Privacy notice

Privacy contact: support@hichalk.com

Where Chalk is provided directly to a family, we are responsible for the personal data associated with that account.

Where Chalk is provided through a school, academy trust or other education organisation, that organisation may be the data controller for learner information. Chalk will process that information on its behalf under the agreed terms.

Depending on how Chalk is used, we may collect:

Account information

For parents, tutors and other account holders:

• Name
• Email address
• Password or authentication information
• Google account information where Google sign-in is used
• Account and subscription information

Learner information

Children use Chalk through a profile managed by a parent, tutor or other responsible adult. Children do not hold their own Chalk accounts.

A learner profile may contain:

• Name or profile name
• Learning profile information
• Lessons and learning history
• Topics studied
• Practice results and missed questions

Lesson information

When a learner uses Chalk, we store information needed to provide and improve the lesson, including:

• Questions and answers
• Lesson conversations
• Chalk’s explanations
• Lesson topics
• Practice results
• Sources used by Chalk
• Lesson dates and times
• Safeguarding flags, where triggered

Voice information

Chalk supports spoken interaction. Where speech recognition is used, speech is converted into text so Chalk can understand the learner.

Chalk does not retain recordings of the learner’s microphone input.

Speech recognition may use the browser’s speech recognition service or ElevenLabs’ speech to text service, depending on the device and availability.

We use personal information to:

• Provide Chalk’s lessons and features
• Remember lesson history and progress
• Allow parents, tutors and schools to review learning
• Provide voice interaction
• Generate and grade learning activities
• Operate safeguarding features
• Keep accounts and the platform secure
• Provide customer support
• Send account and service emails
• Improve the reliability and performance of Chalk
• Meet our legal obligations

We do not sell learner information.

We do not use learner lesson content to train general-purpose AI models.

Chalk uses AI to research, explain and teach topics.

The current platform uses Anthropic’s Claude models for research, explanations, diagrams, questions, grading and related tutoring functions.

Relevant information from a lesson may be sent to the AI service so that Chalk can generate the lesson.

We configure our AI services so that learner lesson content is not used to train general-purpose models.

Chalk is also designed to limit what information is sent to external services to what is needed to provide the feature.

AI-generated information can sometimes be wrong. Chalk therefore restricts its research to approved educational sources and requires explanations to be linked to a source that Chalk actually visited.

Chalk includes a safeguarding system designed to identify specific predefined patterns that may indicate that a learner needs help.

Safeguarding detection uses a fixed list of patterns. The AI model plays no part in that decision.

When a safeguarding trigger is detected:

• The lesson is stopped.
• The learner is shown appropriate signposting.
• The learner is encouraged to speak to a trusted adult.
• The lesson is flagged for the responsible parent, tutor or school.

A safeguarding flag is not a diagnosis or professional assessment.

Chalk is not an emergency service, and safeguarding detection cannot guarantee that every concerning situation will be identified.

Depending on how Chalk is being used, learner information may be accessible to:

• The parent or adult who manages the account
• An authorised tutor
• Authorised school staff where Chalk is provided through a school
• Chalk staff who need access to operate, support or secure the service
• Our technology providers where they need to process information to provide their services

We limit access to personal information to what is necessary.

We use technical and organisational measures designed to protect personal information.

Account and lesson information is stored securely using our production database and application infrastructure.

Authentication uses secure sessions and protected credentials. Passwords and authentication codes are not stored in plain text.

We also use access controls and rate limiting to help protect accounts and the platform from misuse.

No internet service can guarantee complete security, but we continually review our security measures.

We keep information for as long as it is needed to provide Chalk and operate the account.

Lesson history is retained so that learners and responsible adults can review previous lessons.

If an account is deleted, its account, profile and lesson information is deleted from the active Chalk system.

Limited copies may remain temporarily in backups or operational logs until those systems are securely overwritten.

We may retain information where we are legally required to do so.

Depending on the circumstances, you may have the right to:

• Ask for a copy of your personal information
• Ask us to correct inaccurate information
• Ask us to delete information
• Ask us to restrict how information is used
• Object to certain processing
• Request your information in a portable format
• Withdraw consent where processing is based on consent

Chalk provides an account export function for account data.

Account holders can also delete their account from Chalk.

For school-managed accounts, requests relating to learner information may need to be made through the relevant school or education organisation.

To exercise your rights, contact support@hichalk.com.

Children use Chalk through an account managed by a parent, tutor or other responsible adult. Children under 13 do not hold their own Chalk accounts.

We aim to collect only the information needed to provide the learning service.

Chalk does not use children’s information for advertising.

We do not sell children’s information.

We do not use children’s lesson conversations to train general-purpose AI models.

Where a responsible adult can review a learner’s lesson history or safeguarding information, this is part of the way the Chalk service is designed and should be explained to the learner in an appropriate way.

When a school, academy trust or other education organisation uses Chalk, we work with the organisation on the appropriate data protection arrangements.

Where Chalk acts as a data processor, we process learner information according to the school’s instructions and our Data Processing Agreement.

Schools can request information about our security, processing activities and subprocessors by contacting us.

Chalk uses cookies and similar technologies where necessary for things such as:

• Keeping users signed in
• Maintaining secure sessions
• Remembering preferences
• Operating the website

We do not use cookies to build advertising profiles of children.

Where optional analytics or other technologies require consent, we will ask for consent where required by law.

We may update this Privacy Notice when Chalk changes or our data processing practices change.

If we make a significant change to how we use children’s personal information, we will provide appropriate notice.

If you have a question or concern about privacy, please contact us first at support@hichalk.com.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can also complain to the UK’s independent data protection regulator.