Everything you need to know.

Ask.School is the modern parent and student portal — an AI chatbot that answers the questions parents and students ask every day. Timetables (live from your MIS via Wonde), term dates, uniform rules, homework policies, lunch menus, absence reporting and anything else you’d normally publish on a parent portal or FAQ page. Families get an answer in seconds on any phone — faster than calling the front office, faster than searching the website. You upload your own documents and the chatbot answers from those, so the information is always consistent with what your school has published. It runs in the browser and there’s nothing to install.

Yes — 14 days. You get full access to create chatbots, add users, and explore the platform.

Yes. Ask.School is web-based and works on any modern browser, including mobile devices. No app is needed.

Most schools already have the consent they need. If your school uses any cloud service where students log in — Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, a learning platform, or your MIS — your existing acceptable use policy or admissions policy almost certainly covers the use of online tools for educational purposes. Ask.School processes data under the same legal basis (legitimate interests or public task) as these services. For children under 13, you should check that your privacy notice or parental consent form covers the use of AI tools. If it doesn’t, a simple update to your existing policy is usually sufficient — there is no need for individual opt-in consent for each child. We can provide template wording if that would help.

Chat messages are automatically monitored for concerning content including self-harm, bullying, abuse, and exploitation. If something is flagged, your designated safeguarding lead receives an alert by email. Staff can review the conversation, investigate, and record the outcome. Ask.School supports your safeguarding team — it does not replace your statutory duties.

The chatbot immediately responds with appropriate support information and directs the user to speak with a trusted adult. At the same time, an alert is sent to your designated safeguarding lead with the conversation details. Your DSL can review the flagged conversation, add notes, and record the outcome — all within the Ask.School dashboard.

No tool is perfect. Ask.School runs eleven different safety checks on every reply — but unexpected things can still happen, especially when someone is deliberately trying to make them. That's why every conversation is logged and reviewable, and why we treat the chatbot as a support tool, not a replacement for the people who actually run your school.

Yes. For each chatbot you write a short brief: what it's there to help with, the topics it should cover, and the topics it shouldn't. You can upload documents for it to read, narrow what it answers from, and adjust the wording of safeguarding responses. Each chatbot has its own settings, so a parent chatbot and a sixth-form chatbot can behave quite differently.

No. The chatbot has no name, no avatar and no fake personality. It is always clearly a tool, not a person. Where it makes sense, students are reminded that talking to a real adult is different — and always available — in line with the DfE's AI guidance and the children's safety standards.

Yes. Every conversation is recorded in full and accessible to your designated safeguarding lead through the Ask.School dashboard. Your DSL can search, filter, and review any conversation at any time — not just those that trigger a safeguarding alert. This gives your school a complete audit trail and supports your filtering and monitoring obligations under KCSIE.

That is a decision for your school. Ask.School provides the safeguarding guardrails, content filtering, and monitoring tools that allow supervised or independent use. Many schools allow students to use the chatbot independently during lessons, with safeguarding alerts running in the background. Your school’s acceptable use policy should set the expectations.

Ask.School is built around Keeping Children Safe in Education. The platform’s safeguarding guardrails support your duties under Part 1 and Annex D, including online safety, filtering, and monitoring obligations. The system detects and escalates concerns in the same categories KCSIE requires schools to be vigilant about: abuse, neglect, exploitation, and mental health.

No specialist technical training is needed. Your designated safeguarding lead should familiarise themselves with how the alerting system works and how to review flagged conversations — this takes around 15 minutes. We provide onboarding documentation and can walk your DSL through the process. Existing safeguarding training and KCSIE awareness apply as normal.

Yes. All data is encrypted at rest and in transit using industry-standard cryptography. Each school’s data is completely isolated at the database layer — one school cannot read another school’s data. Our servers are hosted in the UK (London) and EU (Frankfurt).

Chat messages are sent to OpenAI to generate the chatbot’s reply. No data is used as learning material for OpenAI’s models, no data is retained by OpenAI beyond the request needed to produce the answer, and we do not include student or school identifiers in the data we send. OpenAI is contractually bound by our Data Processing Agreement and processes data under the UK International Data Transfer Addendum.

Yes. Ask.School complies with UK GDPR, the Data Protection Act 2018, and all 15 standards of the ICO Age-Appropriate Design Code. We have completed a Data Protection Impact Assessment, which is available to schools on request.

Chat messages are retained for 12 months from last activity, then deleted. Student and staff accounts are kept for the duration of your subscription plus 30 days. Safeguarding alerts are retained for the duration of your subscription — your school is responsible for exporting and retaining these long-term per IRMS guidance. Billing records are kept for 7 years (UK tax law).

Your school is the data controller. Muon Works Ltd (the company behind Ask.School) is the data processor. This means your school decides what data is collected and how it is used, while we process it on your behalf under a Data Processing Agreement. A copy of the DPA is available on our website.

All data is stored on servers in the UK (London) and EU (Frankfurt). We use AWS infrastructure with data encrypted at rest using AES-256 and in transit using TLS 1.3. No data is transferred outside the UK and EU. Backups are also stored within these regions.

For school staff accounts, we store names, email addresses, and roles. For chatbot users (students and parents), no personal accounts are required — we store only the conversation content. If you connect your MIS via Wonde, we sync the fields you choose (typically names, emails, year groups, and class assignments). We do not collect any data beyond what is needed to provide the service.

Yes. You can delete individual student conversations, chatbots, or user accounts at any time from the dashboard. If you cancel your subscription, all data is permanently deleted after 30 days. You can also request immediate deletion by contacting [email protected]. We will confirm deletion in writing.

Schools sometimes receive subject access requests from parents, students or staff asking for the personal data the school holds about them. As your data processor, Ask.School helps you respond. From the admin dashboard you can search by user, year group or date range and export every chat message, safeguarding alert and account record relating to that individual as a single bundle (PDF + machine-readable formats). Personal information masked by our PII guardrails can be unmasked for an authorised SAR export. If you need help producing a response, email [email protected] — we aim to turn SAR exports around within two working days, well inside the one-month statutory window. The school remains the data controller and is responsible for verifying the requester’s identity and for any redactions before sending the response on.

Yes, via Wonde. This syncs student and staff names, emails, year groups, and class assignments automatically. You choose which fields to sync. Data syncs daily and new starters appear the next morning.

You have 30 days to export all your data. After that, everything is permanently deleted and you receive a confirmation. There are no exit fees. We strongly recommend exporting safeguarding records before cancellation, as your school is responsible for long-term retention.