Researchers
Dr Rahat Masood, Engineering, UNSW
Associate Professor Jung-Sook Lee, Arts, Design & Architecture, UNSW
Associate Professor Noam Peleg, Law & Justice, UNSW
Associate Professor Helen Paik, Engineering, UNSW
Funding
This project was part of the Australian Human Rights Institute’s 2025 joint seed funding round with UNSW Engineering, receiving $20,000.
Summary
The use of digital learning apps and tools in Australian schools has surged in recent years as technology becomes more integrated into classrooms. Nowadays, children’s educational apps form a fundamental component of the modern education system. The personalised educational content offered by children’s educational apps comes at a significant privacy and security cost. Emerging research indicates that many educational apps collect vast amounts of personal data, track children’s behaviour, and share information with third-parties without explicit user consent and other safeguards. Complex and lengthy Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) in educational apps often obscure critical information about invasive data collection, usage, and sharing practices.
This issue is particularly important in the Australian context, where schools cater to students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Parents may struggle to understand complex T&Cs due to lack of legal literacy, language barriers or varying levels of digital literacy. Parents and guardians often lack choice and consent over the use of children’s educational apps when they are mandated by schools or the Department of Education. Addressing these systemic issues requires a comprehensive evaluation of the T&Cs for Australian educational apps with a focus on transparency, usability, readability, and regulatory compliance.
A team of cybersecurity researchers, legal experts and education policymakers will address this research gap by investigating the security and privacy risks associated with children’s educational apps used in Australian schools. Their study will focus on how educational apps handle children’s personal data and whether their T&Cs align with best practices for data protection and privacy regulations. It will investigate how usable T&Cs are in terms of comprehension, readability, efficiency, and functionality perspectives.
The findings will be valuable for educators, policymakers, developers, and regulatory bodies to ensure safer digital learning environments for children. It will also contribute to an enhanced understanding of children’s rights to privacy and education in the modern classroom.