The short version
- Your class lists live on your device, not on a server.
- There are no accounts and no sign-up to use the apps.
- There is no advertising, no analytics and no tracking of any kind in any app.
- Nothing about your pupils is ever sold, shared or used to train anything.
- The only time data leaves your device is when you choose to back it up, cast it to a classroom board, or publish a calendar link — each described below.
Who we are
Apps4Teaching is a small independent software project run by Kevin McDonough, a working teacher, based in the United Kingdom. For anything in this policy, or to ask what is held about you, write to kevin@apps4teaching.com.
This policy covers the Apps4Teaching mobile apps — Pick'n'Mix, Musical Chairs, TermTime and Check-In — and this website.
What the apps store, and where
Everything you type into an app is stored in that app's own private storage on your phone or tablet. That includes:
- Class lists — pupils' first names and surnames, and optionally a birthday as a day and month only, never a year.
- Seating plans, groups and pairing history, so the same two children aren't put together every week.
- Your own diary — events, categories, notes, and any files you attach (TermTime).
- Colleague contacts you add yourself (TermTime).
- Your settings.
No photographs of children are ever taken, requested or stored. Nothing in this list is uploaded anywhere unless you deliberately use one of the sharing features described below.
Children's data, and schools
The apps are used by teachers, not by children, other than tapping a name on a classroom display. We deliberately hold the minimum needed to do the job: a name, and at most a birthday's day and month. There is no year of birth, no address, no contact details, no photograph, no attainment data and no special-category data.
Because class data stays on the teacher's own device, the school remains the data controller for it in the ordinary way, exactly as it would for a list written in a notebook. If your school needs a written data-processing agreement covering the optional features that do involve a server — the classroom board and calendar sharing — please get in touch and one will be provided.
Google account and Google Drive backup
TermTime can back up an encrypted copy of your data to your own Google Drive, so a new phone can pull it back down. This is entirely optional and off until you press the button.
What we ask for and why
| Permission requested | What it allows | Why we ask |
|---|---|---|
drive.appdata |
Read and write files in a hidden, app-specific folder in your Drive. It gives no access whatsoever to your ordinary Drive files, documents or photographs. | To store one backup file and read it back when you restore. |
What happens to the backup
- It is encrypted on your device before it is uploaded, using a passphrase you choose. That passphrase is never sent anywhere and is never stored outside your own device.
- Google stores only unreadable bytes. Nobody at Apps4Teaching can read your backup — we never receive it, and there is no server of ours involved at any point.
- If you forget the passphrase, the backup cannot be recovered by anyone, including us. That is the intended trade-off.
- The app signs in to Google only when you press the button, and only for as long as the app is open.
Limited use
Apps4Teaching's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Data obtained through Google APIs is used solely to provide the backup and restore feature you asked for. It is never transferred to anyone else, never used for advertising, never sold, and never read by a human.
Withdrawing access
Disconnect from within the app at any time, or revoke it at myaccount.google.com/permissions. To delete the backup itself, use the app's disconnect and delete option, or remove the app's hidden data from Drive under Settings → Apps.
Calendar sharing (TermTime)
You can publish your calendar as a link that colleagues subscribe to. If you never use the feature, nothing is ever published.
- Your app generates a private key of its own. The published address is derived from that key by a one-way hash, so the address cannot be worked backwards into the key.
- The address is the credential. Anyone who has the link can read that calendar — a calendar app subscribing to a feed cannot log in, it simply fetches a URL. Treat the link like a door key and only give it to people you mean to have it.
- Only your device can publish to or withdraw your calendar. Somebody holding your link cannot change it.
- You choose whether to include event details. Publishing without them shares only titles and times, leaving out notes, locations and categories.
- You can withdraw the calendar at any time, which deletes the published file.
- We keep no accounts, no listing of published calendars, and no record of who owns which address.
The classroom board (Pick'n'Mix)
When you cast results to a classroom display, your phone pairs with a board using a short code shown on screen.
- Only display names travel to the board — the names that need to appear on screen, and nothing else. No birthdays, no surnames where they aren't shown, no settings, no history.
- Sessions are temporary. A room holds only what is currently on screen, expires on its own after around ten hours, and is wiped immediately if you start a new session.
- Nothing is written to a database and no pupil data is retained after the session ends.
- The service runs on Cloudflare's network, with sessions preferring EU data centres.
Permissions the apps ask for on your phone
Musical Chairs asks for no permissions at all. Pick'n'Mix asks only for internet access. TermTime asks for a few more, always at the point you use the relevant feature, and each may be refused without breaking the rest of the app:
| Permission | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Contacts | So you can pick a colleague from your address book instead of typing their details. Contacts are read only when you open that picker, and only the colleague you choose is saved into the app. |
| Send SMS | So the app can text a colleague about an event when you ask it to. Messages are sent from your phone by your own network in the ordinary way; we never see them. |
| Notifications, alarms and related | Event reminders, including on-screen alarms. |
| Internet | Calendar sharing and Google Drive backup. With neither in use, the app works entirely offline. |
What we don't do
- No advertising, and no advertising or marketing SDKs of any kind.
- No analytics, telemetry, crash reporting or usage tracking — none of the apps contains any such library.
- No selling, renting or sharing of anybody's data with third parties.
- No use of your data, or your pupils' data, to train machine-learning models.
- No accounts, no profiles, no email list you did not ask to join.
Payments
Paid features are bought through Google Play. Your payment is handled entirely by Google — we never see your card details. All we receive is confirmation that a purchase or subscription is active.
This website
This site is a set of plain pages. It sets no cookies, runs no analytics and embeds no third-party trackers. Our hosting provider keeps standard server logs, which include visiting IP addresses, for security and diagnostics in the ordinary way.
How long things are kept
- On your device — until you delete it, or uninstall the app.
- Drive backups — until you delete them. They live in your Drive, not ours.
- Published calendars — until you withdraw them.
- Board sessions — around ten hours at most, usually far less.
Your rights
Under UK GDPR you have rights of access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection and portability. Because we hold essentially nothing about you on a server, most of these you can exercise directly: the data is on your device, and the apps can export or delete all of it. If you would like help, or want to raise a concern, write to kevin@apps4teaching.com. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office.
Changes
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date at the top will change and the apps will point at the updated version. Material changes affecting a feature you already use will be flagged in the app.