Vidya ("Vidya School", vidya.school) is school management software operated by Seema Computers, Center Point Complex, Nainital Road Baheri, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh 243201, India. This policy explains what information the service holds, why, and who may see it.

Each school that uses Vidya owns the records it enters — its pupils, guardians, staff, fees and results. The school decides what is collected and who at the school may see it. Seema Computers processes that information on the school's instructions, to run the service. We do not sell it, rent it, or use one school's records for any purpose of our own.

If you are a parent or a member of staff and want a record corrected or removed, ask your school first. They hold it and they can change it. We will act on a school's instruction about its own records.

• Pupils: name, parents' names, date of birth, gender, admission number, class and section, address and contact numbers, photograph, and identity numbers the school chooses to record.
• Guardians: name, relationship, phone number, and email address where given.
• Staff: name, designation, contact details, qualifications, photograph, attendance, leave and salary records.
• School operations: attendance, examination marks and report cards, fee invoices, receipts and the school's own accounts, transport routes and bus allocations, and documents a school uploads such as bills or evidence for a concession.
• Accounts: the email address or phone number a person signs in with, and a record of when they signed in.

Vidya exists to keep school records, so most of what it holds is about children. It is entered by the school, not by the child, and a pupil is never asked to create an account or supply anything directly. We do not advertise to anyone, and we never use a child's information to profile or target them.

Staff and guardians may sign in using a Google account. When they do, Google tells us three things: that the sign-in succeeded, the email address on that Google account, and the basic profile it carries (name and picture).

We use the email address for one purpose only — to find an account the school has already created with that address. If no school has that address on its records, the sign-in is refused and nothing is stored. Signing in with Google never creates a new account, and it grants no access the school has not already given.

On a successful sign-in we store the Google account identifier against the existing account, so that the link survives a later change of address, and we mark the address as verified. We request only the openid, profile and email scopes. We do not read your Gmail, your contacts, your calendar or your files, and we never ask Google for permission to.

The Vidya School app for Android opens this same website inside the app. It shows what the website shows and holds nothing the website does not. In addition:

• On your phone, the app remembers which school you last signed in to, so that it can open there next time.
• If you allow notifications, the app registers your phone with Firebase Cloud Messaging, a Google service, and we store the notification token it is given against your account. We use it only to send you your school's notices — such as a fee receipt, an absence, or a mark sheet to fill in. You can turn notifications off at any time in your phone's settings.
• The app uses your camera or your photos only when you choose to attach a photograph or document, and the file goes to your school's records like any upload on the website.
• The app does not read your contacts, your location, your messages or your other files. It shows no advertising and contains no third-party analytics or tracking.

Some schools also use a Vidya attendance phone that recognises faces at the gate. The face data stays on that attendance phone; only the attendance record — who, and when — reaches Vidya.

Every record belongs to exactly one school and the software keeps schools apart; no school can see another school's records. Within a school, what a person sees depends on the role the school has given them — a teacher sees their own classes, a clerk sees the fee counter, a principal sees the school.

Our own staff access a school's data only to run the service: to fix a fault, restore a backup, or carry out something the school has asked for. We do not browse school records otherwise.

Data is held on servers in India, with photographs and uploaded documents held in object storage reachable only by the service. Backups are taken daily and kept encrypted off-site so that a school's records survive a server failure.

School records are kept for as long as the school uses Vidya, because a school register is a long-lived document — a transfer certificate or a mark sheet may be asked for years after a pupil leaves. If a school stops using Vidya, we return or delete its data on its instruction.

• Google, when a person chooses to sign in with a Google account.
• Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google), to deliver notifications to the Vidya School app.
• Our hosting and storage providers, who hold the data and the backups.
• An email provider, to deliver sign-in codes and notices.

Each of these handles the information only to provide its part of the service.

You can ask for your Vidya account to be deleted at any time. How, and what happens to the school's records, is set out on the account deletion page.

Connections are encrypted. Passwords are stored hashed and are never readable, by us or by anyone. Accounts can be protected with two-step verification or a passkey. Access to the servers is restricted to named keys. No system is perfect, and if a breach ever affects a school's records we will tell that school.

If this policy changes materially we will update the date at the top and tell the schools using the service.

Write to [email protected], or call the helpline on +91 7037003700. Post reaches us at Seema Computers, Center Point Complex, Nainital Road Baheri, Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh 243201.