Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

LADDER English is an online educational learning platform for AQA GCSE English Language and Literature. It is operated by Mrs Kelly McNally, who is the controller of the personal information described in this policy.

To be confirmed before launch: whether ICO data-protection fee registration applies to this processing and, if so, the registration reference. No company number, VAT number or ICO reference is stated here because none has been confirmed.

2. What information we collect

Account information. Your email address, your password (stored only in a hashed form by our authentication provider), the first name or display name you choose, your role (student, parent, teacher, administrator) and the dates your account is created and used.

Learning information. Your ladder level, rungs, target grade, activity attempts and results, skills practised, streaks and XP, written answers you save, feedback generated for that work, and your reading and accessibility settings.

Subscription information. Which plan you are on, its status, and the identifiers our payment provider gives us so we can link a subscription to your account. Card and bank details are handled by the payment provider and are never stored by LADDER English.

AI Tutor interactions. The messages you send to the AI Tutor and the replies generated, plus a count of how many questions you have asked so plan limits can be applied. Ordinary conversation history is kept on your own device rather than as a normal server-side chat record. Where a message raises a serious safeguarding concern, the relevant information may be recorded separately for safeguarding review.

"About Me". Anything you choose to enter in the optional About Me section, such as a preferred name, your target grade and how you like to learn. This is voluntary — the platform works without it, and you can edit or clear it at any time.

Downloads. A record of which mock papers you have downloaded and when, so plan allowances can be applied fairly.

Technical information. Information needed to operate and secure the service, such as request logs, rate-limiting counters and error reports.

Our design principle is to collect only the minimum personal information genuinely needed to run the service. We do not ask students for their address, phone number, date of birth or school, we do not use advertising, and we do not build marketing or behavioural profiles. Please do not enter unnecessary personal information into written answers, About Me or the AI Tutor.

3. Why we collect it and our lawful basis

• To provide the service — creating your account, saving progress, showing your next step, delivering lessons and papers. Basis: performance of our contract with you.
• To operate subscriptions — applying entitlements and plan limits, handling payment problems. Basis: performance of contract.
• To keep the platform safe and secure — preventing abuse, fraud, scraping and unauthorised access. Basis: our legitimate interests in protecting the service and its users.
• To meet safeguarding responsibilities — reviewing and, where necessary, escalating serious concerns. Basis: our legitimate interests in protecting children and, where relevant, legal obligation or protection of someone's vital interests.
• To respond to you — answering questions, support and complaints. Basis: performance of contract or legitimate interests.

To be confirmed before launch: the final lawful-basis mapping should be reviewed by a qualified UK privacy professional, including whether any processing relies on consent and how consent is recorded for under-18 users.

4. The AI Tutor and AI feedback

When you use the AI Tutor, the messages in that conversation are sent to the AI service LADDER uses so a reply can be generated, together with LADDER's fixed teaching instructions. When you ask for AI writing feedback, what is sent is the question you are answering, the extract or text you are writing about, your own written answer, and the learning settings needed to pitch the feedback — your ladder level, your target grade and whether you use the SEN pathway.

Your name, email address, account identifier, About Me entries, subscription details and progress history are not sent to the AI service. Only what is needed to answer the request is sent.

Safety checks are applied to messages before and after they reach the AI service, to keep the tool within GCSE English study and to identify content that raises a wellbeing or safeguarding concern.

Please do not include your full name, address, phone number, school name, social-media details or other unnecessary personal information in AI messages.

To be confirmed before launch: the named AI provider(s) and any onward subprocessors, whether prompts are retained by them and for how long, whether prompts are used for model training, and whether any processing occurs outside the UK/EEA together with the transfer safeguards used. None of these are stated here because they have not been verified from the provider's current documentation.

5. Cookies, local storage and analytics

LADDER English stores information on your device to keep you signed in, remember your reading and accessibility settings, and keep local learning state and AI Tutor history available to you. These are necessary for the platform to work as intended.

We do not sell your data and we do not show advertising.

To be confirmed before launch: whether any analytics, product-usage or marketing cookies are enabled. If any non-essential cookies are used, a cookie notice with consent controls is required, and this section must list them.

6. Who we share information with

We share personal information only where it is needed to run the service:

• our hosting, database and authentication providers, who store account and learning data on our behalf;
• our payment and subscription provider, which processes payments and tells us your subscription status;
• the AI service that generates AI Tutor replies and written feedback;
• email delivery services used for account emails such as password resets;
• where LADDER provides that feature, authorised adults connected to a student — for example a linked parent or carer, an authorised teacher for their own class, or a platform administrator;
• where we are required to by law, or where it is necessary to protect someone from serious harm.

Students cannot see one another's work, and students cannot message each other anywhere in the platform.

To be confirmed before launch: a written list of named sub-processors, their roles, locations and the data-processing terms in place with each. We have deliberately not named providers here until that list is verified.

7. How long we keep information

We keep account and learning information for as long as your account is active, so your progress is still there when you come back. Subscription records are kept for as long as needed to administer the subscription and to meet accounting and tax requirements. Safeguarding records are kept for as long as is necessary for that purpose. Security and rate-limiting records are kept only for a short period.

When an account is closed, we delete or anonymise the information we no longer need, unless we must keep it for a legal reason.

To be confirmed before launch: a written retention schedule with specific periods for each category (accounts, learning records, safeguarding records, financial records, logs). We have not stated fixed periods here because they have not yet been set.

8. How we protect information

Access to data is controlled by authentication and per-user database access rules, so a signed-in user can normally reach only their own records. Passwords are handled by our authentication provider and are not visible to us. Privileged operations are restricted to server-side code. We apply rate limits and abuse protections, and we keep the platform patched.

No online service can be completely secure. If a personal-data breach occurs that is likely to affect your rights, we will act in line with our legal obligations, including notifying the ICO and affected users where required.

9. Children and young people

LADDER English is designed for GCSE students, which means many users are under 18. We try to keep the information we collect from students to the minimum needed to teach and to track progress: an email address, a first name or display name, and learning activity.

During student signup, students are asked to confirm that they have read the information provided and have discussed using LADDER with a parent or carer. This is an acknowledgement by the student; it is not a claim that LADDER has independently verified parental consent.

We encourage parents and carers to look at the platform with their child, to read the Terms & Conditions and Safeguarding pages, and to contact us with any questions. A parent or carer can ask us about the information held about their child, and can ask for the account to be closed.

To be confirmed before launch: the approach to age assurance, the minimum age for a self-registered account, how parental consent is obtained and evidenced where it is relied on, and a completed assessment against the ICO Children's Code (Age Appropriate Design Code), including a DPIA.

10. Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete information, where the law allows it;
• restrict or object to certain processing;
• transfer certain information to another service, where that right applies;
• withdraw consent, where we have relied on consent.

Email tutorenglishelevate@gmail.com to make a request. We may need to check that a request genuinely comes from the person the information is about, or from someone entitled to act for them. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection regulator.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the platform develops. Where a change is significant, we will take reasonable steps to make it clear.