Privacy
Privacy Policy
Effective 5 September 2026 · Last updated 5 September 2026
The short version. UpperScholars is an online tutoring service. We collect what is needed to teach your child and run the lessons, and nothing else. We do not sell personal information, we do not advertise, and we carry no analytics, tracking pixels or third-party scripts on any page. Lessons run on our own video server rather than through Zoom, Google or Microsoft. Children are not asked for an email address.
On this page
1. Who we are
UpperScholars is an online tutoring service operated by Rocketparrot Media LLC, of Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. In this policy "we", "us" and "UpperScholars" mean that company. "You" means the parent or guardian who holds the account, unless the context says otherwise.
This policy covers three addresses we run: upperscholars.com (this site), study.upperscholars.com (the portal where lessons, homework and progress live) and meet.uppermeet.com (the classroom where live lessons are held).
Questions about anything here go to [email protected], and we answer them ourselves.
2. What we collect, and why
We collect different things from different people, because a parent, a child and a tutor use the service differently. Nothing below is optional decoration: each item exists because some part of the tutoring needs it.
From the parent or guardian who opens the account
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Name | So a tutor and your child know who they are speaking to. |
| Email address | Sign-in, password resets, and the lesson reminders you choose to receive. |
| Sign-in name and password | To let you in. The password is stored only as a one-way hash — we cannot read it, and neither can anyone who obtained a copy of our database. |
| Phone number | Optional. Only if you give it, and only to reach you about lessons. |
From or about your child
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| First name or the name you enter | So the tutor can address them, and so their work is filed against the right child. |
| Year group, and school if you enter one | To pitch the material at the right level. School is optional and may be left blank. |
| A sign-in name and password | Only if you choose to give your child their own login. You may run everything from your account instead. |
| Quiz answers, scores, time taken, and which topics they have mastered | This is the point of the service: it is how a tutor knows what to teach next and how you see progress. |
| Homework set, work handed back, and files exchanged | So homework has a record rather than living in a chat app. |
| Which lessons they joined and when, and how long they lasted | Attendance, and so the hours taught can be counted honestly. |
| Lesson recordings, where a lesson was recorded | So a child can watch a lesson again. Recording is never automatic — see Recording & Consent. |
Children are not asked for an email address. Reminders about a child's lessons go to their parents. A child only has an address on file if a parent deliberately adds one.
From tutors
Name, email address, the subjects they teach, a short biography they write themselves, the times they are available, and the hours they record against lessons taught. Payment arrangements are handled directly and are not held in the site.
Messages and files
Messages sent between parents, tutors and children through the portal are stored so the conversation still exists tomorrow, along with any file attached to them. Files a tutor shares with a class, and work a child hands back, are stored the same way.
Technical information
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your IP address | Used to limit how many accounts can be created and how many sign-in attempts can be made from one place. It is not used to build a profile of you or to work out where you live. |
| A session cookie | One cookie, so you stay signed in. See Cookies. |
| A security log | Sign-ins, failed sign-ins, password changes and similar events, so an account that is interfered with leaves a trace. |
3. What we do not do
- We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for anyone else's advertising.
- We show no advertising anywhere in the service.
- We run no analytics and no tracking. We have added no Google Analytics, no advertising pixels, no session recorders and no error-reporting service anywhere. This is verifiable: view the source of any page. The one script you will find that is not ours is added by Cloudflare on pages that show an email address, and it exists to scramble that address so automated scrapers cannot harvest it. It sets no cookie and reports nothing about you.
- We do not profile children for anything except teaching them. A child's quiz results decide what practice they are offered next. They are not used for anything else.
- We do not route your lessons through a third-party video company. The classroom runs on software we host ourselves.
4. Why we are allowed to hold it
We hold and use this information because it is necessary to provide the tutoring you have asked us for, because you have consented to specific things such as recording, or because we must — for example, keeping enough of a record to answer a question about a lesson later. Where we rely on your consent you can withdraw it, and we say under each feature how to do that.
5. Where it is kept
Your information is stored on a server we operate ourselves in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. It is not held on a shared cloud platform.
Requests to this site and to the portal reach that server through Cloudflare, which sits in front of them to absorb attacks and to serve pages quickly. Because Cloudflare terminates the encrypted connection, it handles your requests in transit — including, for example, the contents of a form as it is submitted. It does not store your records; those are on our machine.
The classroom is deliberately not behind Cloudflare. Live lesson video and audio travel straight between the participants and our own server, so the video of your child's lesson does not pass through Cloudflare, nor through Zoom, Google or Microsoft. You can check this yourself: meet.uppermeet.com answers as our own server, while this site answers as Cloudflare.
You should know the trade-off in that, because it is a real one. Self-hosting means fewer companies hold your child's data, and it also means the resilience of the service is ours rather than a large provider's. Backups are described in How long we keep it.
6. Who else sees it
Inside the service, access is limited by role and by household:
- A parent sees their own children and nobody else's.
- A child sees only their own lessons, homework and results — not a sibling's.
- A tutor sees the children they teach.
- We can see what is needed to run and support the service.
Outside the service, we use two suppliers and no others:
| Who | What they handle | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Postmark (ActiveCampaign, LLC) | Delivers our email — reminders, password resets, verification. They receive the recipient's address and the content of that email. | United States |
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Domain registration, DNS, and the network this site and the portal are served through. Requests pass through Cloudflare on the way to us, so it handles them in transit; it is not where your records are kept. The classroom is not routed through it. | United States |
We will also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect someone from harm. If we are ever compelled to hand over information about your family, we will tell you unless we are forbidden from doing so.
If the business is ever sold or transferred, personal information may transfer with it. You would be told before that happened, and given the chance to delete the account first.
7. Tutors outside the United States
UpperScholars is an online service and our tutors work online. A tutor may live anywhere in the world. A tutor teaching your child will see that child's name, year group, the work they are set, the results of their practice, and the messages exchanged with them — the same as any tutor, wherever they are.
The information itself stays on our server in the United States; a tutor abroad reaches it over the internet rather than receiving a copy. Every tutor is bound by confidentiality terms, sees only the children they teach, and loses that access when they stop teaching them. If you would rather your child were taught only by a tutor in a particular country, tell us and we will arrange it or tell you plainly that we cannot.
8. How long we keep it
| What | How long |
|---|---|
| Lesson recordings | 90 days by default, then deleted automatically. See Recording & Consent. |
| Account details, lessons, homework, quiz results, messages | For as long as the account is open, and then until you ask us to delete them. |
| Backups | 14 days, on the same machine. A deletion you request is applied to the live service at once; copies inside existing backups fall out as those backups expire. |
| Security log | Kept while it is useful for spotting interference with an account. |
9. Cookies
The portal sets one cookie, named us_session. It says nothing about you except that this browser is signed in, it cannot be read by scripts running in the page, and it is sent only to us over an encrypted connection. Removing it signs you out.
There are no advertising cookies, no analytics cookies and no third-party cookies of any kind — which is why this site has no cookie banner to click through. A banner is only needed by sites doing things we do not do.
10. Security
- Everything travels over an encrypted connection (HTTPS).
- Passwords are stored as one-way hashes and are never recoverable, by us or by anyone else.
- Access is enforced on our server for every request, not merely hidden in the screens — so a person cannot reach another family's information by guessing a web address.
- Repeated failed sign-ins from one place are throttled.
- The classroom requires a token issued by the portal for the specific lesson, so a stranger cannot walk into a class even knowing its address.
No service is perfectly secure, and we will not pretend otherwise. If we discover a breach affecting your family's information, we will tell you what happened, what was affected and what we are doing about it.
11. Your rights, and how to use them
You may, at any time and for yourself or for your child:
- See what we hold.
- Correct anything wrong. Most of it you can edit yourself in the portal.
- Delete it — a single recording, a child's record, or the whole account.
- Take a copy of it in a readable form.
- Object to a particular use, such as recording, and continue using everything else.
Email [email protected]. We will confirm who you are before acting — a request about a child is only accepted from that child's parent or guardian — and we aim to complete it within 30 days. There is no charge.
Depending on where you live you may have further rights under your local law, including under the California Consumer Privacy Act or the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation. Where those apply we honour them; ask and we will tell you how.
12. Children
Much of what this service holds concerns children, and some of them are under 13. That is set out separately and in more detail in Student & Child Privacy, which forms part of this policy.
13. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy we will change the date at the top. If a change materially affects what we collect or who sees it, we will email account holders before it takes effect rather than relying on you to notice.