Child safety policy

What this covers

The AI Creators Holiday Camp 2026 is 100% live and online, for students aged 8–17, run from Nigeria. This policy binds every instructor, staff member and contractor who comes into contact with a student, and it applies to all 12 sessions, the office hours, the one-on-one mentoring sessions, the parent consultations and the Project Expo.

Nothing on this page is aspirational. If we cannot do something in it, we do not run the session.

Who we let teach

Before an instructor takes a single session, all 5 of these are complete:

• Identity verified against a government-issued photo ID.
• A criminal-record background check appropriate to working with children, obtained through a recognised screening service and repeated every 2 years.
• 2 references taken up by phone, not by email, with at least one from a place where they worked with children.
• A signed copy of this policy and of the Code of Conduct.
• A safeguarding briefing before their first session: what to do with a disclosure, what to do with a concern, who to tell, and how fast.

No instructor teaches while a check is outstanding. If a check comes back with something on it, a named safeguarding lead decides in writing whether that person teaches, and until that decision exists they do not.

The same 5 requirements apply to anyone who assists in a session, moderates chat, or attends the Expo on our behalf.

2 adults, and no one-to-one without a record

The Innovator plan includes 2 one-on-one mentoring sessions and a parent progress consultation. Those sessions follow 3 rules, with no exceptions:

• They happen on the program’s video-conferencing account, in a meeting scheduled by us. Never on an instructor’s personal account, personal phone number, or any social platform.
• They are recorded in full, and the recording is kept with the safety record for 12 months.
• A second adult can join at any moment without notice — you, or a program staff member doing a spot check. Parents are welcome in any mentoring session. You do not need a reason and you do not need to ask first.

An instructor who is asked to meet a student privately outside these rules must decline and report the request the same day. That includes a request from the student, and a request from a parent.

How a live session is run

• Waiting room on, always. Nobody enters a session unattended, and the instructor admits people one at a time.
• Named accounts only. A student joins with the first name on the roster for their learning group. An unrecognised name is not admitted; the instructor emails the parent rather than guessing.
• Joining links go to the parent. 1 link per cohort, sent to the email address on the enrolment, never to a student directly and never posted in a group chat.
• Recording starts with the session. Every session, from the first minute.
• Screen sharing is instructor-only by default. A student shares only when the instructor hands it over, only for their own work, and the instructor watches the whole time.
• Chat is monitored and kept with the session record. Private student-to-student chat is turned off.
• A session is never left running unattended. When the instructor leaves, the session ends.
• Staff drop in unannounced. Program staff spot-check sessions without warning. Instructors know this happens and know why.

What we never ask a student for

Nobody from this program will ever ask a student for:

• A surname, a home address, a school name, a phone number, or a social media handle.
• A photograph of themselves, their home, or their family.
• A password to anything, including the accounts they use in class.
• A parent’s bank details or card number, for any reason at all.

If somebody asks a student for any of those, whether or not they claim to work for us, treat it as a red flag and tell us the same day. We would rather read 10 reports that turn out to be nothing.

Instructors do not contact students on personal accounts. Anything about a student goes to the parent’s email address or the program support number — never a private message between an instructor and a student.

Reporting a concern

Email [email protected]with “safeguarding” in the subject line. Say what happened, when, and who was involved. You do not need to be certain and you do not need proof. Working out what happened is our job, not yours.

What happens next:

• We acknowledge every report within 24 hours.
• A named safeguarding lead reviews it and tells you what we are doing within 3 working days.
• Anything involving a risk to a child stops the activity first and investigates second. An instructor is stood down from teaching while a report about them is open.
• If a report suggests a child is at risk of harm, we refer it to the appropriate authorities. We tell you we have done so, unless telling you would put the child at greater risk.
• We keep a written record of every report, what we found, and what we did about it, and we review those records every 2 years.

Students can report too. Any student can email the same address, tell any instructor, or tell their parent. No student is ever in trouble for reporting something, including something they were part of.

AI tools: which ones, and how students use them

The tools change faster than a web page does, so the authoritative list of tools for each learning group goes to parents by email before classes begin on Monday, August 10, 2026. We would rather re-send a list than leave a stale one here. The rules below do not change:

• Beginner programming happens in Scratch, which is built for this age group and holds no personal data about a student.
• Students under 13 never hold their own account on a general-purpose AI tool.They work through the instructor’s shared screen, or through a class account the instructor controls, with prompts entered while the instructor watches.
• Students 13 and overmay use a tool whose own minimum age permits it, in an account created by a parent, using the parent’s login. We do not create accounts for students and we never hold a student’s password.
• We check each tool’s stated minimum age before it appears in a lesson.Where a tool sets an age higher than a group’s band, that group does not use it, and the instructor teaches the same skill another way.
• Content filtering and safe mode are on at the class-account level, and are turned off by nobody.
• No personal data in prompts.Not a full name, not a school, not an address, not a phone number, not a photograph of a real person — including the student’s own. This is taught in week 1, before any generative tool is opened, and repeated every time a new tool appears.
• Training is off wherever a tool offers the setting,and no student work is submitted to any model developer. Nothing your child makes trains anyone’s model.
• An instructor reviews AI output before it goes into a project a student presents at the Expo.
• If a tool produces something upsetting, the rule for the student is: stop, do not share it, tell the instructor. The instructor logs it, reports it the same day, and the tool is reviewed before it is used again.

What we teach about using AI well

Responsible AI is not a talk on day 1 that everyone forgets by week 2. It runs through all 4 weeks, and it is assessed as part of the capstone:

• Week 1. What AI actually is, where it gets things wrong, how to check a claim against a second source, and why a confident answer is not a correct one.
• Week 2. Whose work went into a generated image, what credit means, and when a thing is better left unpublished.
• Week 3. What never goes into a tool, how to tell a person from a bot, and what a scam message looks like.
• Week 4. Every capstone is presented with a short, plain note: what the student asked a tool to do, and what the student did themselves.

Digital citizenship sits alongside it — how to disagree without insulting, what to do about a message that makes you uncomfortable, why you do not screenshot a classmate. The Code of Conduct is how it is enforced.

What a parent can do

• Put the computer somewhere you walk past.
• Keep the joining link inside your household.
• Drop into a session, including a mentoring session. No notice needed, no reason needed.
• Read the Code of Conduct with your child before the first Monday.
• Tell us anything that would help the instructor — a hearing aid, a reading difficulty, a hard week. The accessibility notes field on the enrolment form exists for exactly this.

Review

This policy is reviewed before every cohort and immediately after any report, and the date at the top of the page changes when it does. If a review changes something that affects your child, we email you.