Your privacy, in plain words.

Private records and shared rooms

A concern record belongs to the account that created it, and only that account can open it, along with any photos and documents kept with it. Assembly does not send it to a school.

Parent-room posts are separate, shared records: once they’ve been checked, that room’s members can read them. A person looks at photos on a post or a reply first. Where and when a photo was taken, and on what phone, is taken out of it before anyone else can open it.

Messages about help you’ve agreed are for the two of you: each sees when the other has opened them (two blue ticks), and a moderator reads one only if it’s reported.

How someone joined a room is shown honestly

A room rep can let someone in, or two members can say they know them. The member list shows them as “Recognised by two parents”. It is not an identity, guardianship or enrolment check, and saving a school never grants room access.

Shared posts are reviewed first

Every new room post and reply is held from other members until it has been reviewed against the community rules. A room is the parents of one class talking in confidence, so names are fine; the review keeps it civil and safe. An AI moderator reads it first: it publishes what fits the rules, holds back what clearly breaks one and tells you why, and leaves anything uncertain or serious for a person. People check what it decides and can undo it, and you can ask a person to look at anything it held back.

Child information depends on where you type it

The room member list asks only for an optional first name or initial. A private concern stores the words you choose to enter, which may contain more detail, and only you see it. Room posts can name children and teachers, since a room is the parents of one class talking in confidence, and each is reviewed before other members see it.

Export and access

The account export includes your account details, private concerns, what you’ve written in rooms, the requests and posts you currently back, reports, and the log of actions on your account. It shows your current choices, not every change you ever made to them.

Photos and documents kept with your records, and the photos on your room posts and replies, come in the same download, in a ZIP with it. To correct something, contact us.

Open your account’s data-export tools, or contact us about your data.

Closing your account

You can close your account yourself, from your profile, using your password. Two things then happen, and they are different on purpose:

• Your private records are deleted outright: every concern, note, letter, tracked date, photo and document, along with your name, your saved school and your sign-in.
• What you contributed to a parent room stays in that room and stops carrying your name, except the photos on your posts and replies, which are deleted, because a picture can show who a family is where words don’t.

Your recovery code, the way back in if you forget your password, is kept only as a one-way scramble that nobody here can read back, and goes with your account. Assembly never emails it, or anything else.

We keep that shared content because other families relied on it. A discussion others replied to, and a count of supporters a school was already shown, are not ours to rewrite after the fact. Your profile lists the exact number of records that will be deleted and the exact number of contributions that will remain before you confirm.

Open the account-closing tool.

Honesty about disclosure

A closed community is not secrecy. Records may be compelled by courts, regulators, FOI or subpoena, and screenshots exist. Once something has been submitted to a school or an external body, closing your account removes your name from it but does not retract it: the school still holds what it was sent, and we say so rather than implying we can take it back.

Shared-device drafts

Anything you haven’t finished writing (a record or a note on one, a post or reply, an ask or offer, a date or roster) is kept only in the current browser tab, under the signed-in account. It’s cleared when you save or send it, throw it away or sign out. Assembly never puts one account’s draft into another account.

Cookies, and what your browser keeps

Assembly sets three cookies, all to make the site work: one keeps you signed in, one stops another website sending a form in your name, and one carries a short message like “Saved” to the next page and is gone once it’s shown. Signing in lasts until you close your browser, unless you ticked Keep me signed in on this device; then it lasts up to two weeks, renewed while you keep using Assembly. To end it everywhere else at once, a lost phone, say, use Sign out on other devices in your account.

There are no advertising or tracking cookies and no analytics, and nothing follows you to other websites, so there’s nothing to accept or decline. The one exception is Google’s map in the school explorer: once you open it, what your browser sends Google is covered by Google’s own privacy policy.

Your browser also keeps a few things in the current tab, and they go when you close it: a draft you haven’t sent, where you were among a room’s tabs, and the school and area the search suggested. If you turn on alerts, it keeps the subscription that lets them reach you until you turn them off in Alerts or sign out. An alert travels to your phone through your browser maker’s push service (Apple, Google, Microsoft or Mozilla); what it says is encrypted on the way, so that service sees only that an alert was sent, never its words. Installed as an app, Assembly keeps one page to show when you’re offline.

AI help, and what it sees

Assembly uses OpenAI’s gpt-5.6-luna for these jobs, and only these.

Moderating the parent rooms

It reads each new room post and reply before other members see it, with the post a reply sits under and the reply it answers, so it can judge tone in context. It also reads reports: the reported words and the reason given. For a help-board report it sees the ask or offer, never the private note. It is never told who wrote anything (though a name someone types into their words, like an @mention, is part of the words), and it never sees private concern records or photos: a post or reply with a photo always waits for a person, who looks at it. When it holds something back for how it was said, it writes a calmer version for the author. Only the author and moderators see that version, and it goes into the room only if the author chooses to post it (with a photo, after a person has looked at it).

Helping you write a letter

Only when you press a button that says so. It then receives your record for that concern (what happened, when, what you’re asking for, the letters you’ve recorded as sent, the replies and notes you’ve logged, and anything you’ve recorded as changing after you raised it), your school’s name and suburb, and the letter as it stands. Your name and your child’s name are swapped for placeholders before it leaves and put back into the letter afterwards. Attachments are never sent. It writes a draft for you to read; it never sends anything.

Suggesting a room’s request

Only when someone turning a room question into a request presses Suggest wording. It then receives the post, the room’s published replies (the words only, never who wrote them), the school’s name and anything typed to steer it. It suggests a title and an ask; nothing changes until they’ve read it and pressed Make it a request.

What OpenAI keeps

Requests are sent with OpenAI’s storage switched off. Under OpenAI’s API terms, what is sent isn’t used to train its models, and may be kept for up to 30 days to detect abuse before it is deleted. Requests may be processed outside Australia.

Where it’s kept, and what’s logged

Your account and everything in it are kept in Assembly’s database, with photos and documents in a private folder beside it. Important actions on accounts, exports, consents, moderation and anything submitted to a school are logged, so there’s a record of who did what. All of it, and its backups, is kept in Australia.

Finding your school

To save typing, the school search may estimate your area from your internet connection, using GeoJS. It rounds that to two decimal places, about a kilometre, and uses it to suggest schools from the official directory. The estimate is kept in this browser tab for up to 30 minutes; it doesn’t identify your child’s school or let you into a room.

When you open the school explorer, it shows Google’s map, so your browser asks Google for the map around the schools shown.

Assembly doesn’t ask Google for ratings or reviews (Google doesn’t publish them for schools), and it never sends Google your concern, child information or parent-room activity. You can still search the official school directory when Google is unavailable.