Privacy Policy

Home Learning & Consulting Services Ltd (“HLCS”, “we”, “us”) is an education and business development company registered in Sierra Leone, based at 15 Oniel Street, Model New Road, Freetown. We operate this website and the HLCS Digital Classroom.

This policy explains what personal data we collect, why we collect it, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. It applies to visitors to our website and to registered users of the Digital Classroom, including pupils, parents, teachers and tutors.

When you create an account or use the Digital Classroom, we collect:

• Account details — your name, email address, password (stored only as a secure one-way hash, never in readable form), and your role on the platform (pupil, parent, teacher, tutor or administrator).
• Education details — the class or grade you are studying, your education level (Primary, JSS or SSS), the courses you enrol in, and any parent-to-pupil links used to give a parent visibility of their child’s account.
• Learning activity — lessons viewed, assignments submitted, progress records and results generated as you use the platform.
• Files you upload — assignment submissions and, for teachers and administrators, teaching materials uploaded to the platform.
• Subscription and payment records — the plan you hold, its start and end dates, and a reference issued by our mobile money payment partner. We do not receive or store your mobile money PIN or full payment credentials.
• Messages — messages you send through the platform’s messaging feature.
• Technical data — limited information needed to keep the service running and secure, such as your IP address for rate limiting and abuse prevention.

Much of our work is with primary and secondary school pupils, many of whom are children. We take this seriously.

• Accounts for pupils under 18 should be created and managed by a parent, guardian or the pupil’s school.
• We collect only the information needed to deliver lessons, track progress and communicate about the pupil’s learning.
• We do not use children’s data for advertising or profiling, and we do not sell it.
• A parent or guardian may ask us at any time to show, correct or delete the data we hold about their child.

• To create and secure your account, and to sign you in.
• To deliver lessons, assignments, mock examinations and progress reports.
• To manage subscriptions and confirm payments.
• To send service messages such as password resets, enrolment confirmations and account notices.
• To respond to enquiries you send us.
• To protect the platform against fraud, abuse and automated attacks.
• To understand, in aggregate, how our programmes are performing so we can improve them.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers.

We use a small number of trusted providers to run the platform. Each processes data only on our instructions:

• Vercel — website and application hosting.
• Supabase — database and file storage.
• Amazon Web Services (S3) — storage of learning materials and uploaded files.
• Monime — mobile money payment processing for subscriptions.
• Resend — delivery of transactional email.
• hCaptcha — protecting our forms from automated abuse.
• Upstash — rate limiting to protect against attacks.

Our application and database are hosted in the European Union (Frankfurt region). This means personal data collected in Sierra Leone is transferred to and stored outside Sierra Leone. We rely on our providers’ contractual data protection commitments to keep that data protected to the standard described in this policy.

We use cookies that are necessary for the site to function. These keep you signed in, remember your light or dark theme preference, and support the security checks on our forms. We do not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies. Blocking essential cookies will prevent you from signing in.

• Account and learning records are kept for as long as your account is active.
• If you close your account, we delete or anonymise your personal data within 90 days, except where we must keep records longer to meet legal, tax or accounting obligations.
• Payment records are kept for the period required by Sierra Leonean tax law.
• Password reset tokens expire shortly after they are issued.

• Passwords are hashed and never stored in readable form.
• All traffic to the site is encrypted in transit using HTTPS.
• Access to learning materials and dashboards is restricted by role, so users see only what their role permits.
• Our forms and sign-in routes are rate limited and protected against automated abuse.
• Administrative access to production data is limited to authorised HLCS staff.

You may ask us to:

• Provide a copy of the personal data we hold about you or your child.
• Correct information that is wrong or out of date.
• Delete your account and associated personal data.
• Stop sending you non-essential communications.

Contact us using the details below and we will respond within 30 days. You may be asked to confirm your identity before we act on a request.

We may update this policy as our services change. The “last updated” date at the top of this page shows when it was last revised. Where a change materially affects how we handle your data, we will notify registered users by email.

For any question about this policy or about your data, contact us at homelearningconsulting@gmail.com or call +232 88 809 522. You can also write to us at 15 Oniel Street, Model New Road, Freetown, Sierra Leone, or use our contact form.