Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

SelectivePath is exam-preparation software for the NSW Selective High School and Opportunity Class tests and NAPLAN, used by students (mostly aged about 8 to 15), their parents and carers, and schools. It is operated by [Business name] (ABN [ABN]), referred to here as "we" or "us".

We are bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. Because most of the people who use SelectivePath are children, we also design to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's draft Children's Online Privacy Code: we act in the best interests of the child, keep settings private by default, collect as little as we can, limit profiling, and explain things plainly.

Privacy contact: [contact email] · Post: [Postal address]

2. What we collect and why

We collect personal information only when it is reasonably necessary to run SelectivePath.

We use this information only for these purposes, or for a directly related purpose you would reasonably expect (such as fixing a fault), or where the law requires it. We may send service emails (sign-in codes, security alerts, receipts and, if a parent turns them on, weekly progress reports). We do not send marketing to children.

3. What we don't collect or do

• No advertising, and no advertising or analytics trackers, pixels or third-party scripts of any kind.
• We never sell, rent or trade personal information.
• No precise location, no contacts, no photos, and no camera or microphone access.
• No government identifiers (like a birth certificate or Medicare number), and we don't ask for a date of birth.
• We don't build profiles of children for marketing, and we don't use children's information to decide anything about them beyond what to practise next.
• Children's essays and answers are not used to train AI models.

4. Children and guardian consent

A student account is created in one of three ways:

• A parent or carer sets it up from their own signed-in account. The parent is present and agrees, and we record that.
• A school enrols the student. The school agrees to the account under its own arrangements with families and gives us a parent or carer's email; we record that the school consented.
• A student signs up themselves. They must give a parent or carer's email address (not their own). The account stays on hold, and the student can't use SelectivePath, until that adult approves from the email we send. The email explains what we collect and that essays are sent overseas for feedback. The link lasts 7 days and can be re-sent. If the adult declines, the account and everything in it is deleted immediately. If nobody approves within 30 days, it is deleted automatically.

Email approval is a reasonable step, not proof of identity. If you are a parent or carer and believe your child's account was approved by someone else, contact us and we will suspend or delete it.

Parents, carers and schools linked to a student can see that student's progress. A linked parent can change their child's privacy settings. A student can see pending requests from adults who ask to link to their account, and must approve them.

5. Essays and AI feedback

Essays are private to the student. No parent, teacher, school or SelectivePath administrator can read them in the app. A linked adult can see that a piece was written and the band it received, not the text.

When a student asks for feedback, the essay text and the writing task are sent to our AI provider, Anthropic, PBC, in the United States, which generates the feedback and returns it to us. We do not send the student's name, email address, account number or any other account detail, and we remove obvious contact details (such as email addresses and phone numbers) a child may have typed into the essay before it is sent. We ask students not to put their address, phone number or other people's full names in their writing. Under Anthropic's commercial terms for its API, the content we send is not used to train its models.

The feedback is produced by a computer. It is an estimate to help practice, not an official mark.

6. What other people can see

• Other children never see a child's name, username or email anywhere in SelectivePath.
• Leaderboards are off by default. A linked parent can turn on a family leaderboard for their child. It only includes brothers and sisters whose own parents have also turned it on, never classmates or strangers, and everyone appears under a generated nickname (for example "Swift Kookaburra 42").
• A parent can also switch on "Hide XP, ranks and streak pressure" for their child.
• Comparisons such as percentiles are shown only as statistics across many students, never as a list of other children.
• Teachers see only the students in their own classes; a school sees only students it enrolled or that approved a link to it.

7. Overseas processors (APP 8)

We use a small number of service providers to run SelectivePath. Some of them store or process information outside Australia. Before sending information overseas we take reasonable steps to make sure the provider handles it consistently with the Australian Privacy Principles, including contractual privacy and security commitments, and we send only what each provider needs.

We do not disclose personal information to anyone else unless the law requires it.

8. How long we keep it

• Accounts and study activity: while the account is open. Deleted when the account is deleted.
• Student accounts nobody approved: deleted after 30 days, or straight away if a parent or carer declines.
• Security records (sessions, devices, alerts): while the account is open; deleted with it.
• Sign-in codes: expire after 10 minutes. Email links: expire after 2 hours (password reset) to 7 days (consent requests), or 14 days for an account a school or parent created.
• Free readiness check: deleted after 7 days if no email was given, and after 90 days in every case.
• Contact form messages: kept in our inbox only as long as needed to deal with the enquiry.
• Free-trial fingerprint: kept after an account is deleted, only to enforce one trial per person. Ask us and we will remove it.
• Backups: encrypted backups are kept for up to [backup retention period — must match the backup lifecycle rule; recommended 35 days]. Deleted information disappears from backups when they expire.
• Payment records: kept by us and Stripe for as long as tax law requires (generally 5 years).

9. Security

We protect information with measures including: HTTPS everywhere; passwords stored only as bcrypt hashes; sign-in codes emailed for new devices and stored only in scrambled form; an authenticator-app option, required for administrators; encryption of authenticator secrets; limits on repeated attempts; a strict content security policy; access controls that stop teachers, schools and parents seeing students they are not linked to; and no customer data in server logs. No system is perfectly secure, but we work to keep the risk low and review our security regularly.

10. Seeing and correcting your information

You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or about a child you are the parent or carer of, and ask us to correct anything that is wrong. Email [contact email]. We will check that you are entitled to it (for example, by replying to the email address on the account), respond within 30 days, and not charge for it. A school can export a student's full record from its own dashboard.

11. Deleting your information

You can permanently delete your account yourself at any time: sign in and go to Account → Security → Delete account. This removes the account and its study activity, essays, security records and links to other accounts. A parent or school can also ask us to delete a linked child's account, and a school can erase a student it enrolled from its own dashboard.

Deleting a parent or school account removes its links to children but does not delete the children's own accounts — those can be deleted by the child, by their parent or carer on request, or by us on request.

12. Data breaches

If a data breach is likely to result in serious harm, we will follow the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme under the Privacy Act: we will contain it, assess it promptly (within 30 days at most), and notify the people affected — for a child, their parent or carer or school — and the OAIC, with advice about what to do.

13. Cookies and browser storage

We use essential cookies only. There are no advertising, analytics or third-party cookies.

• sp_session — keeps you signed in (up to 7 days).
• sp_login — holds a sign-in in progress while you enter your code (10 minutes).
• sp_device — recognises a device you have already verified, so a student isn't asked for a code every day.

The app also saves a few things in your own browser (not on our servers until you submit them): unsent writing drafts and exam progress, so work isn't lost if the page closes; display preferences; and whether you've dismissed the "install the app" banner.

14. Questions and complaints

If you have a question or a complaint about how we handle personal information, email [contact email]. We will acknowledge it within 7 days and aim to resolve it within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC): www.oaic.gov.au, phone 1300 363 992.

15. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a way that matters — such as collecting something new, using a new overseas provider, or keeping information longer — we will update the version and date above and tell account holders by email before the change takes effect. Where a change affects children's information, we will ask parents and carers again.