How Silentech Schools protects your data
A school's records are mostly about children, so the rules here are strict. This page says where the data is, who handles it and how a school gets it back.
Whose data it is
The school decides what it collects and why. Silentech runs the platform for the school and processes the data only on the school's instructions, under a written processor agreement.
Silentech does not sell the data, share it for advertising, or use it to train any model.
Where the data is held
Every school's records are held in the European Union, in Amsterdam, with our host Railway. They are not in Ghana, and Silentech runs no server in Ghana.
Records that a person opens offline sit on that person's own device. A student's device, and any staff device marked as shared, keeps them in memory only and wipes them at sign-out.
Who handles it
These companies handle school data for the platform. Each sees only what its job needs.
- Railway hosts the databases and the programs, in EU West (Amsterdam). It holds everything the platform holds.
- Cloudflare runs the domain name, issues certificates for schools' own website addresses, stores website images and school files, and checks that a visitor to a public form is a person.
- Hubtel sends text messages (it sees the number and the text) and, for schools that connect one, takes fee payments into the school's own Hubtel account.
- An email provider sends invitations, password resets and notices. It sees the address and the message.
- Sentry receives reports of program errors, with names, phone numbers, PINs and codes removed first.
Who can see it
Access follows each person's job. A teacher sees the classes they teach, a housemaster their house. A student record outside someone's reach reads as not found.
Every opening of a student's conduct record is logged. The school's activity log can only be added to, and each entry is chained to the one before so a change would show.
Silentech's staff do not sign in to a school as its users. What they can see of a school is counts, whether its database answers, and the contents of a message that failed to send, only with a reason written down. Every operator action is recorded.
Children on a school's website
A student appears on a school's public website only when staff tag them and a guardian's consent is current. Publishing is refused otherwise. When a guardian withdraws consent, the student comes down from the website straight away.
Taking your data with you
A school can export everything it holds at any time, as spreadsheets and files, from its own settings. The export is built from the school's own database and checked as it downloads.
If an agreement ends, the school keeps read-only access and can still export. How long that lasts is set in the agreement.
Questions and requests
A parent or student who wants to see, correct or remove a record should ask the school first, because the school is responsible for it. Anyone can write to Silentech with a question about how the platform works.
Write to silentechs@gmail.com.