For teachers. A child's voice is not free training data.
Parent meetings, pupil support conversations, lesson recordings, the notes you never get round to. Schools are asked to be careful with children's data by law and by instinct, and the fastest way to be careful is to keep it in one place.
Use it forParents' evenings, department meetings, your own lesson reflection, and pupil conversations if your school allows them.
The argumentNothing about a pupil is uploaded, so the school has no processor to assess and no transfer to justify.
Not forLive captioning for a deaf pupil. Transcription runs after the recording, and a deaf pupil needs captions during it.
Two of these involve recording a child and should not happen without your school's explicit agreement. In the other three, no child is on the recording.
01Parent meetings and progress evenings
Twelve minutes per family, twenty families in an evening, and by the fourth one you are reconstructing the second from memory. The notes matter: they become the record of what was agreed with the family.
Recording with the parents' agreement, or dictating immediately afterwards, both produce a better record than the version written at ten at night.
In the app: dictate between families, or record with consent, then transcribe on the device and summarise into agreed actions. Export into the school's system, delete from the phone.
02Support and pastoral conversations
A pupil support meeting, a special needs review, a difficult conversation with a family. The most sensitive material in a school and the material that must be recorded accurately because it may be relied on later.
These need your safeguarding lead's agreement before a recorder appears, every time.
In the app: if it is agreed, use Advanced Privacy. The audio is erased as soon as the transcript exists and the session clears when you leave, so the child's voice does not sit on a device for months.
03Your own lesson planning and reflection
The ten minutes after a lesson when you know exactly what did not work, and the ten weeks later when you cannot remember. Spoken reflection is the version that actually gets made.
Nobody else is on this recording, which makes it the easiest case in the school.
In the app: record on the way to the staffroom, transcribe later, and search the full text of a term's worth of reflections when you plan the unit again next year.
04Recording your own teaching
For your own development, for a mentor, or for a training portfolio. A lesson recording is also a recording of a class of children, which is why most schools have a specific policy about it.
Where audio-only and agreed, it is one of the most useful development tools there is.
In the app: record, transcribe, then search your own teaching for how often you actually asked open questions. The answer is usually humbling.
05Department meetings and staff briefings
Adults, work matters, and minutes that nobody volunteers for. Speaker labels turn ninety minutes into a document where actions have names against them.
In the app: save colleagues' voices once, transcribe locally with speaker separation, summarise into action items, and send the text out the way you already send minutes.
Free tools in schools are rarely free
Education is one of the most enthusiastically marketed-to sectors in software, and a great deal of what arrives in a staffroom is free at the point of use because the data has value elsewhere. Children's data has a special status in almost every privacy regime precisely because children cannot meaningfully consent and the consequences follow them for decades.
A recording of a fourteen year old explaining why they have not been sleeping is a child's voice saying something they may spend years wishing they had not said, in a format that identifies them biometrically.
What a cloud tool means in a school
The school becomes responsible for a processor it did not choose and probably has not assessed. Under the GDPR that needs a contract, a record in the processing register, a retention answer and sometimes an impact assessment. Under FERPA, the school official exception generally requires the school to retain direct control over the record, which a consumer cloud account does not give it.
In practice the paperwork does not happen and the recording gets made anyway, on whatever app was easiest to open.
What Just Transcribe does differently
No processor, because nothing is transferred. The speech model runs on the phone or iPad, the audio never leaves it, and there is no account for a child's voice to be attached to.
The App Store privacy label reads Data Not Collected. It connects twice ever: to fetch a model you choose, and for the purchase.
That removes the vendor. It does not remove the school's duty, your safeguarding obligations, or the need to ask before recording a child. The device is now the place where a pupil's voice lives, and it has to be treated that way.
Why Just Transcribe
Teachers buy their own software more than any other profession on this list, so price and simplicity are part of the argument rather than an afterthought.
✓No processor for the school to assess. Nothing is transferred, so there is no contract, no register entry and no sub-processor list for this step.
✓No account, so no child's voice attached to a login. Nothing to be breached, nothing to be logged into from home.
✓Advanced Privacy for pupil conversations. Audio erased as soon as the transcript exists, session cleared when you leave the screen.
✓Works on school wifi that does not work. Everything runs offline, which in a lot of school buildings is the deciding feature.
✓Fifty-nine transcription languages. Useful in a school where parent meetings happen in six languages, and on-device translation of a finished transcript into fifty-five languages.
✓Local summaries and action items. The bit of the meeting you actually need, generated on the device.
✓EUR 9.99 once. No subscription, no per-seat licence, no procurement process, and no free tier that is paying for itself with data.
Nothing about a pupil is uploaded, so the school has no processor to assess and no transfer to justify for this step.
Which makes the conversation with your data protection officer short. It does not make recording a child automatically appropriate.
What to check before you record anybody under eighteen
The technology is the easy part. This table is the hard part, and it is deliberately not reassuring.
Orientation only. Your school's policy and your data protection officer decide, not this table.
Your school's policy
First and last. Many schools prohibit staff recording pupils on personal devices outright, and that rule is not overridden by the app being offline.
GDPR and children
Children get specific protection, and a recording of a child's voice is personal data with biometric characteristics. Minimising it and deleting it promptly are the obvious safeguards.
FERPA, in the United States
Education records shared with a vendor under the school official exception generally require the school to keep direct control. A tool that receives nothing does not create that problem in the first place.
Consent, and who gives it
For a minor, usually a parent or guardian, sometimes the pupil too depending on age and jurisdiction. Verbal agreement in the moment is not a record of consent.
Safeguarding
If a recording contains a disclosure, safeguarding procedure takes over immediately and completely. Follow it. The recording is then evidence and is handled by the process, not by you and an app.
Retention
Schools have retention schedules. A transcript on a personal phone is outside them, which is a reason to move it into the school's system quickly and delete the local copy.
If in doubt, do not record the child. Dictating your own note afterwards captures most of the value and none of the risk.
The line for the invitation, or for the start of the meeting
I will record this conversation so my notes are accurate. It stays on my phone, it goes to no company, and it is deleted once I have written up what we agreed. If you would rather I did not, I will take notes by hand.
For anything with a pupil in it that paragraph is not enough on its own. Ask your data protection officer and your safeguarding lead first, every time.
Setting it up for a school year
Four steps, and the first one is a conversation.
Ask your data protection officer and safeguarding lead first. The useful sentence is: it runs the speech model on the device, nothing is uploaded, and the App Store label reads Data Not Collected. Then ask what the school permits, and follow that.
Download a model on the school wifi while it is working. Twenty-one models, roughly 75 MB to 7 GB, and four questions in the app to pick one. After the first download it never needs the network again, which in most school buildings is a relief.
Start with the uses that involve no pupils. Your own reflection, department meetings, planning notes. Get comfortable with it there before anything involving a child is on the table.
Set a weekly deletion habit. Nothing deletes itself, because there is no server managing a retention policy. Pick a day, move what matters into the school's system, delete the rest.
The device is now holding children's personal data, which means the school's mobile device expectations apply to it: passcode, Face ID, automatic lock, encryption, and a plan if it is lost. If that feels heavy, that is the correct feeling.
Where Just Transcribe is the wrong tool in a school
Six, and the first one is the one that matters most.
×It does not make recording a child acceptable. The hardest question in this profession is not technical, and an offline app answers none of it. Where policy says no, the answer is no.
×No live captions. Transcription runs after the recording, so it cannot caption a lesson in real time for a deaf pupil. That is a genuine accessibility need and a different product.
×No integration with any school system. Nothing writes into your MIS, your SEN system or your safeguarding platform. Export and paste, by hand.
×No school-managed control. A school cannot configure it centrally, enforce deletion, audit it or wipe its contents remotely.
×No sharing between staff. No sync, no shared folder. A colleague covering your class cannot see anything.
×Not a safeguarding record system. If a conversation becomes a disclosure, it belongs in the school's safeguarding system immediately, under the school's process.
Used for your own notes and for meetings between adults, it takes a real load off. Used as a way around a school policy about recording children, it is a disciplinary matter with extra steps.
Straight answers
Can I record a pupil with this?
Only if your school says you may, and many schools say you may not on a personal device under any circumstances. The app being offline removes the vendor from the picture; it does not remove the safeguarding question, the consent question or the policy. When in doubt, do not record the child and dictate your own note afterwards instead, which captures most of the value with none of the exposure.
Does the school need a contract with you?
No, because there is nothing to contract about. The app never receives pupil data, so The Dutch Logic Co. is not a processor and there is no data sharing agreement for this step. Apple handles the payment and is the party there. The fact sheet has the detail if your data protection officer wants to read it.
Is it any good for captioning lessons for deaf pupils?
No, and this is the most important thing on the page not to get wrong. Transcription happens after the recording, not live, so it cannot caption anything in real time. A deaf pupil needs live captioning or a communication support worker, and that is a different product and often a legal entitlement. Do not substitute this for it.
Will it cope with thirty children talking at once?
Not well, and neither would you. It handles one person clearly, a small meeting reasonably, and a noisy classroom poorly. Audio enhancement helps with a quiet voice or background rumble and it is reversible, but a reverberant hall with thirty pupils is beyond any speech model. Record yourself teaching rather than the class responding.
What if a pupil discloses something serious on a recording?
Your safeguarding procedure takes over instantly and entirely, and nothing about this app changes it. Follow the process, tell your designated safeguarding lead, and hand the material over the way your policy requires. Do not sit on it, do not delete it to be helpful, and do not let a tool's privacy features become a reason to keep something to yourself.
Next
Start where no pupil is involved: your own reflection after a lesson, spoken on the walk back to the staffroom. If a term of searchable notes turns out to be useful, the conversation with your data protection officer about anything more sensitive is worth having properly.
Written by the developer, and not legal or safeguarding advice. I make Just Transcribe. Recording in a school is governed by your school's policy, your data protection officer, and in many places by law about children specifically. Before you record a pupil or a parent, ask.
Written 26 September 2026, updated 3 October 2026 for Just Transcribe 1.36. Numbers and sources on the fact sheet.
