How ClearPanel uses information about your child.

This is the notice for parents, carers, pupils and school staff. Your school is the controller of this information and issues its own copy with its name and contacts; this page is the version ClearPanel keeps up to date. Version 2.1, 13 October 2026.

Who we are

ClearPanel is a service that helps a school’s special educational needs team understand and support pupils. It is provided by Stanton Solutions Limited, company number 14987715, registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office under reference ZB719947.

Your school decides what information is collected and why. In data protection terms the school is the controller, and Stanton Solutions Limited is a processor acting on the school’s instructions under a written agreement. The Data Protection Officer for St Edward’s School is Judicium Consulting Ltd, 72 Cannon Street, London, EC4N 6AE. The Data Protection Lead within St Edward’s School is Mark Pothecary, mpothecary@melchetcourt.com. Questions for Stanton Solutions Limited go to info@clearpanel.co.uk.

What ClearPanel is for

The school uses ClearPanel to run a short screener about a pupil, to plan one-to-one support sessions for that pupil with a member of staff, and to keep a record of how those sessions went so that progress can be reported to parents and carers. The purpose is to give the pupil the right support sooner. Nothing in ClearPanel makes a decision about a pupil on its own; every decision is made by a member of the school’s staff.

What information is held

About the pupil:

• First name and surname, stored encrypted with a key that belongs to the school and shown only to the school’s own staff.
• Date of birth, used to work out the pupil’s age so that activities suit it.
• Screener answers written by the pupil, by a parent or carer, and by a teacher, with the ratings those answers produce.
• Summaries and activity suggestions produced from those answers, notes written by the member of staff who runs each support session, and the progress report the school shares with parents and carers.
• Where an answer describes something that may affect a pupil’s safety, a note for the school’s Designated Safeguarding Lead.

About parents and carers: the answers you give in the screener, attributed to you as the parent or carer. ClearPanel does not hold your name, email address or phone number. The school sends you the screener link itself; ClearPanel never emails you.

About staff: name, school email address, role, and a record of the actions each member of staff takes in the system.

Some of this is special category data under the UK GDPR: information about a pupil’s health and mental wellbeing, and anything that raises a safeguarding concern. A parent, carer, teacher or pupil may also disclose family circumstances or other sensitive matters in an answer, and those are handled in the same way as the rest of the special category data.

How the screener works

The school sends a link. The pupil completes their part with a member of staff present. A parent or carer and a teacher each complete their own part. Before anything you write is saved, you are asked to confirm that you have read how your answers will be used, and nothing is stored until you have.

How artificial intelligence is used, and how it is not

ClearPanel uses an AI service to read the screener answers and write short summaries for the school’s staff, to suggest support activities suited to the pupil, to check session notes against the goals that were set, and to draft the progress report. The service reads only what has been written in ClearPanel about that pupil. It is never given the pupil’s name; a placeholder is used instead and the name is added back on screen by the school’s own systems.

ClearPanel produces an evaluation of a pupil’s needs from the screener answers, which the UK GDPR calls profiling. No decision about a pupil is made by the software alone, and no decision that has a legal or similarly significant effect on a pupil is made solely by automated means, so the rules on automated decisions in Articles 22A to 22D of the UK GDPR do not apply. A member of staff who knows the pupil reads every output before anything follows from it and can change or reject any part of it. Summaries are drafts for staff to read and correct. Suggested activities are chosen by the member of staff, and by the pupil, from what is offered. Session outcomes are provisional until a member of staff confirms them. Reports are reviewed by the school before they are shared. Where the screener answers suggest a pupil may be at risk, ClearPanel raises this for the Designated Safeguarding Lead to consider; it does not decide what happens next, and the DSL sees the original answers, not only the summary. Each of these reviews, confirmations and acknowledgements is recorded in the audit log, so the school can show who reviewed what and when. Staff who use ClearPanel are briefed on what it does and what it cannot do. You can ask the school to explain any evaluation about your child and to have it looked at again.

The AI service is run by Amazon Web Services in the United Kingdom or the European Union, currently in its London data centres. It keeps no copy of what it reads or writes; nothing about a pupil is retained or used to train any model.

Where information is stored

Your child’s information is stored in the United Kingdom: the database and the encrypted names are held by Supabase in London. The AI service runs in the United Kingdom or the European Union, currently London, and retains nothing. The web application is delivered by Vercel and holds no pupil information itself. Invitation emails to school staff are sent from Ireland, in the EU; they contain a staff name and email address and nothing about any pupil. Staff sign in using the school’s own Microsoft account, so no ClearPanel password exists and the school’s own security applies. No information about a pupil, parent or carer is processed outside the United Kingdom or the European Union.

Who can see what

• Parents and carers see the progress report the school chooses to share, and their own screener answers while completing them.
• The member of staff who runs a pupil’s sessions sees the activities, the session records and the summaries needed to plan support. They do not see safeguarding notes.
• The school’s SENCO and Designated Safeguarding Lead see the full record, including screener answers and any safeguarding note.
• Stanton Solutions Limited does not read pupil records in the ordinary course of providing the service. Access for support is only at the school’s request and is logged.

Every change and every access to sensitive parts of the record is written to a log the school can inspect.

Who receives information

• At the school: the special educational needs coordinator, the member of staff who runs a pupil’s sessions, and the Designated Safeguarding Lead where a concern is raised.
• Service providers acting for the school under written terms: Stanton Solutions Limited, which runs ClearPanel; Supabase, which holds the database in London; Amazon Web Services, which runs the AI service in the United Kingdom or the European Union; Vercel, which delivers the web application and holds no pupil information; Resend, which sends email to school staff only and never receives information about a pupil, parent or carer.
• Where the law requires it: the local authority or children’s social care, through the school’s own safeguarding procedures, not through ClearPanel.

How long information is kept

The school keeps records for the periods in its own records retention schedule, which you can ask to see. Most of those periods run from your child’s date of birth, not from the date they leave. Special educational needs records, which include screening results, support plans, session records and progress reports, are kept until your child’s 31st birthday. Safeguarding records are kept until your child’s 25th birthday and then reviewed, and where a record relates to child sexual abuse it is kept until your child’s 75th birthday, in line with Department for Education guidance. The school remains responsible for the full record after your child leaves.

ClearPanel is not the school’s system of record. It holds a copy of the information only while the school uses the service and only on the school’s instructions. Unless the school sets a different period, ClearPanel deletes a pupil’s information twelve months after the school records that the pupil has left, and the school exports anything it must keep to its own records before then. The school can archive or permanently delete a record sooner at any time. Permanent deletion removes the record, its encrypted names, screener answers, sessions and reports; backups are overwritten within 30 days. If the school stops using ClearPanel it takes a full copy of its information, and everything ClearPanel holds for the school is then returned or deleted, at the school’s choice, within 30 days of the agreement ending, with written confirmation.

Your rights

You have the right to ask what information is held about you or your child, to have mistakes corrected, and in some circumstances to have information deleted or its use restricted. Please make any request to the school, which will respond within one month. Stanton Solutions Limited helps the school answer requests and can provide a complete copy of a pupil’s record within five working days of the school asking.

If you are unhappy with how your information has been handled, you can complain to the school’s data protection officer and to the Information Commissioner’s Office at ico.org.uk.

Lawful basis

The school is an independent school and is not a public authority under data protection law. It relies on the following legal bases in Article 6 of the UK GDPR.

• Legitimate interests, Article 6(1)(f), for identifying, planning, delivering and reviewing special educational needs support, including the screener, support plans and progress reports. The school’s interest is providing the education and support your child has been placed with it to receive, including any provision in an Education, Health and Care plan, and checking that it is working. The school has weighed this against your child’s interests and rights and recorded the assessment in its data protection impact assessment for ClearPanel.
• The recognised legitimate interest of safeguarding vulnerable individuals, Article 6(1)(ea) and Annex 1, paragraph 6, for protecting pupils from neglect or physical, mental or emotional harm. The law recognises this purpose for all children, so no separate balancing test is needed, and only the information that is necessary is used.
• Legal obligation, Article 6(1)(c), for records the school must keep under the Education (Independent School Standards) Regulations 2014, Keeping Children Safe in Education and the Children and Families Act 2014.

Information about your child’s health, including mental health, and anything that raises a safeguarding concern, is special category data. The school processes it under Article 9(2)(g) of the UK GDPR, substantial public interest, with two conditions in Schedule 1, Part 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018: paragraph 18, safeguarding of children and of individuals at risk, for safeguarding and wellbeing work; and paragraph 6, statutory and government purposes, for special educational needs support carried out under the legal duties above. As the law requires, the school holds an appropriate policy document setting out how it complies with the data protection principles when using special category information under these conditions and how long it keeps it; you can ask the school’s Data Protection Officer for a copy.

An answer, a session note or a safeguarding record may occasionally contain an allegation or suspicion of an offence, for example that a child has been hurt. The law treats that as criminal offence data. The school processes it only as a safeguarding matter, under the same safeguarding condition and section 10 of the Data Protection Act 2018, and ClearPanel does not look for, classify or report criminal conduct.

Consent is not the basis for any of this, because your child’s support and safety cannot depend on consent being given or withheld. You may still decline to complete the screener, and the school will tell you what that means for the support offered. You may object to processing based on legitimate interests, and you may complain, as set out under Your rights.

Security

Information is encrypted in transit and at rest. Pupil names are encrypted separately with a key held by the school. Access is limited by role, staff sign in through the school’s own accounts with the school’s multi-factor authentication, and the school removes a member of staff’s access by disabling their school account. If a security incident affects the school’s information, Stanton Solutions Limited will tell the school within 24 hours of becoming aware of it.

Changes to this notice

This notice is reviewed when the service changes in a way that affects how information is used, and the school is told when that happens.