Twelve Questions to Settle Before You Sign — Data Ownership, Full Export and the Freedom to Switch

Wednesday after school, in a secondary school library. The deputy head, the IT coordinator and two panel heads are watching a third vendor demo. Forty minutes in, the computer literacy panel head raises a hand: "If we want to leave after two years, which button gives us everything the school put in?" The presenter smiles and says he will check with his technical colleagues.

What decides whether a school AI platform works out is rarely the number of ticks on a feature list; it is whether the school can still walk away in year two. The twelve questions below price that exit before signing, and pin down billing, models and the limits on student data along the way.

The exit drill

Most procurement teams leave contract terms to the last meeting, by which point someone has a favourite and the terms become what the school can live with rather than what it can change. Put the exit first and the order is right: confirm you can leave, then compare how good it is.

Question 1 — what the data is, and whose it is

You are not looking for "we respect your data". You want a clause with an inventory: student accounts and personal particulars, teacher-uploaded materials and knowledge bases, AI conversation logs, marking and comments, results and progress data, parent communications — all belonging to the school, with the vendor acting only as a processor. An inventory removes half the future arguments.

Stop if the clause says only "user-generated content", if "joint ownership" appears, or if the vendor retains rights to use the data to improve its service. That last one is usually the door through which student conversations walk into a training set.

Question 2 — who presses export, how many clicks, and what comes out

A good answer is specific. A school administrator presses it, no ticket, no waiting, and what lands is machine-readable JSON or CSV plus the original files teachers uploaded, under their original filenames. No cap, no fee.

Stop at PDF reports only, export "quoted separately", or a pile of files with no schema — technically your data, and unreadable to the next vendor.

Question 3 — whether cloud and on-premises are equal

Some vendors reserve "your data is yours" for the on-premises edition and stay vague about the cloud. Where the server sits should not change ownership. Ask whether both deployments have identical features, the same one-click export, and the same contract text.

Question 4 — the calendar after termination

A mature contract gives you dates: annual subscription, no minimum term; a handover window after notice (thirty to ninety days is common) during which the school can still log in and export; deletion within a stated number of days after that, confirmed in writing.

Stop at three-year bundles, early termination penalties, and the kindly worded promise that your data will be "retained in case you come back".

The shape of the bill

Features can be added later. The shape of the bill, once set, decides whether teachers dare to use the thing at all.

Question 5 — whether AI usage sits inside the subscription

Per-token billing has a concrete consequence in a school. A Primary 5 general studies teacher wants to try "rewrite this lesson at three difficulty levels", works out whether it will eat the panel's allowance, and does not try. Ask whether usage is included, what the default quota is, and whether an administrator can raise it without a new invoice.

Question 6 — account caps and roll changes

Take a secondary school with thirty-two classes, roughly 1,150 students and 92 staff. The problem with per-seat pricing is not the total; it is renegotiating every September, and weighing the cost of an account for a mid-year transfer student or a relief teacher. A good answer is uncapped whole-school accounts, with roll changes not triggering a price change.

Where the export button sits in the admin panel tells you more about how a vendor plans to keep you than any line on the feature list.

Room to swap engines

Models turn over every six months or so. This year's best is next year's third choice. A platform earns its place by holding onto your teaching configuration and your data while the engine underneath changes.

Question 7 — whether the model can be changed in the admin panel

The question is not only which providers are supported but what swapping costs. The answer you want: an administrator picks from a dropdown, and the assistants, marking rubrics and knowledge base links panels have built all keep working. Stop if switching needs "custom development", if the course structure has to be rebuilt, or if certain features only exist on one provider's model.

Question 8 — whose domain people log in to

A school can point a subdomain such as ai.school.edu.hk at the vendor by CNAME, with the vendor issuing and renewing the TLS certificate. For parents and students, the login page carries the school's own address, which matters more than a few extra buttons. Ask whether it is supported, whether it costs extra, and who owns certificate renewal.

Question 9 — language and local curriculum context

Traditional Chinese (Hong Kong) interface with an English toggle; output language configurable per tool, because the Chinese panel wants Chinese and the English panel wants English; oral practice covering Cantonese, Putonghua and English. Then read the vocabulary. Does it say "panel head" or something borrowed from elsewhere, "Primary 6" or "Grade 6"? Interface strings are cheap to translate; the wrong context takes years to fix.

Boundaries around student data

This set of questions is not about passing an inspection. It is about having an answer on the day a parent telephones.

Question 10 — which fields are encrypted, and the no-training term

Get down to the field level: phone number, student number, guardian contact, SEN notes, social worker referrals — encrypted at rest or not. Then ask about the leg that leaves the building. Are API calls made under no-training terms, is there written evidence, and which jurisdictions do the servers sit in? Ask too for a mapping against the six data protection principles of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance.

Question 11 — how many layers of guard, and whether a teacher can intervene live

Keyword filtering is only the outermost layer. Ask whether anything is intercepted on the way in, whether the system prompt states that homework will not be done for the student, whether output is reviewed, and who reads flagged conversations. The practical version: during a lesson, can the teacher see what the class is asking, and can she pause one student's tool immediately?

Question 12 — what the audit log records, for how long, and who can export it

Logins, exports, settings changes, account creation and deletion, and every AI interaction should be recorded; the retention period should be written down; an administrator should be able to read and export it without applying to the vendor. On the bad day it is the only thing that can explain what happened.

Running the conversation

The same question asked at a demo and asked in a tender produces answers of very different quality. Demos are for "press it and show me": export, model switching, the monitoring screen. Written rounds are for contract and calendar questions, because the vendor has to check internally and a written answer carries weight. A trial is for what only use reveals — whether the exported file loads into another system, and how long the first support reply took.

Three things are worth treating as disqualifying: ownership not written into the contract, administrators unable to run a full export, and a minimum term. Fail one and the vendor should not reach the shortlist however good the demo was, because the cost surfaces in year two or three, when there is no choice left.

Common misreadings

• The claim: Data in the cloud effectively belongs to the vendor. What actually happens: Deployment location and ownership are separate questions. What matters is the contract wording and whether an administrator can press export. An on-premises server with no export path and no backups is the riskier arrangement.

• The claim: Usage-based billing is fairer — use less, pay less. What actually happens: Schools need predictability more than a low total. Metered pricing pushes cost judgements down to frontline teachers, and the experiments most worth running never happen.

Three things to try on Monday

1. Open the admin panel of whatever you use or are considering, sign in as an administrator, and give yourself ten minutes to find the export function. If you cannot find it, that is the finding — the cheapest due diligence available.
2. Turn questions 1, 2 and 4 into three sentences and email your vendor contact, asking for a written reply within five working days. How fast and how specific it is tells you as much as the content.
3. Add a fifteen-minute item to the next admin meeting with one question: if we changed platform in two years, what could we not take with us? That list is page one of your tender.