Terms of use.

Who these terms are for

These terms apply to teachers who use Second Listen through their local authority. Your local authority's own policies, including its acceptable use and data protection policies, apply as well. Where they ask more of you, follow them.

What you may record

• Your own teaching, in a lesson you are leading, at a school that has joined Second Listen.
• Only where your school has told pupils and parents that lessons may be recorded for teachers' professional reflection.
• Up to 20 minutes at a time. Let the class know you are recording your teaching to reflect on it.

What you must not record

Second Listen is for teaching, not for conversations about individual children. Do not record, and pause or stop recording if it starts to happen:

• a pupil talking about their home life, family, safety, health, wellbeing or anything else personal;
• a disclosure, or anything that could be one;
• discussion of a named pupil's additional support needs, health, behaviour plan or care arrangements;
• one-to-one conversations with a pupil, meetings with parents or carers, and staff meetings;
• lessons where another adult has not agreed to be recorded, such as a visitor.

Protected personal data: never record

Do not record, about any pupil, colleague or anyone else:

• Financial details: bank or card details, debts, benefits, free school meals
• Family and relationship details: home life, family circumstances, who lives with whom
• Health: physical or mental health, medication, diagnoses, self-harm
• Biometric data: fingerprints or face scans used to identify someone
• Genetic data: DNA tests, inherited conditions
• Political opinions: how someone votes or which party they support
• Sex life: anyone's sexual activity or relationships
• Sexual orientation: whether someone is gay, lesbian, bisexual or straight
• Trade union membership: whether someone belongs to a union
• Criminal offence data: offences, arrests, police or court involvement

If a pupil discloses something

Follow your school's child protection procedures straight away, exactly as you would if you were not recording. Second Listen is not a way to record, keep or report a disclosure, and nobody at Second Listen will see or act on one.

The safety net

Before anything is saved or sent for analysis, Second Listen checks the text of each recording for signs of protected personal data or a personal disclosure, such as a pupil talking about their home, their safety or their health. If it finds any, the recording is aborted: the recording and its text are deleted, nothing is analysed, and you are told why. Only the kind of thing it found is logged, never the words.

The check reduces the risk; it does not remove it. Speech recognition mishears, and people say sensitive things in ways no check can predict. It is a safety net under these terms, not a replacement for them.

Your reflections

What Second Listen gives back is for your own professional learning. It is never a judgement of you, nothing is scored, and your school's leaders never see your lessons or reflections. Second Listen is not designed to provide evidence for capability or performance processes, and should not be used for them. If you export a reflective cycle, for example for Professional Update, what you share is your choice.

Your account

• Keep your work email secure: it is how you sign in.
• Use your own account only, and don't share sign-in codes.
• If you leave your school or local authority, your access ends with it.

Your data

How Second Listen uses personal data, where it goes and how long it is kept is set out in the privacy notice. Lesson audio is transcribed by Microsoft in the UK, which keeps none of it, and the audio is deleted within seconds. Pupils' names are replaced with labels before anything is saved.

If these terms change

We will ask you to read and agree to them again before your next recording.