Survey terms

Last updated: 15 October 2026

1. About these terms

These terms apply to the AI Readiness Assessment and to any other survey, self-check or registration form I run, whatever platform it is hosted on. They apply to everyone who completes a survey and to every school or organisation that takes part.

• Respondents accept these terms by completing a survey.
• Participating schools accept these terms when their Head of School, or another person with authority to act for the school, registers or gives written consent to take part.

The privacy policy explains how I handle personal information generally. Where these terms are more specific about surveys, these terms apply. If a school and I sign a separate written agreement, that agreement takes priority over these terms where the two differ.

2. Words used in these terms

• Assessment means the AI Readiness Assessment: surveys for school leaders, staff, students and parents, followed by a findings debrief with the school's leadership.
• Survey means any questionnaire, self-check or form I run, including the assessment surveys and conference registration forms.
• Instrument means the surveys themselves and everything that makes them work, as set out in section 13.
• Participating school means a school or organisation that has agreed to run one or more surveys with its community.
• Respondent means anyone who answers a survey.
• Results means the analysis, reports, dashboards and findings produced from the responses.

3. Who runs the surveys

The surveys are run by me, Vaughn Littlejohns, an educator and researcher. Littlejohns is the name I publish under. I am responsible for the surveys and for the responses I collect.

I also work full time as Director of Technology & Innovation at Prem Tinsulanonda International School in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and survey invitations may show that title. The surveys are run in my own name. My employer is not a party to these terms and does not receive any participating school's survey data.

The assessment is offered free of charge. No payment is asked of a school or a respondent.

4. Taking part is voluntary

• Nobody has to take part. Choosing not to take part has no consequences, and a school must not treat it as having any.
• You can skip any question that is not marked as required, and you can stop at any time before you submit.
• A school must not make the staff survey a condition of employment, appraisal or performance review, and must not ask staff to show or share their answers.
• If you gave your name or email address and want your response withdrawn, email me. I will delete it, as long as it has not already been combined into anonymised results or published. Responses submitted without a name cannot be traced back to you, so they cannot be picked out and withdrawn later.

5. Students and parental consent

The student surveys are designed for students in Grades 3 to 12 (roughly ages 8 to 18). They are anonymous: they never ask for a student's name, email address, student number or any other direct identifier.

The participating school decides whether its students take part, and it is responsible for:

• informing parents and guardians about the survey before it runs;
• obtaining parental consent, or offering a parental opt-out, as its own policies and local law require, and doing so before the survey link is shared with any student;
• meeting any additional requirement for younger children, such as those under 13 or the age set by local law;
• running the survey in a supervised setting where students know they can skip questions or stop, and where a student who does not take part is given something else to do.

I can provide a parent information letter for the school to send. The school remains responsible for sending it and for any consent records.

6. What the surveys collect

• Leaders, staff and parents. Your role or relationship to the school, your answers about how AI is used, understood and supported, and any comments you choose to write. Some surveys offer an optional name or email field, for example if you want to be contacted. Leaving it blank does not affect anything.
• Students. Year group or grade band, answers about how they use and understand technology and AI, and any comments they choose to write. No names or contact details.
• Registration and self-check forms. Your name, school, email and, if you choose, a phone, WhatsApp or WeChat contact, plus any answers you give.

The surveys do not ask for health information, religious beliefs, biometric data or other sensitive personal information. Please do not write it into a comment box.

A note on comment boxes. Comments are read and summarised as written. If you put names, roles or other identifying details into a comment, someone may be able to recognise you or the person you describe. I remove identifying details before any comment is shared with a school or used in research.

7. Confidential and anonymous

These two words mean different things, and I use them precisely.

• Anonymous means the survey does not collect who you are. The student surveys are anonymous, and so is any survey where you leave the optional name and email fields blank.
• Confidential means that if the survey does hold your name or email, it is kept by me, separately from how results are reported, and is never shown to your school next to your answers.

Whichever applies, these rules hold:

• Results are reported only in groups large enough that no individual can be identified. That includes filtered views, such as one year group or one department. Where a group is too small, it is combined with others or left out.
• A participating school receives aggregated results and comments with identifying details removed. It does not receive individual responses linked to a name or email address.
• I will not try to identify an anonymous respondent, and a participating school must not try to either.

8. Safeguarding

Responses are confidential, with one exception. If an answer suggests that a child is at risk of serious harm, I will pass that response, with the context needed to act on it (such as the survey and year group), to the participating school's designated safeguarding lead as soon as I can. Student surveys are anonymous, so I cannot identify the student, but the school may be able to act.

The surveys are not monitored in real time and are not a way to report a concern or get help. If you are worried about your safety or someone else's, talk to a teacher, your school's safeguarding lead or another adult you trust straight away.

Each participating school must give me the name and contact details of its designated safeguarding lead before any student survey runs.

9. How the results are used

For the participating school. The school receives its aggregated results and a findings debrief with its leadership team. It may use them inside the school community to plan and improve its approach to AI.

For research. Responses contribute to research on how schools are implementing AI, which I publish in academic papers, conference presentations, articles and books. Research use follows these rules:

• Only anonymised, aggregated data is published. No individual respondent can be identified.
• No participating school is named, or described in a way that would identify it, without the written permission of its Head of School.
• Short comments may be quoted only after anything that could identify the writer, their school or anyone else has been removed.
• Anonymised data from several schools may be combined to describe patterns across schools and to build comparisons. No individual school's results are shown to another school.

What results are never used for.

• Ranking or publicly comparing named schools.
• Appraising, disciplining or making employment decisions about individual staff.
• Marketing to respondents. Answering a survey never adds you to a mailing list. The Littlejohns Letter is a separate opt-in.
• Selling. I do not sell survey data, in any form, to anyone.

10. Who is responsible for what

In data protection terms, I act as the data controller for the survey responses and research data I hold. A participating school is a separate controller for its own community information and for the results it receives.

I rely on the consent of adult respondents, on the participating school's authorisation and its parental consent arrangements for students, and on legitimate interests in research that uses only anonymised, aggregated data.

11. Where the data is stored

Surveys are hosted on established survey platforms, usually Google Forms and Google Sheets (Google Workspace). Where Google services are unavailable, for example in mainland China, an equivalent platform such as SurveyMonkey or Tencent Survey is used, and the invitation will say which. Responses are then held in my Google Workspace account. Analysis may use AI tools, set up so the data is not used to train their models, and only ever on data with names and contact details removed.

These providers store and process data in the United States and other countries, so your responses may be transferred outside the country where you live. By taking part you understand that this transfer will happen. I rely on the providers' published safeguards for international transfers, and access to the responses is limited to me.

If a data breach occurs that is likely to cause serious harm, I will tell the affected participating school promptly so that it can inform its community, and I will notify regulators where the law requires it.

12. How long it is kept

I keep survey information only for as long as it is needed for the purposes in these terms. When it is no longer needed, it is de-identified or securely destroyed.

• Names and email addresses given in a survey are deleted, or separated from the responses, once the participating school's findings debrief is complete and they are no longer needed.
• Anonymised research data is kept for as long as it is needed for the research and its publication.
• Registration and contact details are kept until the research round they relate to has finished, or until you ask me to remove them.

13. The survey instrument is protected

The instrument is my original work and my intellectual property. It includes:

• the questions, their wording and order, and the response options;
• the scales, indicators and readiness steps I have written;
• the four-stakeholder design and how the surveys fit together;
• the survey introductions, instructions and supporting materials;
• the analysis method, the dashboard, the results, the reports and the debrief materials.

Being able to see or complete the surveys does not give anyone any right to the instrument. A participating school receives a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable permission to distribute the survey links I provide to its own community, and to use its results internally, for the duration of the round. All other rights are reserved.

Without my prior written permission, no one may:

• copy or duplicate any survey, including with "Make a copy", exports, screenshots or transcription;
• reproduce, adapt, translate or edit the questions, or build a survey that is substantially similar;
• run the instrument, or any version of it, outside the round it was provided for, including in later years;
• share the instrument, the analysis or the reports with anyone outside the participating school, including other schools, school groups, consultants or companies;
• put the instrument, the analysis or the reports into any AI tool or model, whether to train it, to prompt it to reproduce or rework them, or to build something similar;
• sell, license, publish or commercially exploit any part of it;
• remove or obscure the attribution to me.

If I agree to a school hosting a copy of a survey in its own account, that copy is covered by the same permission and limits, is licensed for that round only, and must be deleted when the round ends. The school is then responsible for the responses held in its copy.

If these limits are breached, the permission ends immediately, all copies must be deleted, and I may take action to protect my work, including seeking an injunction and damages. If you would like to use the instrument in a way these terms do not allow, email me. Licensing can be discussed.

14. What a participating school agrees to

By taking part, a participating school confirms that:

• the person who registers or consents has authority to act for the school;
• it will distribute only the links I provide, unchanged, and only to its own community;
• it will meet its responsibilities for informing its community and for parental consent in section 5 before any student survey runs;
• it will give me the contact details of its designated safeguarding lead, and act on any concern I pass on;
• it will keep the instrument, the analysis and the reports confidential, and use the results only as these terms allow;
• it will not try to identify individual respondents, or use results to rank, appraise or discipline anyone;
• it will not publish findings that name me or the assessment without agreeing the wording with me first.

The school agrees to cover any loss, claim or cost I face as a result of the school breaching these terms, including running a student survey without the consent arrangements in section 5.

Either of us may end a school's participation at any time by email. If a school withdraws before its data has been combined into the anonymised research data, its data will not be used for research. Sections 7, 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14 continue to apply after participation ends.

15. Not professional advice

The results and the debrief describe what respondents reported, read through my experience of AI in schools. They are not a compliance audit, an inspection judgement or legal, regulatory or safeguarding advice. The school remains responsible for its own decisions and for meeting its own legal obligations. What worked in one school may not work in yours.

16. Liability

The assessment and the surveys are provided free and as they are. I take care with them, but I do not guarantee any particular result, and I cannot promise the survey platforms will always be available or error-free. To the maximum extent permitted by law, I am not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for any loss arising from decisions made using the results. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, or rights you have under consumer law, including the Australian Consumer Law where it applies.

17. Your rights and complaints

Depending on where you live, you can ask to access, correct or delete personal information I hold about you, object to how it is used, or withdraw your consent. Section 4 explains how withdrawal works for survey responses. Email vaughn@littlejohns.org and I will respond within the time the law requires.

If you are not satisfied with my answer, you can complain to the data protection regulator where you live, for example:

• Thailand: the Personal Data Protection Committee (PDPC)
• Singapore: the Personal Data Protection Commission (PDPC)
• Hong Kong: the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD)
• Mainland China: the Cyberspace Administration of China or your local equivalent authority
• Australia: the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (oaic.gov.au)
• United Kingdom: the Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk); in the EU, your national data protection authority

If a concern is about how your school ran a survey, for example how it informed parents, please raise it with the school as well. I will help where I can.

18. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia, consistent with the terms of use for this site. Any dispute will be dealt with in the courts of New South Wales, unless agreed otherwise in writing. This does not remove any protection given to you by the data protection law of the country where you live.

19. Changes to these terms

I may update these terms from time to time. When I do, I will change the "last updated" date at the top. A survey round runs under the terms in place when it opened, unless a change is needed to comply with the law, in which case I will tell participating schools.

20. Contact

Questions about these terms, the surveys or your data:
Vaughn Littlejohns
vaughn@littlejohns.org