Obtaining parent consent
Obtaining consent from parents or guardians where a child is under the age of 13
At Loop, we believe it is important for parents or guardians to know which educational technology tools their children are using, and how each tool assists their education. It is imperative that parents or guardians are aware of the privacy policies and protections that are in place to govern such usage.
In this article, we outline what Loop is used for, how and when we collect consent from parents or guardians for their children to use Loop, and the rights of parents to access and delete their children’s information.
What is Loop?
Loop allows teachers to gather structured feedback from their students about their understanding of content, learning experience and wellbeing. Providing a private, digital setting gives students more confidence to speak out about things that might be holding back their learning. And this allows their teacher to make deliberate changes to better support their students.
Teachers can enable anonymous responses, schedule questions, reply to feedback one-on-one or to groups of students with similar feedback, send announcements, and monitor progress over time.
This has several educational benefits:
- It gives students a greater voice in their education, especially those who are shy, or fear speaking out in front of their peers
- Teachers can more easily spot and support struggling students
- Gain insight into what is or isn't working in the classroom for a particular cohort of students
- Provides a mechanism for professional development as teachers can refine their teaching style (we have worked extensively with early career teachers who have found this to be particularly valuable)
- Replaces or complements student surveys, which can be slow and the results of which are typically only applied once students have finished a semester or learning module. We make feedback more actionable than traditional student surveys using Google Forms or similar.
Why use Loop?
Loop is used by teachers and students from over 5,000 educational institutions globally. This includes:
- K-12 schools
- Vocational education and training colleges
- Universities
When is parent or guardian consent required?
In addition to our market-leading data privacy and security standards, we require any child aged under 13 to have consent from their parent or guardian.
Without this consent, a child is unable to use Loop and their account is rendered inactive.
How is this consent collected and stored?
Where a child under 13 signs up to Loop they are required to enter the email address of a parent or guardian. The relevant parent or guardian then receives an email from Loop which provides an overview of Loop, details our privacy policy, and seeks consent for their child to use Loop. This consent is provided by the parent or guardian clicking on a link and confirming consent for their child to use Loop. This is stored by Loop as a record of consent, and may be withdrawn at any time by the parent or guardian.
In addition, and because each education institution has a different approach to using educational technologies and different approval policies, Loop provides the opportunity for a teacher or leader at your child’s school to confirm they have consent for your child to use selected educational technologies. This approach is often employed where schools seek a single source of consent from parents or guardians at the beginning of the academic year to cover all technologies approved for use in the school.
As such, Loop enables the following:
- A teacher can invite a student to their class on Loop and confirm they have the necessary consent form a parent or guardian to use educational technologies as approved by that teacher and in accordance with the school’s policies
- A school leader can invite a student to their class on Loop and confirm they have the necessary consent form a parent or guardian to use educational technologies approved by that school and in accordance with the school’s policies
In this scenario, once parent or guardian or consent has been confirmed by the teacher or school the child will be able to use Loop. Loop will record the teacher or school leader who confirmed they have appropriate consent and the date with which this was confirmed.
At any time this consent can be withdrawn by a parent or guardian by contacting Loop at support@loophq.io.
Parent or guardian rights
At any time, a parent or guardian can withdraw consent for their child aged under 13 to use Loop.
In addition, they can request to view the personal information data stored by Loop or have this data deleted. Under the latter request their child will no longer be able to use Loop.
This request can be made by contacting Loop at support@loophq.io.
