Child safety on lessonu

lessonu hosts private teachers and small schools across a wide range of subjects and ages — academic tutors, music and instrument teachers, language coaches, exam-prep specialists, adult education, and hobby instruction. Most lessons on the platform are with adult students or self-managing older students.

Some teachers on lessonu work with students under 18. When they do, the additional safeguards on this page apply. Everything below is either "always applies" (clearly marked) or "applies when teaching under-18 students."

The frameworks we've aligned to: Australia's National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and New Zealand's Children's Act 2014 (including the Safety Checking requirements under §32).

A teacher on lessonu who takes on any student under 18 must hold a current working-with-children authorisation for the state or country they teach in. We require teachers to enter their authorisation number and expiry date in their profile before accepting bookings from minor students.

• NSW: Working With Children Check (WWCC) issued by Service NSW.
• QLD: Blue Card issued by Blue Card Services.
• VIC: Working With Children Check via Victoria Police; teachers also need VIT registration to use the "school teacher" verified badge.
• SA / WA: Working With Children Check (state-issued).
• TAS / ACT / NT: Working with Vulnerable People registration.
• New Zealand: Children's Act 2014 §32 Safety Check, comprising identity verification (passport / driver licence), NZ Police Vetting Service check completed within the last 3 years, a risk assessment (typically conducted by the employer or referring organisation), and reference checks. Self-employed teachers can request a Police vet directly via police.govt.nz.

Teachers who only work with adult students do not need a working-with-children authorisation to use lessonu. The verification gate is age-conditional, not platform-wide.

lessonu does not run police checks ourselves — the state-issued check is the legal instrument and is a deeper background check than a private operator can do. Parents and schools can ask a teacher to show their authorisation or have it confirmed by lessonu before the first lesson.

When a teacher has enabled bookings from minor students, their public booking page displays their verification status: the state or country of authorisation, the type of check, and an "Expires" date. Where verification is pending or expired, minor-student bookings are disabled until renewal is recorded.

Teachers who only accept adult bookings won't see this badge on their page — and don't need to.

The controls below apply to every lesson on lessonu, regardless of student age:

• Logged communication. Lesson chat and teacher–student messaging is recorded in-app and retained for the lifetime of the student's account. Teachers are told this on signup.
• Video lessons. The classroom uses LiveKit; sessions are end-to-end encrypted in transit.
• Recording defaults. Recording is opt-in per lesson and requires explicit consent from the student (or from the parent where the student is under 18). Recorded files are auto-deleted after 30 days unless explicitly saved.

The following additional controls apply only when a student is under 18:

• Parent contact retained. Teachers cannot remove the parent contact from a minor student's account. The parent retains visibility of in-app messages.
• Observer link available. A parent or secondary adult can join any video session via an observer link.
• No external contact handoff. Teachers are asked not to move communication to personal phone numbers, personal email, WhatsApp, Snapchat, or Instagram with students under 18. Reports of off-platform contact with a minor are treated as a Code of Conduct breach.

If you're a parent, student, teacher, or school administrator worried about something on lessonu, email lessonu.team@gmail.com. We respond within 24 hours and within 4 hours during business hours (AEST 9am–6pm).

Reports of illegal content on the platform (child sexual abuse material, image-based abuse, cyberbullying, or serious harm) are reviewed and the offending content is removed within 24 hours of confirmation. lessonu will preserve evidence and escalate confirmed reports to the eSafety Commissioner (AU), the Department of Internal Affairs (NZ), or police as appropriate. This commitment is made under the Online Safety Act 2021 (Cth) Basic Online Safety Expectations.

For anything involving suspected harm to a child, please also contact the appropriate authority directly — lessonu's response is internal and not a substitute for a report to police or child-protection services:

• Immediate danger: 000 (AU) or 111 (NZ).
• Child protection (AU): the helpline for your state — e.g. NSW Child Protection Helpline 132 111, QLD 1800 177 135, VIC 13 12 78.
• Child protection (NZ): Oranga Tamariki contact line 0508 326 459.
• Online abuse or grooming (AU): the eSafety Commissioner at esafety.gov.au/report.
• Online abuse (NZ): Netsafe at netsafe.org.nz/report.
• Privacy complaints (AU): Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.
• Privacy complaints (NZ): Office of the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz or 0800 803 909.

Mandatory reporting laws differ by state. In every Australian state and territory, registered teachers are mandatory reporters. In some states (NSW, ACT, NT) the list extends to all people providing services to children. Where lessonu staff become aware of reasonable grounds to suspect child abuse, we will report to the relevant authority and inform you that we've done so, except where doing so would prejudice the investigation.

This section does not apply to lessons between consenting adults.

Student accounts under 18 inherit the parent account's privacy settings. We don't use student data for advertising, never sell it, and never share it with a third party except those listed in /subprocessors. Parents can request a full export or deletion of their child's data at any time from their dashboard or by emailing lessonu.team@gmail.com. The general Privacy Policy covers all accounts, adult or minor.

If you're evaluating lessonu for a school or any organisation that works with minors and need a longer compliance pack — working-with-children verification logs, mandatory reporting policy, Stripe Connect KYC overview, our data-residency statement, our incident-response runbook, or a completed state-specific Vendor Privacy Assessment (NSW VPA, VIC DSP, QLD ISMS, NZ MoE) — email lessonu.team@gmail.com. We respond within 5 business days and can countersign your child-safe organisation policy.

For evaluators and school procurement reviewers — lessonu's alignment to the ten National Principles (AU) is summarised below. Each principle is followed by the section of this page (or the linked operations document) that addresses it.

• Principle 1 — Child safety embedded in leadership. The founder of lessonu serves as Privacy Officer (see /privacy §14) and is accountable for child-safety decisions on the platform. Decisions are documented in the incident-response runbook.
• Principle 2 — Children informed of their rights. Minor-student accounts receive a plain-English rights summary on first sign-in, and parents/guardians are linked to the account and can view all in-app communication. We are preparing a child-facing "your rights on lessonu" explainer.
• Principle 3 — Families and communities are informed. §3 and §4 above; observer link for video sessions; parent inbox copy of in-app messages.
• Principle 4 — Equity is upheld and diverse needs respected. lessonu does not require age, cultural, or ability disclosure beyond what teachers choose to record for pedagogical purposes. Te Reo Māori support is on the roadmap for NZ educators.
• Principle 5 — Suitable workers are engaged. §2 above: state-issued working-with-children authorisation (AU) or Children's Act §32 full Safety Check (NZ) required for anyone teaching under-18 students.
• Principle 6 — Processes for complaints + concerns. §5 above: a dedicated safeguarding inbox with a 24-hour / 4-business-hour response SLA. Escalation paths are listed explicitly.
• Principle 7 — Staff equipped through training. All lessonu staff with database or moderation access complete a mandatory child-safety briefing and acknowledge the incident-response runbook annually.
• Principle 8 — Physical and online environments promote safety. §4 above: encrypted video, opt-in recording with consent, parent visibility, no off-platform contact for minors.
• Principle 9 — Continuous improvement. Every reportable incident triggers a post-incident review and runbook update. This page is reviewed at least every six months.
• Principle 10 — Policies document how the organisation is safe for children. This page is the public policy. Internal operations documentation (incident-response runbook, breach register, staff training log) is available to school procurement reviewers on request to lessonu.team@gmail.com.

This page is reviewed every six months and after any reportable incident. Next scheduled review: November 2026.