Common questions,
straight answers.

Cloak for Schools is an online cyber-safety learning platform for secondary students — used the way schools already use platforms like MyMaths or Cognito, but for online safety. Students log in and work through interactive lessons at their own pace; teachers assign tasks, track progress and get a lesson plan on every lesson through a teacher dashboard. It is licensed to schools as a per-school annual subscription, and it is built by Solid Code Solutions, a UK software and IT consultancy.

Cloak for Schools is built for secondary schools. The content and tone are aimed at students aged 11 to 16, with activities focused on the platforms, behaviours and online risks that age group is more likely to encounter. It is not designed for primary-age pupils.

Cloak for Schools is student-facing, with teacher support built around it. Students log in, complete lessons and activities at their own pace, while teachers assign tasks and track progress from a dashboard. Teachers also get ready-made lesson support, including discussion prompts, key talking points and a short guide. Cloak for Schools is not staff training, CPD or an in-person workshop programme.

Yes. Activities are mapped to the online-safety content of the statutory RSE and Health Education curriculum — the Online safety and awareness and Wellbeing online strands — and to Computing online-safety outcomes. They cover areas such as spotting scams and fake messages, recognising deepfakes and AI-generated content, evaluating what's real online, and managing privacy, data and digital footprint. Several activities also build media-literacy and critical-thinking skills: telling real from fake, evaluating sources and spotting manipulation. Those skills support wider Citizenship and personal-development work at key stages 3 and 4. The aim is to help schools show clear evidence of online-safety teaching across RSHE, Computing and wider personal-development work. A statement-level mapping to the 2026 RSHE guidance and Computing outcomes is available for school due diligence — just ask.

Yes. The DfE's updated statutory Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education guidance came into force on 1 September 2026, and for the first time it names risks like deepfakes, AI-generated images, AI chatbots, sextortion, and commercial data sharing and targeted advertising as online-safety content that secondary schools should cover. Cloak for Schools covers the guidance's two online-safety strands, Online safety and awareness and Wellbeing online, in full, sequenced across key stages 3 and 4, with a lesson plan on every lesson so a form tutor can teach it rather than just assign it. The teacher dashboard records what was taught and who completed it, so what you show governors is what was delivered, not what was planned. A statement-level mapping is available for due diligence. If you want to see the style first, the free activities touch three of the named risks: scams and fake messages, AI-generated images, and sharing personal information with apps.

Because the ban is a proposal, and the skills are not really about social media. On 15 June 2026 the government announced plans to bar under-16s from social-media platforms, with regulations expected in Parliament before Christmas and protections taking effect in spring 2027. Nothing is in force yet, and nothing in the announcement changes what schools must teach now: the RSHE guidance that took effect on 1 September 2026 still expects secondary schools to cover online safety.

The plans are also narrower than the headline. Messaging apps are explicitly excluded, gaming continues with some features restricted, and general-purpose AI stays in everyday use. Scams, pressure and image-sharing can happen in those spaces too, and students will still be in them whatever happens to Instagram and TikTok. The habits Cloak for Schools teaches, such as checking who is really behind a message, refusing to hand over a code, recognising pressure and telling a trusted adult, carry across all of it, and keep working as students gain more independent access. If the law changes, the lessons and the mapping change with it.

Source: GOV.UK fact sheet, New rules to protect children online, 17 July 2026.

ProjectEVOLVE is a respected resource that gives schools access to a broad library mapped to the UKCIS framework. Cloak for Schools is designed to complement resources like this by reducing the work involved in selecting, sequencing, preparing and evidencing online-safety teaching.

Built around the 2026 guidance. The updated RSHE guidance names risks including deepfakes, AI chatbots, sextortion and commercial data exploitation. Cloak activities are designed around these requirements and mapped to relevant statutory topics, giving schools a clear record of what has been covered.

Designed to stay current. Online risks change quickly. New scams, platforms and AI tools can emerge faster than traditional curriculum resources are updated. Cloak for Schools is designed to respond to significant new risks with timely, classroom-ready content.

Students take part directly. Activities like Would You Click? and Spot the Fake place students inside practical scenarios rather than asking teachers to deliver a slide deck. Lessons are designed for non-specialist staff and include guidance for discussion and sensitive topics.

The licence covers delivery and evidence. Lessons arrive prepared, sequenced and mapped, while the teacher dashboard records what was assigned and completed. Schools still benefit from free frameworks and resources; Cloak adds the delivery layer, student experience and evidence that would otherwise need to be assembled internally.

The simplest way to judge it is to try a free activity with a Year 9 class and see how students respond. If it's useful, talk to us about your school.

Yes. The free activities are publicly viewable without a login. The schools platform sits behind a student login, but Cloak for Schools will not impose contractual restrictions that prevent schools from showing materials to parents. That supports the guidance's expectation that RSHE materials are available to parents.

Cloak for Schools is developed by Solid Code Solutions, a UK software and IT consultancy founded in 2013 with experience delivering secure digital products for education, public-sector and business clients. Technical accuracy is reviewed by a cybersecurity practitioner from that team.

Cyber expertise alone is not enough to put something in front of a class, so it is not the only check. Content is built from real-world cyber safety expertise, monitored security feeds and current online risk trends, and every activity passes a defined review chain before it reaches a classroom: cyber accuracy, safeguarding and age-appropriateness (a practising DSL), curriculum and classroom usability (a practising secondary PSHE / RSHE lead), accessibility and reading level (a SEND reviewer), and a teen relevance check. A person approves every activity before publication — AI never does.

You can see who reviews what, check by check, and we will tell your school exactly who reviewed the material it is given.

Every activity passes five reviews before publication, in this order:

1. Cyber accuracy — a cybersecurity practitioner from Solid Code Solutions.
2. Safeguarding and age-appropriateness — a practising Designated Safeguarding Lead, who signs off the content warnings and teacher notes.
3. Curriculum and classroom usability — a practising secondary PSHE / RSHE lead.
4. Accessibility and reading level — a SEND and accessibility reviewer.
5. Credibility and clarity — a panel of teenage reviewers.

Three principles sit behind those checks. Accurate: every activity is informed by cybersecurity expertise, trusted guidance and current online risks. Age and stage appropriate: designed for students aged 11 to 16, pitched around the platforms, behaviours and risks they are likely to encounter, and adapted to suit different year groups. Neutral by design: practical online-safety skills, informed decision-making and relevant legal and safeguarding information, without promoting a political or partisan position.

Nothing reaches a classroom on an automated pass. AI helps identify and prepare emerging-risk themes worth teaching, but it holds no authority: it cannot approve content, cannot publish, and never touches student data. However an activity starts life, it only becomes a lesson once the professionals above have taken it through every check and signed it off.

Some online-safety topics — such as sextortion, grooming, coercion, scams, image-sharing and exploitation — are sensitive by nature. Cloak for Schools handles them carefully, with staff in control.

You preview everything first. Teachers can preview every lesson and activity before assigning it, so nothing reaches students unvetted. Sensitive topics carry a clear warning and come with teacher notes and discussion guidance, so staff know what is covered and can prepare.

Students are never asked to disclose personal experiences. Activities are built around scenarios and characters, not a student's own life. There are no free-text boxes asking students to describe things that have happened to them or to other people, and students cannot message anyone through the platform. Reflective questions are framed around the scenario, so students can think a topic through without being put on the spot.

Support is signposted, and staff are guided. Every student module includes an accessible Speak to a Teacher link — a steady reminder of how to report a concern to a trusted adult at their own school if an activity mirrors something they have experienced in real life. Alongside it, activities point students towards recognised support routes, and teacher notes include prompts for staff on what to do if a student makes a disclosure — so a concern reaches the right person, following your school's own procedures.

You stay in control of what is taught, and when. Schools can adapt, delay or turn off particular topics to suit their cohort and their curriculum sequence. A topic or lesson can also be held back from an individual student who may be more affected by a subject, without changing it for the rest of the class.

Reviewed by someone who does your job. No sensitive material reaches a classroom without sign-off from a practising Designated Safeguarding Lead — the content warnings, the teacher notes and the handling of each topic — alongside a secondary PSHE / RSHE lead, a SEND reviewer and teenage reviewers. The full chain is set out under who reviews what.

Cloak for Schools supports your online-safety teaching and the evidence it produces. It does not replace your school's safeguarding procedures, which remain your responsibility.

Cloak helps with the teaching, not the technology, and it is worth being clear about the line. Keeping Children Safe in Education expects governing bodies and proprietors to make sure children are taught how to keep themselves and others safe, including online. It links that teaching to RSHE and expects online safety to be reflected across curriculum planning, not treated only as a technical control. That is what Cloak for Schools is built for: activities mapped to the online-safety content of the statutory RSE and Health Education guidance and to Computing outcomes, and a teacher dashboard that turns completed work into a clear record of what was taught and who completed it — the kind of evidence that is useful for governors, personal-development reviews and inspection conversations.

What Cloak is not: it is not a filtering or monitoring system. Those are network and device controls that come from your IT provider — Cloak does not sit on your network and does not monitor student devices. It also does not replace your safeguarding procedures. Every student module carries a Speak to a Teacher link that points a student towards a trusted adult at their own school, so a concern is handled through your processes, not ours.

KCSIE 2026 and the updated RSHE guidance both came into force on 1 September 2026.

No. Cloak for Schools supports online-safety education; it does not replace technical filtering or monitoring systems. Schools will still need appropriate web-filtering, device-monitoring and safeguarding processes in place. Cloak for Schools helps with the teaching and evidence side of online safety, not the network-control side.

Judgement. Parental controls, screen-time limits and school filtering decide what a device will open and for how long. They are worth having, and Cloak for Schools is not a substitute for them. What they cannot do is decide for a student whether a DM is a scam, whether an image is real, what a chatbot should be told, or when to stop and tell an adult. Those calls are made by the student, on whatever device is in their hand at the time: a friend's phone, a games console, or later the first laptop with nothing installed on it. Controls narrow what a student can reach. The teaching is what they carry when the controls come off, and Cloak for Schools records that it was taught.

Your school or trust is the data controller. Solid Code Solutions Ltd, the company behind Cloak for Schools, is the data processor and handles personal data only on your documented instructions. We provide a data processing agreement, signed before any student data is processed, a clear sub-processor list and information to support your data protection impact assessment and supplier checks.

Solid Code Solutions is registered with the Information Commissioner's Office and certified under Cyber Essentials, the government-backed scheme for protection against common cyber attacks. The platform is built around data minimisation: it collects only what is needed to run lessons and show teachers progress, keeps children's best interests central, never uses student data to train AI models, and is designed to meet the ICO's Children's Code (the Age Appropriate Design Code).

The full detail — the student data schema, UK hosting, sub-processors, access controls and retention periods — is in section 11 of our privacy policy.

We use AI behind the scenes to help spot emerging scams and threats, so lessons can reflect what students are actually facing now. But a person reviews and approves everything before it reaches a classroom. AI never publishes on its own, and it never touches student data. You get content that's current and checked.

The precise scope. AI is used to help identify emerging scam and online-risk themes from external sources, and to help prepare and structure material for human review. It is not connected to student accounts, does not process student data, cannot approve content and cannot publish. Every classroom material is reviewed and approved by people before release.

What "daily" actually means. The external sources are a carefully collated set of respected security and online-safety feeds, checked every day. A person reviews what comes back and decides what is real and worth teaching — which is how we keep false positives and hype out of the classroom.

Cloak for Schools runs in the browser at app.getcloak.tech — there is nothing to install, no app to deploy and no software that sits on your network. It works in any up-to-date browser on the devices schools already have, including Chromebooks, iPads and Windows or Mac machines, and students can pick up self-paced work from home on their own devices. If your filtering locks devices down, the only change IT needs to make is allowing app.getcloak.tech.

Setup is deliberately light, and we do it with you. The data processing agreement is signed first — before any student data is touched — then staff and student accounts are created from the class lists you provide, as a simple export from your MIS. There is no integration project and nothing for parents to set up. Once classes are in, teachers can preview activities and assign their first lesson straight away. Exactly what data is needed and how students and staff log in is set out in section 11 of our privacy policy.

Yes. Accessibility was part of how the schools platform was built, not something added at the end: it is designed to meet the WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standard, so students who rely on screen readers, keyboard navigation, captions or larger text can take part in the same activities as everyone else. Teacher guidance also helps staff adapt activities for students who may need additional support before, during or after a lesson. Our accessibility statement sets out how we design for access, where we are today, and how to report a problem. If your school has specific access needs, mention them when you talk to us and we'll work with you to account for them before you start.

Your school stays the data controller and Solid Code Solutions Ltd — the company behind Cloak for Schools — acts as the data processor, working only on your instructions. A data processing agreement is signed before any student data is processed, and we support your data protection impact assessment and supplier review. The free activities available today need no login and do not ask students to enter any personal data.

The full detail — the student data schema, how students and staff log in, UK hosting, sub-processors, access controls and retention — is set out in section 11 of our privacy policy.

Cloak for Schools is offered as a per-school annual subscription licence, with single-fee pricing available for multi-academy trusts. Register your interest and we'll come back with pricing for your school — and the free activities are a no-commitment way to judge the approach with a class first.

The licence runs for twelve months from your start date and covers the whole school: every student, every class, the teacher dashboard and the lesson plans, with no per-student pricing. It does not auto-renew — we contact you before the year ends, and continuing is a decision you make, not a charge that happens to you. If you choose not to renew, access ends at the end of the licence period and student data is deleted in line with the retention commitments in our privacy policy. MAT licences work the same way, on a single agreement covering the trust's schools.