Privacy and security

Anonymous by design.

The Schools Report only works if parents feel safe being honest. Here is exactly what we collect, how we protect it, and what we publish.

What we collect

When you take the survey, we collect:

• Your email address, to confirm you're a real person, to allow one response per household for each school each year, and to send you your school's summary if you ask for it.
• Your answers about the school, including any optional comments and sign-off.
• Your child's year level, stored as a graduating class (for example, Class of 2033), so results can be shown for a whole year group.
• How long the survey took, to help us spot responses that look automated or fraudulent.
• A scrambled code made from your internet connection, to spot many responses for the same school coming from one place. It can't be turned back into your internet address.

What we never collect

• We never ask for your name, your child's name, or the name of any teacher or student.
• We ask you not to name or describe anyone in your comments. We read every comment, and any name is removed before anything is published.
• We don't use advertising or tracking cookies.

How we keep you anonymous

• Emails are stored separately from answers. They are linked only by a random code that never leaves our database, so no one reading the results can connect an answer to a person.
• Each child's answers are kept separately and only reported as part of a whole year group.
• Safety in numbers. A school's results only appear once at least five families have responded. The same applies to results for a year group, and to sensitive topics like bullying and inclusion.
• Comments may be quoted in our reports, without your name. We read every comment first and leave out anything that could identify a student, teacher or family.
• Sign-offs are only published if you tick the box to agree, without your name, and they may be shortened.
• We never show how many children a family has at a school.

How we protect your data

• Survey data is stored in a secure database hosted in Sydney, Australia, and is encrypted when it's stored and whenever it travels over the internet.
• The database can only be reached by our website's own systems. Only The Schools Report team can see individual answers, through a password-protected area.
• The database itself enforces our rules, such as one response per household for each school each year.
• We use trusted service providers to run the site: Supabase (database), Vercel (website hosting) and Resend (sending emails). Some of these providers may process data outside Australia.
• Our pages load fonts from Google Fonts, which means Google can see that your device visited the page.

Staying signed in

After you verify your email, the survey remembers this on your device for 30 days, so you can rate another school or add another child without verifying again. If you share a device, choose "Not you? Use a different email" on the verify step.

The "Notify me" list

If you ask to hear when reports open, that email goes on a separate list that's never linked to survey responses. We only use it to tell you about reports, and every email lets you unsubscribe.

How long we keep information

We keep survey answers so we can show how schools change from year to year. We keep your email so we can prevent duplicate responses and send any summaries you've asked for. Scrambled connection codes are deleted after each year's survey closes.

Your choices

• Every rating, tick box and comment is optional. We only need your email, your school and your child's year level.
• You can ask us what we hold about you, or ask us to delete your email and your responses, at any time.

Contact us

Questions or requests about your privacy: hello@theschoolsreport.com

Last updated October 2026.