Community Guidelines & Moderation Policy

School Atlas is a place for parents to share honest experiences of UK schools. To keep reviews useful, fair, and lawful, every review is moderated before it appears on a school profile. This page explains what we will and will not publish, how decisions are made, and how to report or appeal.

1. Who can post a review

• You must have a registered School Atlas account and be 16 or older.
• You must identify your relationship to the school (current parent, former parent, prospective parent, alumnus, or staff member).
• Your name is never displayed next to your review — only your relationship and the date.

2. What we will publish

• First-hand accounts of your own experience at the school.
• Specific, factual observations (“my child waited six months for an EHCP meeting”).
• Reasoned opinions clearly presented as opinions (“in my view, the pastoral team handled the bullying well”).
• Constructive criticism of policies, teaching, communication, leadership, facilities, and value for money.

3. What we will not publish

Reviews are rejected, edited, or removed if they contain:

• Named individuals. Do not name teachers, pupils, parents, or other staff. Reviews that identify a named person by role, classroom, or photograph will be removed.
• Defamatory claims. Statements of fact that are untrue and damage a school's or individual's reputation are removed. Opinions must be clearly identifiable as opinion and held in good faith.
• Safeguarding disclosures. Anything suggesting a child is at risk of harm must be reported to the school and, if necessary, to the local authority or police — not published in a review. We will remove such content and signal the contributor towards the NSPCC helpline (0808 800 5000).
• Personal data about others. No names, contact details, medical information, SEND records, or photos of anyone other than yourself.
• Hate speech, harassment, or discrimination on the grounds of any protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010.
• Threats, abuse, or incitement to violence.
• Commercial or promotional content — including tutor adverts, competitor plugs, and paid reviews.
• Duplicate or coordinated reviews. We use signals such as IP address, account age, and writing style to detect campaigns.
• Breaches of confidence — including material covered by a non-disclosure agreement, settlement, or safeguarding report.

4. How reviews are checked

Every submission is queued for human review before publication. We do not publish reviews automatically. Moderators check each review against the criteria in section 3, using published inspection reports, the school's own website, and publicly available records where helpful. Reviews that pass are published within 72 hours on business days. Reviews that are rejected are not published, and the contributor receives a short explanation by email.

AI is used to flag likely policy violations (for example, suspected named individuals or duplicate submissions) but every publish/reject decision is made by a human moderator.

5. School right-of-reply

Schools with a verified institution account may post a single public response beneath any review of their school. School responses must follow the same guidelines in section 3 — in particular, they must not name the reviewer, other parents, or any child, and must not reveal information that could identify them.

6. Notice-and-takedown: reporting a review

If you believe a review is defamatory, illegal, or breaches these guidelines, you can ask us to remove it. We operate a notice-and-takedown procedure consistent with section 5 of the Defamation Act 2013 and the Defamation (Operators of Websites) Regulations 2013, as well as the illegal-content reporting duty under the Online Safety Act 2023.

Send a notice of complaint by email to moderation@schoolatlas.co.uk. For the notice to engage the section 5 process under the 2013 Regulations it must specify:

• your name;
• your email address (so we can contact you about the complaint);
• the URL of the page hosting the review and the statement(s) complained of (quoted verbatim);
• an explanation of what the statement means to you and why it is defamatory (for example, “this alleges X, which is untrue because Y”);
• confirmation of where in the United Kingdom you are ordinarily resident;
• whether you consent to your name and email address being provided to the reviewer (the 2013 Regulations require your consent before we can pass those details on — without that consent we may still be required to remove the review under the Regulations).

Our response timetable (business days, in line with the Schedule to the 2013 Regulations):

• We acknowledge receipt of a complying notice within 48 hours.
• Within 48 hours of receiving a complying notice we either remove the statement or forward it (with the parts of your notice you have consented to share) to the reviewer.
• The reviewer has 5 days to reply and may either agree to the removal, ask us not to remove it, or provide sufficient contact details for you to pursue them directly.
• Where the reviewer does not respond, does not consent to their details being provided, or cannot be contacted, we will remove the statement within 48 hours of the deadline.
• Where the reviewer responds with sufficient contact details and asks us to keep the statement live, we will not remove it (the dispute is then between the complainant and the reviewer) unless a court order or other legal obligation requires us to.

If the complaint is about illegal content (priority offences under the Online Safety Act 2023, including threats, CSAM, harassment, or terrorism content) we act on it immediately on becoming aware, in line with our Illegal Content Risk Assessment. Illegal-content notices are not governed by the 48-hour / 5-day Defamation Act process.

During investigation of any notice, we may temporarily hide a review from public view without prejudice to the outcome.

7. School logos and branding

Profile pages may display a school's logo or site icon, sourced from the school's own public website, solely to identify the school — the same way search engines and directories display site icons. Logos remain the property of their respective schools or trusts, and their display does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement of School Atlas. If you represent a school and would like your logo replaced, updated, or removed, email moderation@schoolatlas.co.uk and we will action it promptly.

8. Appeals

If we remove or reject your review, you may appeal by replying to our notification email within 14 days. Appeals are reviewed by a second moderator who was not involved in the original decision. Decisions on appeal are final.

9. Changes to this policy

We may update these guidelines. The “last updated” date above reflects the most recent revision. Significant changes are communicated to registered users by email.

10. Contact

• Moderation queries: moderation@schoolatlas.co.uk
• General: info@schoolatlas.co.uk
• Privacy policy · Terms of service