Children's privacy

• We only know the name or nickname your grown-up chose, your school year, and how you get on with lessons.
• We use this to choose questions that are just right for you — not too easy, not too hard.
• We never show adverts, never sell your information, and there are no league tables, points or streaks.
• Nobody else can see your learning unless your grown-up decides to share it.
• If something worries you, stop and talk to your grown-up. You can always say "I'd like to stop".

Every child profile starts with the most private settings. There is no public profile, no chat with other users, no location tracking and no social features.

We collect only what is needed to teach: nickname, year group, accessibility settings and lesson answers. We do not collect surnames, dates of birth, addresses, school names or photographs of faces.

We do not use timers, rewards loops or streaks designed to keep children online. Progress is described gently as Exploring, Developing or Secure, never as a score or ability label. Profiling is used only to choose the next lesson, and is never used for marketing.

Parents can see everything we hold about their child, change settings, download the full record and delete it at any time. When a parent shares a record, it is read-only, time-limited and can be switched off.

In the UK a child must be 13 or over to give their own consent to online services. HearthStead accounts are opened and controlled by a parent or carer aged 18 or over, who consents on the child's behalf.

If we become aware of a risk to a child's safety we will follow our safeguarding policy, which may include contacting the appropriate authorities as the law allows. Our safeguarding lead can be contacted at safeguarding@hearthstead.co.uk [to be confirmed].