| Date | 14 October 2026 |
|---|---|
| Review Date | December 2026, then annually, or sooner if practice or legislation changes |
| Owner | Director, Nudge Education Online & Head of School, with the Designated Safeguarding Lead |
| Approved by | Approved by the Director, NEO & Head of School on 14 October 2026 under authority delegated by the Proprietor (CEO of Nudge Education Ltd) on 13 October 2026; for noting at the NEO board on 3 December 2026 |
| Version | v10.26 |
Shared with every family at induction. Written for parents and carers; your child gets a shorter version.
Why you are reading this
Your child’s school day happens through a screen, so the questions you would normally ask at a school gate need answering in writing: who can see my child, what is kept, what is filtered, and what do the AI tools actually do. This guide answers them plainly. It goes with the NEO — Home-School Agreement you sign and the NEO — Privacy Notice for Learners, and nothing here changes what those say.
What NEO gives your child, and what it does with it
Your child gets a NEO Google account. It is a managed account: it cannot send or receive email outside NEO, cannot share files outside NEO, and can only join lessons through NEO. Staff can see what is in it. Learners on a full-time place get a NEO Chromebook; it stays NEO’s property, it is set up for NEO only, and it comes back at the end.
Live lessons are not recorded. Recording is switched off across NEO and learners cannot record either. Some lessons are transcribed (turned into written text) by the note-taking tool built into our staff Google tools, switched on only by the teacher, so that we can keep your child safe and write honest weekly reports. Transcripts are kept for one term and are never shared with other families, other learners or anyone outside NEO except where safeguarding requires it. Nothing your child says or writes is used to train an AI.
Filtering and monitoring
Every NEO account has web filtering (Smoothwall, made by Qoria). It works in any Chrome browser your child signs into with their NEO account, so it is on a NEO Chromebook all the time, wherever the device is, and it is also on in the NEO profile if your child signs into Chrome on your own device. Filtering blocks harmful sites. It does not look at anything outside the NEO account — other browsers, other profiles and your own family accounts are not touched.
A NEO Chromebook is a managed school device: your child cannot open a private or guest window, add another account, or switch off the filtering. We tell children this plainly at induction so it is not a surprise.
Safeguarding monitoring, which looks for signs that a child may be at risk (for example searches about self-harm or contact from a stranger) and alerts our Designated Safeguarding Lead, is not yet switched on. When it is, it will run only on NEO Chromebooks, never on your family’s own devices; the DSL decides what to do with an alert and our Engagement and Operations Coordinator or your child’s Practitioner-Mentor will talk to you. Monitoring data is held by the supplier for 15 months and then deleted. We will update this guide and tell you when monitoring starts.
If your child is on a Discovery Phase, a part-time package or tuition and uses your own device, filtering applies only inside the NEO account, and there is no monitoring. Your child is also protected by the managed NEO account, by how we run lessons (a teacher and a second adult in every session, no private messaging, the teacher decides who joins) and by what we teach about staying safe online. The filtering on your home broadband and your own parental controls matter in that case, and we will help you set them up if you ask. If you would prefer your child to have a NEO device, tell us.
The AI tools NEO uses
NEO follows the Diamond Standard: six tests every AI tool must pass before it goes anywhere near a learner, and a traffic-light rule. Green tools help adults and never touch learner data. Amber tools touch learner data or interact with a learner, and go through a formal review first. Red is anything that would push a learner towards one answer, pretend to be a person or an authority, or take a decision away from a human; NEO does not use red tools, ever.
At the moment the AI your child will meet is: the Google note-taking tool that transcribes some lessons (amber, reviewed); the Google Classroom and Workspace features that come with the account (green or amber as reviewed); and AI literacy lessons, where learners learn how these tools work, where they go wrong and how to question them. NEO staff do not type your child’s details into chatbots. No AI marks your child’s work on its own, writes their reports on its own, or talks to your child as if it were a person. Progress reports are written by the adults who teach and mentor your child.
If NEO wants to introduce a new AI tool that would interact with your child, we will tell you what it does and why before it is used, and you can ask for your child not to use it.
Consent and your choices
Most of what NEO does with your child’s data is done because it has to be, to educate and safeguard them; that is set out in the Privacy Notice and does not depend on consent. The things that do need your consent are listed in the Home-School Agreement and the Parent and Carer Agreement, and the main one is photographs and publicity: NEO never uses an image of your child without your written permission, and never for advertising. You can withdraw that permission at any time. NEO’s published images of young people are AI-generated, never real learners.
Your child has rights too. They can ask what is held about them, they can tell us if something feels wrong, and from the age of 13 they can make some choices about their own data; we will always include them.
What we ask of you
Keep the NEO device for NEO use and in a shared space where you can see it; make sure an adult can be reached during lessons; tell your Practitioner-Mentor if your child seems distressed online, has had contact from someone they do not know, or is spending time on sites or apps that worry you; and talk to your child about what they do online, without it being an interrogation. We will do the same from our side.
Who to talk to
Anything in this guide: your child’s Practitioner-Mentor first, then the Head of School. A safeguarding worry: the Designated Safeguarding Lead, through the Practitioner-Mentor or neo@nudgeeducation.online. A data protection question: the Data Protection Officer at Nudge Education Ltd, through the same address. If something happens that cannot wait, call 999.
Related: NEO — Online Safety and Acceptable Use Policy · NEO — Artificial Intelligence Policy (Diamond Standard) · NEO — Remote Learning Policy