address, surname, date of birth, school, address or photograph. Children cannot sign up on their own, and there are no public profiles.

On the try it page, anyone can have one piece of writing marked, and one redraft of it, without signing up. For that:

• The writing is not kept. It is sent to the AI to be marked, the marks come back to your browser, and we store nothing of it. Your browser keeps a copy until the end of the day, so a reload does not lose it.
• A cookie holds a random number, so we can tell that a redraft comes from the same visitor and give each visitor one try a day. It lasts two days.
• Your IP address is used to stop one person taking many tries.
• We store only scrambled versions of the cookie’s number, the IP address and the writing, made with a secret key and a different salt every day. They cannot be turned back into the address or the writing, or matched to the same visitor on another day. Beside them we keep the year chosen and the marks, for 30 days.

The lawful basis is our legitimate interest in letting people see the service before they sign up, and in stopping misuse.

We use your information and your child’s only to run Rook Learning:

• to sign you and your child in, and keep accounts safe;
• to set work, mark it, and show you and your child the results and progress;
• to let the adults you choose (a second parent, a tutor) follow the same work;
• to check the quality of the marking and fix problems;
• to keep children safe (see below).

The law needs us to have a reason, called a lawful basis, for each of these. Running the service you signed up for is the basis for most of it. Checking quality, fixing problems and preventing misuse rely on our legitimate interest in running a safe, working service. Safeguarding also relies on the public interest in protecting children.

We never use the information for advertising, we never sell it, and we never share it with anyone except the services listed below that help us run the site.

Writing is marked by Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic. To mark a piece, we send Anthropic the writing, the question or prompt, your child’s school year and any notes that go with it. We do not send your child’s name or username.

Anthropic handles this for us under its commercial terms, which do not allow it to use what we send to train its AI models. It keeps the information only for a short time, to check for misuse, and then deletes it.

The AI only marks work that has been handed in. Children cannot chat with it, and it never writes any part of the answer for them. Spelling, punctuation and length are checked by fixed rules. A parent or tutor can change any score the AI gives.

Every piece of work and reading check-in that is handed in is also read by the AI for signs that a child might be at risk, such as self-harm, abuse or bullying. If it finds something, we show a notice to the parents and tutor linked to that child, with a short summary and the words that raised it. The notice stays on their dashboard until one of them marks it as seen.

Your child is not told when a notice is raised. This is so that a worried adult can decide how to talk to them. The screen never changes the marking. Admins can see how many notices there are, and we keep a record of each one while the child’s account is open.

• Your child.
• You, and a second parent if you invite one (never more than two parents).
• Their tutor, if you or we link one.
• Us, when we need to: to support you, to fix a problem, to check the marking, or to keep a child safe.

Children cannot see each other’s work, and there is no way to message anyone on the site.

These companies store or handle information for us. They may only use it to do that job, under contracts with them.

SupabaseIreland (EU)

Stores every account and all the work, and sends the email that confirms a parent's address.

DigitalOceanLondon (UK)

Runs the website. Its servers handle every page you load.

AnthropicUnited States

Runs Claude, the AI that marks the work, writes the feedback, reads photos of notes and screens writing for safeguarding concerns.

Open Library and Google BooksUnited States

Look up a book when your child adds one by its ISBN or title. They receive only the ISBN or title typed, never who typed it.

Where information goes outside the UK, it is protected by safeguards that UK law recognises: the EU has a UK “adequacy” decision, and transfers to the United States are covered by contract terms approved for that purpose.

When your child adds notes from a web page, our server visits that page to copy its text. The site that runs the page will see a visit from our server, not from your child.

We use two cookies: the one that keeps you signed in, and, only if you use the try it page, one that lets us give each visitor one free try a day. Both are strictly necessary for what you asked for, so we do not ask for consent to them. There are no advertising, analytics or tracking cookies, and no third-party scripts that follow you.

The site also saves a few things in your browser, which never leave your device:

• whether you chose light or dark mode, and whether sounds are on;
• a backup copy of writing and check-ins while they are being typed, so nothing is lost if the connection drops. It is cleared once the work is handed in.

The fonts are served from our own site, so loading a page does not contact Google or any other font service.

• Your child’s work is kept while their account is open, so they and you can look back at it.
• Deleting your child’s account, which you can do yourself from the Children page, deletes all their work, marks, notes, check-ins and safeguarding notices straight away. It cannot be undone.
• Your own account: email us and we will delete it and everything that belongs to it.
• An account that is never confirmed: if nobody clicks the link in the confirmation email within 7 days, the account, and a child set up on it, is deleted automatically.
• Tries without an account: the scrambled cookie number, IP address and writing, the year and the marks are deleted after 30 days. The writing itself is never stored.
• Books your child adds by ISBN stay in our catalogue after their account is deleted. The book record holds only the title, author and cover, never who added it.

Deleted information can stay in our hosting providers’ backups for a short time, until those are replaced.

Under UK data protection law you can ask us, about your own information or your child’s:

• for a copy of it;
• to correct anything that is wrong;
• to delete it;
• to stop or limit how we use it, or to object to it;
• for a copy you can take to another service.

You can already see all of your child’s work in the site, save their bookshelf as a PDF, and delete their account yourself. For anything else, email a.hmeid@gmail.com. We will reply within a month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, please tell us first. You can also complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection regulator, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113.

Your parent set up your account. We keep what you write so that it can be marked and so you can see how you are getting better. Your parent and your tutor can read it too, and so can we if we need to.

A computer program, an AI, marks your work. It does not know your name. It will never write your answers for you, and it does not learn from what you write.

If you write something that makes us worried about you, we will let your parent or tutor know, so they can help. If you have a question about any of this, ask your parent to get in touch with us.

If we change how we use information, we will update this page and the date at the top. If a change matters, for example if we start charging or add a new kind of service, we will tell you on the site before it happens.