A child can publish one of their cards so other children can use it. Everything about how that works was designed backwards from a single question: what is the least information that has to travel for the card to be useful?
At a glance
| How it works | |
|---|---|
| What is shared | The card's content only |
| Attribution | First name · year band · the professor who taught it |
| Not shared | Surname, school, age, location, contact, anything else |
| Messaging between children | None. There is no channel |
| Approval | A human reviews every card before it goes live |
| Automatic publishing | Never |
| Taking a card down | Any time, by child or parent |
| Cards already adopted | Stay with the adopter |
| Ranking | By how many children found it useful |
Why allow it at all
The honest answer is that it produces better cards and a bit of pride.
A child who knows a card might be seen by someone else writes it more carefully. And a card that has helped forty other children is a genuinely nice thing to have made — one of very few forms of contribution available to a twelve-year-old studying at home.
We were also cautious about it for a long time, and the feature shipped after the private flashcard system, not with it. Anything involving children and other children's content deserves that ordering.
What travels, and what does not
A published card carries its content — the question, the answer, a hint if there is one — and a byline: first name, year band, professor. So Ada · Y8 · with Professor Darwin.
That is the entire payload. No surname. No school. No exact age. No location. No avatar. No profile to visit. And, most importantly, no way for one child to contact another. There is no messaging, no comments, no replies, no follows. The card is the only thing that moves.
The byline is also a frozen copy taken at the moment of publishing, not a live link to your child's account. If they later change their name in their profile, the published card does not update — because it is a snapshot, not a window into a child's record.
A person approves every card
This is the part worth being unambiguous about: nothing a child writes becomes visible to other children automatically.
A published card enters a queue as pending. A human being reviews it and decides. Only that human action can make a card live — there is no automated route, no scoring threshold that promotes a card by itself, and no way for a card to slip through by volume.
We verified this the boring way, by trying to break it: an independent review of the code specifically attempted to find a path that could set a card live without human approval, tried several, and found none. That is the kind of check a safeguarding claim deserves.
Content checks also run before a card can even be submitted — the same rules that govern tutor-written cards, so a card that breaks them cannot be published regardless of who wrote it.
Reporting, and what happens then
Any child can report a live card. A reported card is immediately held — taken out of view pending review — rather than staying up while someone gets round to it. Holding first and reviewing second is the right order when children are involved.
There is a related case worth mentioning because it took us a second attempt to get right. If a child publishes a card and later decides the card is wrong, flagging it now also holds the published copy. Previously the copy stayed live: the one card its own author had identified as broken was still being adopted by other children. That is fixed.
Taking a card back
Your child can unpublish at any time, from any state, in one action. So can you, from the parent dashboard, without needing their agreement.
One thing that does not happen: copies already adopted by other children do not vanish. When another child adopts a card it becomes their card, in their collection, with their own review schedule. Reaching into other children's collections to delete material would be both technically ugly and pedagogically wrong.
This is why the published card is a frozen snapshot rather than a live pointer. Your child editing or retiring their own copy does not disturb anyone else, and nobody else's collection depends on your child's.
How cards are ranked
By adoption count — how many children have found a card useful enough to take. Deliberately not by anything else: no likes, no reactions, no engagement score, no author reputation.
The reason is that any engagement metric turns a study tool into a small social platform, and a social platform for children is a completely different product with a completely different risk profile. Counting adoptions measures usefulness and nothing else.
What your child cannot do
For completeness, the things deliberately absent: message another child, see another child's collection, see who adopted their card, follow anyone, comment on anything, or publish anything that is not a flashcard they made.
FAQ
Can other children see my child's name?
No. A published card carries a first name only, a year band such as Y8, and which professor taught it. No surname, no school, no contact details, and no way to message the author.
Is a published card reviewed by a person?
Yes. Nothing becomes visible to other children automatically — a human has to approve each card before it goes live.
Can my child take a card back?
At any time, and so can you from the parent dashboard. Copies already adopted by other children stay with them, because they became their cards.