Privacy notice
Learning data should help the learner — and nothing more.
This notice explains what Silicon Academy and Silicon Studio collect, why we use it, who we share it with, and the choices available to learners, parents, tutors and organisations.
We do not sell learner data or use it for behavioural advertising.
Answers, mastery and tutor evidence help choose what should happen next.
Data-rights requests can be made at any time, subject to legal exceptions.
1. Who we are and when this notice applies
Silicon Academy ("Silicon", "we", "us") is the trading name used by David Oshikowa Akowe, a sole trader, to provide Silicon Academy, an adaptive learning service, and Silicon Studio, a live teaching workspace. For direct consumer accounts, David Oshikowa Akowe trading as Silicon Academy determines why and how personal information is used and acts as the data controller.
Our business and service address is 1 Cotton Close, Dagenham, Essex RM9 4HN, United Kingdom. For privacy questions or rights requests, contact contact@siliconacademy.co.uk.
If a school, tutoring organisation or other education organisation provides your account, that organisation may also be a controller for some information and may give you its own privacy notice. Where Silicon processes information only on that organisation's documented instructions, Silicon may act as its processor.
2. Information we collect
| Category | Examples | Why it is needed |
|---|---|---|
| Account and profile | Name, email, role, year group, organisation, account settings, and the date/version of Terms and Privacy acceptance. | Create and secure your workspace, apply permissions, record the agreement made at signup and provide the right experience. |
| Learning evidence | Answers, scores, attempts, mistakes, mastery, assignments, mocks, recommendations, progress and study activity. | Deliver Academy, adapt learning, provide feedback and report progress. |
| Studio lesson data | Room membership, whiteboards, shared notes, lesson summaries, resources and teaching evidence. Live chat messages are delivered to room participants but are not currently persisted by Silicon as lesson history. | Run live lessons, preserve agreed room memory and connect teaching evidence to later practice. |
| Billing and subscription | Plan, subscription status, Stripe customer/subscription identifiers, trial dates and cancellation status. | Start and manage subscriptions and control product access. Silicon does not store full card numbers. |
| Support and communications | Enquiries, support messages, transactional email delivery and service notices. | Answer requests and operate the service. |
| Security and technical | Session identifiers, IP address, user agent, timestamps, audit events and error/security information. | Authenticate users, prevent abuse, investigate incidents and protect accounts. |
| Uploaded content | Files, images, PDFs or other materials a tutor or organisation chooses to use in Studio. | Provide the resource-sharing features the user requested. |
We do not ask users to provide special-category information (for example health or biometric information) for ordinary Silicon use. Please avoid putting unnecessary sensitive information into free-text fields, chat or uploaded resources.
3. How and why we use personal information
Depending on the activity, we rely on one or more lawful bases:
- Legitimate interests: for the core educational processing needed to provide, personalise, secure and support a direct learner service, after considering the learner's rights and best interests. For child-facing processing we do not rely on a child's ability to enter a contract as the sole lawful basis.
- Contract: for an adult data subject's own account, billing or requested features where that person is party to the contract. A parent or organisation's commercial contract is not automatically the contract lawful basis for a child's personal information; child-data processing is assessed separately, and where Silicon acts only as a processor we follow the relevant controller's documented instructions.
- Legal obligation: where we need to keep records, respond to lawful requests or meet tax, accounting, safeguarding or regulatory duties.
- Consent: only for genuinely optional processing where consent is legally appropriate, such as non-essential cookies if introduced; it is not a blanket basis for core learning profiling.
We do not sell personal information and we do not use learner profiles for third-party behavioural advertising.
4. Children and young people
Silicon is designed for school-age learners, so children's privacy is a core design requirement. We aim to use high-privacy defaults, minimise collection, avoid unnecessary sharing and explain data use in clear language. Learners can read our shorter Young people's privacy guide.
Where a learner is under 18, a parent, guardian, school or other authorised adult may be involved in setting up or managing access. The learner still has data-protection rights in their own personal information. We consider age, understanding and the best interests of the child when responding to requests.
Silicon does not include targeted advertising, geolocation, or public learner profiles. Our application also sends a browser policy that disables geolocation access.
5. Adaptive learning and profiling
Academy uses learning evidence such as recent answers, difficulty, mistakes, mastery, assigned work and tutor follow-up to recommend activities and adjust practice. Studio evidence can also influence what Academy recommends next. This educational profiling is enabled as a core Academy function because the purpose of Academy is to adapt curriculum practice using the learner's own learning evidence.
The profiling is curriculum-bounded: it is not used for behavioural advertising or unrelated commercial targeting, and Silicon does not use it to decide grades, school admission, employment, credit or another legal or similarly significant outcome. Learners can choose other published content, tutors can use professional judgement rather than following a recommendation, and users can ask for inaccurate learning evidence to be corrected.
7. International data transfers
Some service providers operate internationally. If personal information is transferred outside the UK, we use a lawful transfer mechanism where required, such as UK adequacy regulations or approved contractual safeguards.
8. Retention and account deletion
We do not keep identifiable personal information indefinitely. Account/profile information, Academy learning evidence and Studio room memory are normally kept while the account and learning relationship remain open because they are needed to provide the service. We review data that no longer has a continuing purpose rather than keeping it "just in case".
| Information | Launch retention approach |
|---|---|
| Account, Academy and Studio data | Kept while the account/learning relationship remains open; removed from live Silicon systems when a valid account-deletion request is completed. |
| Session data | Silicon sessions last no more than 7 days and are revoked immediately when an account is deleted. |
| Waitlist records | Normally removed after 12 months, and removed earlier when a matching account is deleted. |
| Operational audit/security events | Normally retained for up to 12 months. User-linked audit rows are scrubbed on account deletion where they are not needed for another lawful purpose. |
| Billing/tax evidence and deletion proof | A minimum billing record and a non-reversible hashed deletion record may be retained for up to 7 years to meet tax/accounting, dispute and deletion-evidence needs. The deletion record does not contain the learner's answers or plain email address. |
| Safeguarding records | Reviewed case by case. A separately held safeguarding record may be kept after account deletion where continued retention is necessary and lawful. |
Settings provides a machine-readable core-data export and permanent account deletion. Deletion ends Silicon access immediately, revokes active sessions and removes account-linked Academy data. Studio rooms involving the account are removed under the current room model. If the deleting account owns a self-serve Stripe subscription, Silicon cancels it immediately so it cannot renew; deletion itself does not automatically create a refund, so the Refund policy still applies. A managed learner or educator does not cancel their organisation's subscription.
Silicon's current production database configuration does not include scheduled project backups. If disaster-recovery backups or point-in-time recovery are enabled later, deleted information may remain temporarily in a protected backup until that copy expires. Before any restored snapshot is used as production data, our process requires deletions completed after the restore point to be reapplied.
The right to erasure is not absolute. We may retain the minimum information needed for a legal obligation, tax/accounting requirement, safeguarding purpose, or the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims. If you need deletion or restriction that is not available in-product, contact contact@siliconacademy.co.uk.
9. Security
Silicon uses access controls, role-based permissions, secure session cookies, encrypted HTTPS connections and audit/security controls designed to protect personal information. No online system can guarantee absolute security, so we also limit access and monitor for misuse.
If you believe an account has been compromised, sign out where possible and contact us promptly.
10. Your data-protection rights
Depending on the circumstances, UK data-protection law may give you rights to:
- be informed about how your information is used;
- access a copy of your personal information;
- correct inaccurate information;
- ask for deletion or restriction;
- object to certain processing;
- receive certain information in a portable format;
- withdraw consent where processing relies on consent; and
- raise concerns about automated decision-making where applicable.
To exercise a right, email contact@siliconacademy.co.uk. You do not need to quote a law or use a particular form. We may need to verify identity before acting on a request. We normally respond without undue delay and within one calendar month; where the law allows more time for a complex or multiple request, we will tell you and explain why.
You can also complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). See ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/.
12. Changes to this notice
We may update this notice when Silicon's features, suppliers or legal obligations change. We will update the date at the top and provide additional notice where a change materially affects how we use personal information.