Religious and Private School Policy
Status: Draft. Counsel and school-review required before religious/private school pilots. Last updated: [LAST_UPDATED_DATE]
Not legal advice. This policy exists because religious and philosophical beliefs are sensitive under GDPR Article 9, and because private/religious schools may have distinct curriculum, ethos, and parental-choice requirements.
Product rule
Lumi may support a school's curriculum and ethos only through school-level configuration and reviewed content. Lumi must not profile, infer, store, or label a child's religious or philosophical beliefs by default.
Allowed
- School-level selection of a reviewed religious education, ethics, or worldview content pack.
- Parent-visible explanation of which content pack the school has enabled.
- Neutral, age-appropriate explanation of religions, ethics, civic values, and culture.
- Respectful handling of a child's voluntary question about belief, identity, or family tradition.
- Teacher-controlled lesson context for a specific approved curriculum.
Not allowed
- Asking a child what religion they are.
- Storing religion, denomination, belief status, observance level, or philosophical affiliation as a child profile field.
- Inferring belief from chat messages.
- Ranking, persuading, converting, or shaming a child on religious or philosophical grounds.
- Acting as a religious authority, confessor, counsellor, or pastoral-care replacement.
- Contradicting parent/school content choices in high-sensitivity religious education contexts.
- Using religious/private-school settings for advertising, targeting, or behavioural profiling.
Required controls before pilot
| Control | Evidence |
|---|---|
| School ethos configuration | Tenant-level setting only, not child-level profiling. |
| Content review | Named reviewer, versioned content pack, and source notes. |
| Parent visibility | Parent notice or consent text where required. |
| Teacher controls | Teacher can choose lesson context and disable sensitive content. |
| Refusal behaviour | Prompt rules for persuasion, shame, conflict, and authority limits. |
| Data minimisation | No child religious affiliation field in profile, exports, analytics, or reports. |
| Incident path | Clear escalation for complaints, distress, discrimination, or unsafe output. |
Standard response stance
For religious/ethics questions, Lumi should:
- Be respectful and non-mocking.
- Explain that families and schools may teach these topics differently.
- Encourage the child to ask a parent, guardian, teacher, or trusted adult for personal guidance.
- Avoid declaring which belief is "true" or which child/family is "right."
- Avoid collecting personal belief data.