School Ninja Privacy Policy

School Ninja Privacy Policy. 

Last updated April 2021

Introduction

We at School Ninja (School Ninja) believe that online safety is of utmost importance in online education. We care about the safety, security and privacy of you when you use our website, mobile application and any of our online education services (our services). We strive to provide an online learning environment with the same security, privacy, online safety and support as a real school.

We are dedicated to not only providing a safe and secure online space for children to learn, but also committed to safeguard and maintain the appropriate use of personal information of every user on School Ninja, including students, teachers, school staff, tutors and parents. More information about our pledge to student privacy can be read here https://studentprivacypledge.org/privacy-pledge/. The main focus of the pledge is to: 

  • Not to collect, maintain, use or share student personal information beyond that needed for authorized educational/school purposes, or as authorized by the parent/student.
  • Not to sell student personal information.
  • Not to use or disclose student information collected through an educational/school service (whether personal information or otherwise) for behavioral targeting of advertisements to students.
  • Not to build a personal profile of a student other than for supporting authorized educational/school purposes or as authorized by the parent/student.
  • Not to make material changes to school service provider consumer privacy policies without first providing prominent notice to the account holder
  • Not to knowingly retain student personal information beyond the time period required to support the authorized educational/school purposes, or as authorized by the parent/student.
  • Maintain a comprehensive security program that is reasonably designed to protect the security, privacy, confidentiality, and integrity of student personal information against risks
  • Limit the collection, use and retention of student personal information only for purposes for which we are authorized by the educational institution/agency, teacher or the parent/student.

Accessing School Ninja services

By accessing or using our services (including without limitation the mobile version of the schoolninja.au website (Mobile Site) and the School Ninja mobile application(s) available via the Apple App Store and the Android Marketplace (Mobile Application), you acknowledge that you accept and consent to the practices and policies outlined in this Privacy Policy. Remember that your use of School Ninja’s Services is at all times subject to the Terms of Service, which incorporates this Privacy Policy. Any terms we use here without defining them have the definitions given to them in the Terms of Service.

Privacy Policy Summary

This document is quite extensive and we have tried to make sure it is easy to navigate and understand. While we encourage you to read through the whole document, we have summarised the key points for you.

  1. School Ninja’s privacy procedures are in line with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) as set out in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act).
  2. We collect and store a range of data about you, both directly (for example, when you provide it to us via our services) and indirectly (that is, records on how you interacted with our website, for example when you have clicked a button or completed an online course).
  3. Your personal data and visibility on School Ninja is limited in some ways to those who you interact with directly such as those users who you share the same groups and communities – such as fellow students, your teachers, your tutors and family members – and those who authored the course and quiz content that you complete.
  4. We don’t use your data for any purpose other than to provide you with School Ninja services, improve School Ninja services or to provide you with pertinent updates.
  5. We take all reasonable steps to ensure the security and integrity of your Personal Information and expect that every user takes steps to maintain the security of their own accounts with strong passwords and enabling 2 factor authentication.
  6. You have the ability to control the security and privacy of your personal information.
  7. In the unlikely event of a data breach which is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify you and the Australian Information Commissioner (Commissioner).

We might update our Privacy Policy from time to time, in which case we will update the link to the Privacy Policy on our website. If we make significant changes to our Privacy Policy we will provide you with notice as appropriate under the circumstances, e.g., by displaying a prominent notice within our services or by sending you an email or direct message through your account. We may notify you in advance or after policy guidelines have been updated.

This privacy policy will cover the following:

1. What personal information we may collect about you (and how we collect it)
2. What personal information other users see about my account
3. How long we keep your personal information for, and where we store it
4. How we may use the information we collect
5. Whether we will give your information to anyone else
6. Your rights and responsibilities
7. Where you can find more information
8. Information about links
9. Contacting us – Our contact details

1. What personal information we may collect about you

When users log into our services, School Ninja collects several types of Personal Information about you when you interact with us online. We will collect only information which is required to maintain the quality of School Ninja services.

New accounts creation

New accounts can be created by us, you the individual, your teachers, your parents, your tutors and/or your school. To create an account we may ask you for a minimal amount of identifiable information to provide the best educational and secure experience for you:

  • your first and last name
  • your school email
  • name of your school
  • your school ID
  • your classes
  • your date of birth

Students accounts created by your teachers and/or school

If you use School Ninja through your school or with your teacher, then your school or teacher may create an account on your behalf. In order to create an account they may provide the above information about you so that we or they can create an account for you.

Free teacher and publisher accounts

An user may register a free teacher account on the website. Free teacher accounts give users the ability to create and sell educational content, but include limitations to certain features including direct messaging and cannot create digital classroom spaces.

Premium educator accounts – teacher pro and tutor pro

Premium educator accounts are designed for qualified teachers, school support staff and educational tutors (Premium Educator) within the education sector. In most circumstances all Educator accounts will have an official .edu.au or .education email domain if they are working directly with a school. Where an Educator does not have an official education domain, we may ask for you to include the following additional information on your account:

  • Your teaching registration id number and expiry date
  • Your working with children’s check id number and expiry date

Individual accounts and payments

If you hold an individual Premium Educator licence (rather than using the general school licence), then we may collect this information directly from you or from the card holder who purchases the licence on your behalf. 

If you purchase an individual premium subscription for yourself, or purchase access to School Ninja course content for yourself and/or your child to use our services, we will also collect payment information to process the sale. All payments through School Ninja are made through secure 3rd party payment gateways and School Ninja does not maintain any credit card or payment details on School Ninja servers. Where products and services are purchased through the online store, a token is created on your account to remember which card had been used to process the transaction, however this token does not show your complete credit card details and only includes the last 4 digits for identification purposes. Tokens are also used in subscription products to send to the 3rd party payment provider to request subscription payments.

Anonymous accounts

School Ninja requires active email addresses for users to activate and use their account, reset passwords and receive notifications. All users are required to verify their email account on account creation, or verify via 3rd party login credentials through Google and Office 365.

School Ninja does not require your real name or the real names of your students to confirm their accounts. However, it most often makes life easier for teachers and users are encouraged to create an account with their real first name and then may choose a nickname of their choice.  Teachers and Schools also have the option of entering pseudonyms for your students instead of their real names as long as these accounts have a valid email account. 

Where a Premium Educator account requests evidence of teaching registration or working with children’s check, if the email address and names on the accounts do not match, further identification may be required.

Please remember that if you provide Personal Information about other individuals to us, you must ensure that you have informed those individuals that you are providing their Personal Information to us, and that you have obtained their consent and advised them of our Privacy Policy.

Personal Information uploaded on your account

School Ninja offers a unique interface where you can personalise your own account with additional Personal Information. When you create your account only your first name and nickname will be visible however you may personalise your account by adding information to your profile. These personalisations include:

  • Adding a profile picture to your profile
  • Adding a banner to your profile 
  • Adding information to the About Me section

By default School Ninja will only display the information you have included in your profile bio, however you can change the visibility of this information by editing your profile privacy. 

Who can see your profile information

Upon activation of your account only your first name and nickname is visible on your profile. Where a profile picture, profile banner and about me information has been added to your account, this will also be visible on your profile.

In general School Ninja has private community spaces and users will only be able to interact and see your profile information if you share common groups or community spaces. If you post in the public forums then your profile photo and nickname can be visible to other users and guest visitors. However these users will not be able to open your profile or send you direct messages. 

Unless your account is listed as a Teacher, Tutor, Educator or Publisher, your profile information is generally only accessible to other users who share a group with you. Those users will be able to view your profile and send you Private Messages directly through the website. Student profiles also do not have access to open and view other student profiles, even if they share a group.

Email messages and contacting us

We may also collect information about you when you contact us for help so that we can answer your questions (including details about your requests and an email address to contact you with the answers, if required.) This includes messages sent to us through the website contact form, our support pages or direct email.

Indirect collection of information

In addition to information about you which has been provided by you, your school or your teachers, we may also collect Personal Information about how user interact with us in the form of ‘metadata’. Metadata includes all information revolving around your use of our services, such as clicking certain buttons or how far you scroll on a page. This kind of data collection is increasingly common with modern websites. Some examples of the metadata we collect includes:

  • your answers and results on courses, lessons, topics, quizzes, forum and group discussions.
  • your use of the website (for example, when you login and how long you spend completing certain tasks).
  • your completion of assignments and school work set on School Ninja.
  • details about your device (for example, your internet (IP) address, your location and the type of browser that you use, and its identity in the form of a “cookie”).

Collection of metadata is undertaken for two reasons:

  1. To learn more about how our users interact with School Ninja, as part of our continued efforts to improve the user experience.
  2. To calculate interesting information about learners, such as the time taken to complete a particular question within an activity to improve future courses.

2. What Personal Information other users see about my account

By default School Ninja creates closed communities so that users outside of your community have significant restrictions on the personal information they can see. 

When you join a classroom or group (Group), all members of the group become a part of your School Ninja community. This allows your profile photo and username to become visible to other members of the group and all users inside the group can see all posts and contributions to class discussions that you post inside the Group. Those members may also communicate directly with you through group discussions, profile search and direct messages (depending on your account type, and the account type of other members in your group).

School Ninja has a range of group types to interact in the community such as a classroom, school, family and tutor group. While the names of the Groups can vary depending on the group type, generally they revolve 3 permission levels – Organizer, Moderator and Member. Group specific names for each are detailed in the table below.

Group typeOrganizerModeratorMember
SchoolPrincipalTeachersStudents
ClassroomTeacherLearning SupportStudents
FamilyParents–Children
Tutor GroupTutors–Students

The Organizers and Moderators of each group are also given access to see your Personal Information pertaining to your use of our services related to that group. This can include:

  • Information about courses, lessons, topics and quizzes completed which are attached to the group.
  • Results of quizzes, polls and surveys taken part inside the group.
  • Video progress and video views inside the group and courses of the group.
  • Time spent inside the group contributing to group discussions and forums.
  • The ability to view, moderate and delete your posts in group discussions and group notices.
  • Overall marks of quizzes and assignments completed both inside and outside of the group.

Student accounts – Family Members and Educators visible to each other

Student accounts have been carefully created to allow unique connections with Parents and Teachers. By default when a student is added to:

  • a family group, the Organizer of the family group is displayed in “Family” in the students Circle tab.
  • a classroom or tutor group, the Organizer of the group is displayed in “Educators” in the students Circle tab.

The Circle tabs are visible to both parents and teachers allowing for both parents and teachers to have a safe forum to connect with each other and ensure the safety of their children. 

Both the student’s teachers and parents can also see additional information about the student including all groups they are enrolled in, the marks from quizzes and assignments, homework tasks and calendar events.

By default student accounts do not have the ability to remove themselves from a group. If you are part of a group which you no longer wish to be, you can request from the group organizer to be removed. If this is not possible, please reach out to [email protected] to request to be removed from any group.

Additional user information for content authors

In all cases, regardless of group enrollment, the author of any School Ninja course, lesson, topic, quiz, question or video which has been posted or published on School Ninja can see the username of every user who accesses their course content and the analytics of their progress.

3. How long we keep your personal information for, and where we store it

School Ninja provides the ability to support your learning journey for multiple years, across multiple schools and even through university. We will keep and maintain your Personal Information safely and securely on School Ninja servers while you are an active user of our services and provide you and/or your school continues to hold a paid/premium licence with School Ninja. Where you do not have a paid/premium active licence, your school’s license has expired, or you have completed your secondary schooling, we may continue to keep and maintain your personal information on School Ninja servers for up to 2 years of non-activity to give you the chance to continue learning at any point you choose. 

If your account has not been active or used for 2 years, we may send you a correspondence with a date from which your account will be deactivated. From this date we will delete your account and anonymise or delete your learning data so that it can only be used in a non-identifying manner for analysis by your school or to improve our products. You or your school may notify us that you no longer require us to retain past learning data before this 2 year period has passed, in which case we may take this action sooner.

Where your data is stored

All personal data is stored in secure databases, housed in high end Google Cloud servers right here in Australia. All Personal Information and personal data is kept safe behind multi-layered security to ensure that your personal data is protected against all malicious attacks. In the unlikely event of a data breach which is likely to result in serious harm, we will notify you and the Australian Information Commissioner (Commissioner).

Messages, posting content and autosave

School Ninja offers a unique personal messaging system which allows for secure, professional and informal contact between users. When a message has been sent it is saved in our servers. Users can choose to hide any message they send, however the message itself is not deleted and will be retained on the server.

When creating online courses, lessons topics and posts information is often collected before you submit the post in the form of drafts and autosaves. In general, if you’ve typed something into School Ninja, you should assume it has been immediately sent to our servers. If posting to the public forums, these items can be edited for a short time after posting before they become permanent and cannot be deleted. If for any reason you need to have a post removed, please contact support directly at [email protected]. 

If you write to us via email or through our support tickets and contact forms (for example when asking for assistance or making a sales enquiry), we’ll keep a record of that correspondence for future reference.

Use of Cookies

In order to improve the user experience, School Ninja uses Cookies to ensure that the users are being given the right information on a page. A Cookie is a small piece of information which is sent to your browser and stored on your computer’s hard drive, mobile phone or other device. Cookies do not damage your computer.

You can set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie. This enables you to decide if you want to accept it or not. However, some of our services may not function 

properly if your cookies are disabled. We use cookies that are necessary for the performance of our services and cookies that do not personally identify you, but may be used for analytics purposes, such as allowing us to see how many people use and access our website so that we can improve our services.

4. How we may use the information we collect

School Ninja as a data processor

In most cases School Ninja is a social learning site and acts as a data processor which will use your Personal Information only as instructed by you, your Parents, your Educators and your School. In order to perform our services, we may use information collected by you to:

  • maintain a record of your learning on our platform – for example: copies of your completed courses, course certificates, lessons, topics, quizzes, questions and videos – so that these can be reviewed and marked by your teachers and so that you have a record of your work.
  • keep you updated about your tasks on our services. For example, to remind you of due dates for homework to-do’s and to update you on your performance in courses, lessons, topics, assignments and quizzes.
  • help your studies by sharing your course progress and marks with your teachers and parents (for example, that you have completed assignments and your scores on assignments and quizzes)
  • publish your quiz results on quiz scoreboards, which are publicly available. To give you credit, we will use your nickname or first name.

Use of statistical information to improve services.

We may anonymise statistical data of courses, lessons, topics, quizzes and videos to identify areas where educational outcomes can be improved for all students, and to maintain and improve our services. For example, we can use statistical information about how long all students spend on a lesson, or the number of your classmates who have completed an assignment, to make sure that the lesson or assignment is not too simple or difficult. With the exception of quiz results and leaderboards (which are published publicly) such information will only ever be used on a grouped basis so that you (or your classmate) will never be identified individually.

For the management and administration of our services

We will use the Personal Information that we have collected about you to provide our services, and to carry out administrative tasks such as managing our relationship with you, your family or your school, and for billings and invoicing purposes, as may be necessary in order to perform our contract with your school.

For marketing purposes and our legitimate business interests:

We will also use the Personal Information to communicate with you where we have a legitimate interest to do so – for example, sending you information about new learning resources and products that are being made available. You can opt out of receiving such communications at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link or following the instructions in the email.

Fraud prevention

We may also need to use your Personal Information to protect you and ourselves from criminals or fraudsters. In some circumstances, we may also need to share or use your information to make sure that we follow the law. Where required School Ninja will honor legal requirements to surrender any Personal Information to the courts related to fraud and criminal conduct.

Whether we will give your information to anyone else

We will keep your personal information safe and will not give it to any third party except as explained in this policy or where we are allowed or required to do so by law.

Your rights and responsibilities

While we do our best to keep your personal information safe and private by 

following high standards of data security and breach prevention, no security and safety system is 100% secure. You have to play your part in ensuring that your username and password are kept safe, and tell us when or if you believe your account has been accessed without permission. We recommend that you ensure you maintain a strong password for your account, do not share your password with others and update your password with a password schedule. To ensure the best data protection for your account we also encourage all users to use 2 factor authentication with your account.

You may have the right to ask us to:

  • give you a copy of your personal information that we have collected
  • update or correct any personal information about you that is wrong
  • stop collecting your personal information
  • remove your personal information from our records

Just let your school know your concerns or drop us a message at [email protected].

If you think we are not doing a good job with your personal information, you also have the right to make a complaint by sending us an email at [email protected]. If you lodge a complaint with us, we will respond promptly, and then determine what action needs to be taken (if any) to resolve the complaint. We will respond to your complaint within the shorter of 20 working days or 30 calendar days.

You also have the right to make a complaint to the government bodies that regulate us. More details are available here: