Parent/Guardian Information Sheet and Consent Form

Project Title: Action Tutoring English AI Tutoring

Lead Researcher: Dr Hannah Chapman, Action Tutoring

Action Tutoring is a well established national organisation who partners with schools to support pupils who are working at borderline grades to provide tuition in English in maths.

We are running a research project at your child’s school, and we would like to invite your child to take part. Please read this information carefully to understand what the project involves before deciding if you wish to give consent.

If you have any questions or complaints about this research, please contact: hannah.chapman@actiontutoring.org.uk

1. What is the purpose of this research?

Action Tutoring has partnered with an organisation called Build Education to create an Artificial Intelligence (AI) English tutoring tool. This tool is designed to help pupils prepare for their KS4 English exams. The tool has been developed using Action Tutoring’s specialist curriculum and has undergone rigorous testing with our staff and with pupils in several schools in England to ensure the tool follows our curriculum and provides accurate support for pupils. We are running a small research project to test whether this AI tool is effective, easy for pupils to use, and engaging. Your child’s feedback will directly help us improve educational technology for young people. We are committed to sharing what we learn. A summary report of the research findings will be shared with your child’s school at the end of the project, which will be available to you upon request.

2. What will my child do?

If you agree to let your child take part, the project will last for 9 weeks and take place on school premises:

Weeks 1 to 8: Your child will attend one English tutoring session per week using the AI tutor. A specially trained Action Tutoring staff member will be in the room during every session to help the pupils.
Surveys: Your child will be asked to complete a short questionnaire in weeks 1, 4, and 8 to share their thoughts on the programme. If for any reason your child chooses not to complete the programme we will also ask them to complete an exit survey.
Week 9: Your child will take part in a small group discussion (a focus group) to talk about their experience with the AI tutor.

3. Does my child have to take part?

No, participation is entirely voluntary. If you choose not to take part, it will not affect your child’s relationship with the school. If you do say yes, you or your child can still change your mind and withdraw from the project at any time.

Please note that even if you give your consent, our staff will still explain the project to your child at the start of the first session and ask if they are happy to participate. We will respect your child’s decision if they choose not to take part on the day.

4. What information will we collect?

To help us understand if the programme is working for different groups of students, the school will share some of your child’s educational records with us. This includes their Unique Pupil Number (UPN), age, gender, ethnicity, current working grades, and whether they receive extra support (such as Pupil Premium or Special Educational Needs support).

5. How will my child’s data and privacy be protected?

Under UK data protection laws, Action Tutoring is the legal controller of your child’s information. We process standard personal data based on our legitimate interests as an organisation to deliver and improve our educational services. Where we collect sensitive information, such as ethnicity or SEND, we do so under the legal basis of substantial public interest (equality of opportunity and treatment) to ensure our programmes are reaching and supporting all demographic groups equally. Your child’s information will always be processed in accordance with our privacy policy on our website.

Confidentiality & Sharing: Your child’s real name and school will never be used in any published reports. The pseudo-anonymous findings from this project will be shared with Build Education and our funding partners to help improve the tutoring tool, and summary reports may be published on the Action Tutoring website and social media channels.
AI Privacy: The AI tutoring tool operates in a highly secure environment based in the UK, this includes all text processed by the tool which will remain in the UK. We guarantee that your child’s personal data and conversations will never be used to train or teach these third-party AI models. Action Tutoring will use enterprise-grade Google Gemini AI to assist in analysing pseudonymised evaluation and transcript data.
Data Storage: The technology is hosted on highly secure servers. Action Tutoring will hold your child’s educational data safely for 2 years. Build Education will securely hold the typed transcripts of the AI chats for 12 months before deleting them.

Important note on withdrawing: Participation is voluntary, you can request your child be withdrawn from the research at any point without consequence. Survey and focus group data will be anonymised one week after the final evaluation session and therefore this data will no longer be personal data. Your child’s survey and focus group data will have had their name removed and will have been mixed with data from other students, meaning we will no longer be able to identify and extract it.

6. How will my child be kept safe?

Because pupils type freely into the AI chat, we have put strict safety measures in place. A staff member will read all the chat transcripts within 24 hours of every session to ensure the tool is working correctly and the conversations are appropriate.

Safeguarding exception: We keep your child’s information confidential. However, if a student types something into the chat that raises a concern about their safety or well-being, we are required by law to break confidentiality and report this to the school’s safeguarding team so they can provide support.

If you have any questions, please email the lead researcher Dr Hannah Chapman at: hannah.chapman@actiontutoring.org.uk or speak to your child’s school.