Before a circle with under-16s in it can use the features that carry risk, somebody has to take responsibility for those children being there. This is how that works, who is allowed to do it, and the five reasons a circle is not yet cleared.
Without a plan: none
Only an institution, or a tutor on a paid seat, can warrant a circle containing under-16s.
Who is responsible
A school, or a tutor on a paid seat, decides which children are in their circle and whether a parent agreed to it. That is a controller’s decision and it stays theirs — we are not in a position to know whether a given parent said yes, and pretending otherwise would be the worst of both worlds.
What the platform does is record the delegation and then answer one question, in one place, for every feature that needs it: is this circle assured?
The three conditions
Assured means all three at once. Any one missing and the answer is no.
- The owner is eligible to take it on — An institution, or a tutor on a paid seat. Not any signed-in account — a warranty from somebody with no seat, no policy and no accountability is a checkbox rather than a promise. This is the same test the board uses to decide which widgets you may place, deliberately, so the two answers cannot drift apart.
- They have accepted the current agreement — The data processing agreement is versioned, and acceptance is recorded against a specific version. When the text changes materially the version is raised, which asks everybody again rather than treating an old consent as covering new terms.
- They have warranted this particular circle — Not their account in general — this circle, with these children in it. One click, and it records who promised what, when, under which agreement version, and how many under-16s were in the room at the time.
A circle of adults needs no warranty
A circle with no under-16s in it is assured by definition. Nothing is being warranted, and asking a tutor of four adults to sign a child-safeguarding promise in order to use chat would teach them that the promise is paperwork — which is the failure mode worth avoiding above all others here.
The moment a child joins, it flips on its own. That is not a background job noticing: it is the same question being asked again and getting a different answer, because the count of children is read live.
Why a warranty goes stale
A child who joined after the promise was made is a child the promise never covered. So a warranty is checked against the enrolment dates of the children currently in the circle, and if any of them arrived later, the circle is unassured again until somebody confirms.
This is derived rather than stored, which matters more than it sounds: there is no expiry timer to tune and no snapshot to fall out of step with reality. The enrolment row is the fact.
A warranty given under an older version of the agreement is stale for the same reason. Re-accepting the terms is not enough on its own — the promise about these particular children was made under the old text.
The five reasons you will see
When a circle is not assured, the product says which of five things is missing, in these words. Each one names the next action rather than describing a state.
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| No under-16s in this circle. | Nothing to warrant. The gate does not apply, and nothing is being asked of you. |
| Only an institution or a tutor on a paid seat can take responsibility for under-16s in a circle. | The circle’s owner is not eligible. A free account cannot warrant children, whatever role it gave itself at signup. |
| Accept the data processing agreement to use this with under-16s. | Eligible, but has not accepted this version of the agreement. One screen, once per version. |
| Confirm you have guardian consent for the under-16s in this circle. | The agreement is accepted but this circle has never been warranted. This is the sentence most tutors meet first. |
| Someone under 16 has joined since you last confirmed. Please confirm again. | Stale — either a child enrolled after the warranty, or the agreement version has moved on. |
Who can see the gap
The gap is information about the circle — it names how many under-16s are in it — so it is shown to the circle’s teaching side, not to its members. A learner who cannot use chat in an unassured room is not told how many children are in the room with them.
Common questions
Eligibility is a paid teaching seat, not the teacher role. The role can be chosen at signup and proves nothing; the seat is the signal that there is an account, a policy and somebody accountable behind the promise. It is the same test that decides which board widgets you can place.