Short answer
Only your family. Other families cannot see your home education records. The Willowfolio team only looks when you ask us to.
That is the whole answer. The rest of this article explains exactly how it works, so you can stop worrying and get on with your day.
Who counts as "your family" in Willowfolio?
When you set up Willowfolio, you create a family. Every record you add, whether it is an activity log, an observation, a book entry, a schedule, a report or a photo, belongs to that family. Only people who are members of your family can see those records.
Your family members are the people you have invited: your partner, a co-parent, or a tutor. You control who is in your family at all times from Settings, then Family. Only parents and co-parents can send invites, and the person you invite must accept from the email address you sent it to.
If you remove someone from your family, their access to your records ends immediately. They cannot see, download, or retrieve anything once they are removed.
Can other families see my home education records?
No. Every record in Willowfolio is scoped to a single family, whether you are home educating, homeschooling, or using a structured curriculum. Your activity logs, observations, reading records, schedules, reports and photos are visible only to your family's members.
In practical terms, the system filters every query by your family. A different family on the same service cannot accidentally or deliberately see your data. This pattern is called tenant isolation (a way of keeping each family's records completely separate from every other family's records, even though they use the same system). It is not a setting you need to turn on. It is how the system is built.
What can the Willowfolio team see?
When you email us with a support request or a bug report, we may need to look at your records to understand the problem. We do this only when you contact us, and only to help you.
We do not browse family records for any other reason. Every time a member of the Willowfolio team accesses your data for support purposes, that read is logged.
If you have never contacted us, no one on the team has looked at your records.
What usage data does Willowfolio collect?
Willowfolio collects anonymised, aggregated numbers: how many families logged an activity this week, how often a feature is used, which areas of the app are busiest. These counts help us improve the product.
No individual family or child is identifiable from these numbers. They are totals, not records.
What about the public feedback board?
By default, feedback you submit through Willowfolio is shared on a public board so other families can see it and vote on it. This is a deliberate community design choice.
If you want a piece of feedback to stay private, there is a single tick you can check before you submit. That keeps your feedback between you and the Willowfolio team. Your name is not attached to public feedback either way; submissions are anonymised.
For a full walkthrough of how the feedback board works, see our article on giving feedback and what public by default means.
What about reports I send to the Local Authority?
Your Local Authority report (called the Council Report inside Willowfolio) is generated by you, when you choose. Nothing leaves your hands automatically.
Before sending, you preview the report and decide whether to share it. Willowfolio does not send anything to your LA on your behalf. You produce the report, download or print it, and post or email it yourself.
A worked example
Danielle, a single mum in a two-bed terrace in Sheffield, home educates her two boys, aged six and nine. When she first set up Willowfolio, she was the only family member. All her records, observations, reading logs and Council Reports belonged to her family alone.
A few months in, her sister Leah started helping with the boys on Tuesday afternoons while Danielle worked a late shift at the hospital. Danielle invited Leah as a co-parent from Settings, then Family, so Leah could log activities and add observations on those Tuesday sessions.
Leah accepted the invite from her email, and from that point she could see and add to the family's records. Danielle could see everything Leah added, and Leah could see everything Danielle had already logged. No other family on Willowfolio could see any of it.
Six months later, Leah's work schedule changed and the Tuesday arrangement ended. Danielle removed Leah from the family in Settings. Leah's access ended immediately. She could no longer see any of the records, including the observations she had added herself. Those observations still belong to Danielle's family.
The boys' records stayed exactly as they were. Nothing was lost, nothing was shared with anyone new. Danielle's family is still just her.
If anything in Willowfolio about your data or who sees what is not what you expect, write to us at [email protected] and a real person will sort it out.