The pupil
His own check-in, and control of where each thing he writes goes. A route to a person above everything else, and a round red SOS beside his name for an emergency.
A prototype, built from a proposal by Farnaz Al-Sadi
Everyone around one pupil, seeing the same picture.
A boy is seen in a week by his housemaster, his tutor, three subject teachers, a clinician and a coach. Each holds a fragment. None of them holds the whole, and his parents — who often know most — sit outside the loop entirely.
Start here: a guided walkthrough
Nine steps, about five minutes. It opens by itself and moves you between the six people who see the same boy, in the order that makes the argument. You can leave it at any point and look around on your own.
- Theo, who is at the centre
- The emergency button, and what it does not claim
- What he chooses to share, and what he keeps
- A teacher, who has thirty seconds
- His mother, who knows things the school does not
- A clinician, and the gap nobody has closed
- His housemaster, who sees the shape
- What changed around him, and whether support landed
- The coordinator, and the argument
Nothing to install and no sign-in. Three invented boys, an invented fortnight, an invented rota. No real child appears anywhere in it.
Rather read than click? What happens to what you write sets out who sees what, in the words a pupil is shown.
The week nobody could see
This is one real week, as four different people experienced it. Each of them saw a fragment and thought little of it. Nobody saw the row below.
How it closes
Four steps, none of which asks anybody to do much. The whole design assumption is that nobody has spare time, so every contribution is under a minute and nobody has to chase anybody.
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1
He checks in, and decides where it goes
Questions chosen with him, not assigned to him — two taps if that is all he has in him. What he writes, he shares with his whole team, with one adult, or with nobody. Every section tells him exactly who reads it, because a boy told nothing assumes the worst.
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2
The adults contribute what they already notice
A teacher adds one observation a week. A housemaster logs a conversation. A parent sends an early signal from home. Each takes under a minute, and none of them has to chase anybody.
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3
A clinician decides how far clinical news travels
A discharge or a change in treatment reaches the people managing his day, at a level the clinician sets: coordinator only, the pastoral team, or the family as well. Raw clinical detail never leaves the clinical circle.
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4
Converging signals surface for a person to act on
When independent sources agree inside one week, it is raised — alongside what changed around him, because a dip that follows a set change is a different conversation. It prompts a conversation. It never decides anything, sends anything, or scores him.
Who it is for
Six roles, each with a genuinely different view of the same record. What you see is what your job needs, and no more.
Teachers
One page on him, a morning flag, and one box after the lesson. Never a pastoral note, never a clinical one.
Pastoral leads
The full picture, and the pattern view that puts every source on one time base.
Clinicians and therapists
Their own record, and the handoff to the school that they control. Compartmented from each other.
Parents
A weekly digest in, an early signal out. Their own child's record and nothing else.
Coordinator
The pastoral loop, and the requests that need a person today. Not the clinical record.
What the pupil decides
A wellbeing tool that a child experiences as surveillance is worth nothing, because he stops answering it honestly and the record then looks healthy and means nothing. So the parts that are his are actually his, and the interface tells him where every single thing goes.
Why “just me” is not invisible
A school cannot offer a child unmonitored storage. A private note is exactly where a disclosure lands that nobody then reads. So his pastoral lead can see that he wrote something and kept it, and nothing else — which is a reason to go and ask him, and that conversation should happen face to face anyway. He is told this, in those words, on the page.
What never reaches a teacher or a parent
Any note he writes, at any setting, ever. Teachers see one thing from a check-in: on a harder-than-usual day, a line saying it is a harder morning. No number, no words, no reason. Parents see the numbers and the shape of a fortnight, and not a sentence he wrote.
What this is not
Not a diagnostic tool. Nothing here identifies, screens for, or rules out any condition.
Not a treatment. It delivers no therapy, no intervention, and no clinical advice.
Not monitoring. It does not watch, score, or rank a child.
Not an emergency service. There is one emergency button, a round red SOS beside a pupil's own name, marked for emergencies only. It does not change this: it writes a record and names whoever is on duty. It cannot make a person appear, it says so every time, and it repeats 999 alongside.
That boundary is regulatory as well as clinical. Software intended to diagnose, monitor or treat can be a medical device under the UK Medical Devices Regulations 2002. This sits outside that regime deliberately. Read the full position.
Where it stands, and what a pilot would involve
A working prototype with fictional pupils, built and tested but not yet used by a real school. Before one real child's name goes anywhere near it, two things have to be true, and neither is a formality.
A written safeguarding response path
Who answers when a pupil asks for someone, within what time, and who covers evenings and weekends. The button does not appear at all until a school has named somebody on duty and a place to send him — but naming them in a form is not the same as agreeing a rota.
A signed-off Data Protection Impact Assessment
Mandatory under Article 35 for special-category data about children. A pilot of six is not a way around it.
A pilot is six to ten pupils for one term — small enough to stop, long enough to learn anything. The school is the data controller throughout, the data stays in the UK, nothing is used to train any model, and there is no AI anywhere in it. The full data protection position is published rather than available on request.