Privacy Policy

Last updated: 12 August 2026

WEBSTRAKE TECHNOLOGIES LLP operates Slate, a school management platform used by schools in India. This policy explains what information Slate handles, who decides how it is used, and who to approach about it.

Slate is a webStrake product, and everyone who signs in to Slate does so with a webStrake account. Anything to do with the account itself, how it is created, how long it is kept, your rights over it and how it is closed, is governed by the webStrake Privacy Policy, which applies alongside this one. This policy covers what is specific to Slate.

Who controls the information in your school's Slate

This is the most important part of this policy, so it comes first.

Your school is in charge of its own records. The school, and the trust, society or company that runs it, decides which students and staff to record, what to collect about them, and how long to keep it. Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, the school is the Data Fiduciary for that information.

We hold that information on the school's behalf and act on its instructions. In the language of the same Act, we act as a Data Processor for what a school enters into Slate: students, parents, staff, attendance, fees, marks, transport, conduct and the rest. We do not decide what goes into your school's records, and we do not use them for our own purposes.

We are responsible for our own relationship with the organization, and for how Slate itself is used. When an organization subscribes, writes to us for support, or uses the product, we decide how that information is handled, so for that limited set we act as a Data Fiduciary. It is described under Information we hold in our own right below.

Who to approach

Parents and staff should approach their school, not us. Your school controls its own records and can correct or remove them directly in Slate. We cannot act on a request about a school's records from an individual, because the records are not ours to change. Requests of that kind must come from the school.

For your webStrake account as distinct from your school's records, follow the webStrake Privacy Policy.

Information in your school's Slate

What a school records depends on which parts of Slate it uses, and on what the school chooses to enter. It can include:

• Students: name, admission number, class and section, date of birth, gender, photograph, guardians and their contact details, address, and, where the school chooses to record them, health notes such as allergies or medical conditions. Students do not have their own Slate accounts.
• Parents and guardians: name, relationship to the student, mobile number, email address and occupation.
• Staff: name, contact details, designation and department, employment record, photograph, attendance and leave.
• School activity: attendance, fee charges and payments, marks and progress cards, homework and notices, discipline records, award points, transport routes and boarding records, and gate visitor entries.

We use this information only to provide Slate to your school: to run the service, keep it secure, support it, produce the reports and documents the school asks for, and meet our legal obligations. We act on the school's instructions and not on our own account.

Information we hold in our own right

Separately from your school's records, we hold:

• Organization and billing information — the organization's details, the person who subscribes, subscription and plan history, invoices, payments and tax records.
• Support and enquiry information — messages you send us, demonstration and pilot enquiries, and our replies.
• Feedback you send from inside Slate — what you write, which page you were on, and, only if you choose to add them, a picture of your screen and a voice note.
• Usage and technical information — which parts of Slate are opened and how often, device and browser type, application version, approximate location derived from network address, error reports, performance measurements, and security and access logs.

We use this to run and secure the service, to deal with billing, to answer you, to detect and prevent fraud and misuse, to meet our legal obligations, and as described in the next section.

Feedback you send from inside Slate

Slate has a Feedback button on the pages you use when you are signed in. Use it to report something that is not working, to ask us for something, or to tell us what you like. Using it is always your choice.

When you send feedback, we receive:

• What you write. Whatever you type into the box.
• Which page you were on. The address of the Slate page you had open, so we can find the same screen. This is not your physical location, and Slate does not collect your location when you send feedback.
• A picture of your screen, only if you ask for one. Nothing is captured unless you press the button that takes a picture of the page you are on. We then show you the picture before anything is sent. If that page has a student's or a colleague's details on it, the picture will contain them, so please look at it first. You can remove the picture and still send your feedback.
• A voice note, only if you record one. The microphone starts only when you press record, you can listen back, and you can delete the recording and send without it. We can also turn voice notes off across Slate.

Only our own support and engineering staff can open feedback, and we use it only to answer you and to improve Slate. We do not use feedback for advertising. We do not use a voice note to identify anyone by their voice, and we do not use feedback to train automated systems.

Because a screen picture can contain your school's records, we treat it as part of your school's information and handle it under the same instructions from your school, in addition to what this section says.

Improving Slate and our other services

We study how Slate is used, and we use information in aggregated and de-identified form, which does not identify any organization, school or individual, to understand what is working, to improve Slate, to develop new features and services, and to build and improve the products and technologies we offer across webStrake, now and in future. We may retain and use information in that form without limit of time.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not share it with anyone for their own marketing.

Children's information

Most students in a school are under eighteen, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 treats them as children.

The school holds the relationship with the parent, so the school is responsible for telling parents what it records and for obtaining parental consent where the law requires it. Slate gives the school the tools to keep those records accurate and to remove them.

We do not use children's information for advertising, we do not carry out behavioural tracking or advertising directed at children, and we do not build profiles of children. Slate does not show advertising to anyone.

Automated decisions

We do not take decisions about any individual by automated means. Slate calculates figures such as attendance percentages, fee balances, grades and ranks from what the school has entered, and every decision taken on them is the school's decision.

Services we rely on

Slate uses a small number of outside services across our website, web app and mobile apps. Each receives only what it needs to do its job.

• Our hosting and infrastructure providers store and serve the data that makes up Slate.
• The webStrake accounts service verifies who is signing in. Slate never stores your password.
• Cashfree processes online fee payments, when a school turns them on. Card and bank details are handled by the payment provider, not by Slate.
• MSG91 delivers the SMS messages a school sends through Slate, such as fee reminders and notices.
• Brevo delivers the emails a school sends through Slate, and our own service emails.
• Google Firebase Cloud Messaging delivers notifications to the mobile apps and the browser.
• Google Analytics and Firebase analytics tell us how Slate is used, such as which screens are opened and where people run into trouble, so we can improve it. This is measurement, not advertising.
• Google Maps draws the maps used for attendance zones and bus stops, and finds places when a stop is being added.

We place each of these under obligations no less protective than those in this policy, and a current list is available on request. Where one of them processes information outside India, that is done only as permitted under the Act.

Slate also uses cookies and similar technologies, which are described in our Cookie Policy.

We may also share information with professional advisers, or where we are required to by law, by a court, or by a regulator, and in connection with a reorganisation or transfer of our business. We do not share your school's records with any other school or customer.

Keeping information

A school's records stay in Slate for as long as the school keeps using it, because a school needs its history: a former student's attendance and fee record has to remain available after they leave. Records of students who leave or graduate move to the former students area rather than being erased, so the school can still produce them.

Three periods are fixed:

• Visitor photographs taken at the gate are kept for thirty days and then removed.
• A screen picture or voice note attached to feedback is deleted as soon as we have finished looking into that feedback, normally within five days. It is also deleted if we remove the feedback. The written part of your feedback is kept as a support record.
• When a subscription ends, a school's records are kept for twelve months. This gives a school that renews late time to recover its history, and gives you time to export what you need. After that the organization can ask us to delete them, and we may delete them without further notice.

We keep other information for as long as it is needed for the purposes in this policy, and longer where the law requires it, for example tax and accounting records. Copies may persist in routine backups for a period after deletion and are removed as those backups age out. How long your account is kept is covered by the webStrake Privacy Policy.

See Data Deletion for how removal works in practice.

Security

Slate is served only over an encrypted connection. Access inside a school follows the person's role and duties, so a parent reaches only their own child and a staff member reaches only the work their role covers. We keep access logs, restrict internal access to those who need it for their work, and take regular backups.

If a breach affects a school's records, we tell the organization that subscribes for that school, and give it the information it needs to meet its own obligations. Notifying the Data Protection Board of India, and the people affected, is the school's responsibility, because the records are the school's.

No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, so while we take reasonable steps to protect information, we cannot guarantee absolute security. Keeping sign-in details confidential, and removing access for people who leave, remains the school's responsibility.

Your rights

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 you may ask for a summary of the personal data held about you, ask for it to be corrected or completed, ask for it to be erased, nominate someone to act for you, and raise a grievance, subject to the limits the law allows.

Exercise these rights for school records through your school, and for your webStrake account through the webStrake Privacy Policy. For information we hold in our own right, write to us at [email protected].

Grievances

If you are not satisfied with how a request about Slate has been handled, write to Ajit Kothari, Grievance Officer, at [email protected]. We respond within thirty days.

If your grievance is about your school's records, we will refer you to your school, because the school decides what it keeps.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. We will update the date shown at the top and, where a change is significant, tell the organizations that subscribe to Slate. Continuing to use Slate after a change means the updated policy applies.

Contact

Write to [email protected] with any question about this policy.