Privacy Policy & Child Data Protection

ShikshaGap is an academic diagnostic and pedagogical intelligence application designed for elementary school teachers in Indian government schools. Because our tool assists with children's learning evaluations (Classes 3 to 5, minors under 18), we treat all student data with the highest sensitivity under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 (DPDP Act).

Data Fiduciary Identification

Legal Entity Name: ShikshaGap Educational Initiative

Registered Location: Hyderabad, Telangana, India, India

ShikshaGap Educational Initiative acts as the Data Fiduciary responsible for defining the pedagogical purposes and safeguards for data processed across ShikshaGap.

Absolute Commitments Regarding Children's Data:

No behavioral tracking, advertising, profiling, or commercial monetization of children's data.
No real student names are ever sent to external AI providers. Only pseudonymous IDs are used.
All diagnostic outputs are decision support tools for teachers; teacher judgement is final.

1. What Information We Collect and Why

Category	Data Fields	Purpose & Basis	Retention
Teacher Data	Name, school affiliation, email, staff ID	Account authorization, class assignment, communication	Duration of active employment at school
Student Data	First name, roll number, answers, mastery scores, detected gaps	Formative pedagogical diagnosis, printable practice worksheets	Current academic year (deleted after annual cycle)
Question Memory & Quality Metrics	Validated mathematical problem text, operands, anonymised success tallies, aggregate error category counts	Question engine quality calibration and difficulty tuning; zero student names, roll numbers, or personal telemetry stored	Persistent mathematical library (retained without student identifiers)
Anonymous Session Summaries	Random client session ID, grade, language, hour-precision timestamp, question IDs attempted/correct, topic mastery outcomes	Measuring question engine reliability and curriculum progression across classrooms; strictly decoupled from student identity	90 days rolling retention (purged via automated upkeep cron; aggregate mathematical tallies retained)
Technical Logs	IP address, browser type, timestamp of errors	System security, rate-limiting, audit compliance	30 days rolling purge

Note: All persistent question quality telemetry and session summaries are strictly anonymised and decoupled from student identities. Session summaries are automatically purged after 90 days. Formal legal text requires review by qualified legal counsel under the DPDP Act 2023.

2. Parental or Guardian Consent

The school or classroom teacher must obtain verifiable parental or guardian consent before entering any child's data or assessment responses into ShikshaGap.

How Consent is Recorded: Schools use the physical printable Parent / Guardian Notice & Consent Record template (accessible at /notices/guardian in English, Hindi, and Telugu). The document is signed or thumb-printed by the student's parent or legal guardian, verified and countersigned by the class teacher, and securely retained on file in the school administration office for the academic year.

3. Third-Party Processors & Cross-Border Processing

We work with a minimal set of secure infrastructure partners:

Hosting: Vercel Inc. (cloud infrastructure with TLS encryption in transit and at rest).
AI Diagnostic Analysis: Google Gemini API (Interactions API / Flash models). Student identifiers sent to Gemini are anonymized pseudonyms (e.g., anon_4b8f), and real student names are never passed in prompt contexts.
Fonts: Self-hosted at build time via next/font; zero runtime requests to third-party CDNs or external font servers.

Cross-Border Processing Disclosure: While ShikshaGap is tailored for Indian schools, technical data may be processed by Google (Gemini) and Vercel on secure cloud servers located outside India. All such transfers are subject to rigorous encryption, pseudonymous masking of student records, and strict data confidentiality agreements.

4. Special Safeguards for Children

In compliance with Section 9 of the DPDP Act 2023, ShikshaGap enforces strict safeguards regarding minors:

No Tracking: Zero tracking cookies, zero pixel tags, and zero device fingerprinting.
No Behavioural Monitoring: The system does not monitor children's browsing behavior, emotional responses, or non-academic activities.
No Targeted Advertising: There is absolutely no advertising, sponsored content, or marketing on the platform.

5. Data Breach Notification Protocol

In the event of an identified personal data breach involving student or teacher records:

Data Protection Board of India: ShikshaGap will notify the Data Protection Board of India in the prescribed form and manner without undue delay.
Affected Data Principals: Impacted schools, educators, and parents will be promptly notified via registered institutional email and administrative notices describing the nature of the breach, affected data categories, and recommended mitigating actions.
Remediation: Immediate incident containment, root-cause isolation, and security patch verification will be initiated by our technical response team.

6. Rights Under the DPDP Act 2023

Parents, legal guardians, and authorized school teachers have the statutory right to:

Request a copy of all diagnostic records held for their child.
Request correction or rectification of inaccurate academic logs.
Request permanent erasure of student records from our active databases.
File a grievance with our designated Data Protection Grievance Officer.

Submit a Data Request (Access / Correction / Deletion)

7. Grievance Redressal Officer

In accordance with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, you may contact our Grievance Officer:

Data Protection & Grievance Officer: Data Protection & Grievance Officer, ShikshaGap Privacy Cell

Email: contact@shikshagap.in

Jurisdiction: Hyderabad, Telangana, India

Note: While ShikshaGap provides multilingual interfaces in English, Hindi, and Telugu, this English legal document governs in the event of any interpretive ambiguity.