Understanding photo and video consent: what parents should know
Schools, early learning centres, outside-school-hours care, and even extracurricular programs all ask parents to consent to photos and videos of their children. The forms look simple; tick yes or no, but each option can expose your child to a different level of digital risk.
Here’s a simple guide to help you make confident decisions. For a more detailed explainer on consent, what it means, and your rights, check out our other article.
Consent to photos and videos used within the service and for staff training purposes
What this means: Images of your child may be stored and viewed within the education provider’s internal environment, including staff, internal systems, and any third-party platforms the service uses for documentation.
Watch-outs:
“Internal use” often still involves external EdTech systems and cloud storage you don’t see.
Not all platforms are equally secure; some store files in locations with poor safeguards, and you’ll have no to limited visibility into who can access the files.
Recommendation: Generally a safe yes, but ask questions! We’ve got a handy guide to help you. You want to walk away knowing where the images are stored, who within the organisation can view them, and what the complete list of use cases for “use within the service” entails. For instance, it shouldn’t include newsletters, as that’s external use.
Consent to photos and videos shared with other families or students
What this means: Your child’s image may appear in group learning updates, class portfolios, or shared digital spaces accessed by other households or students.
Watch-outs:
You cannot control how other families save, screenshot, or share the images.
If the platform is insecure, these images may reach far beyond the intended group.
Recommendation: We strongly recommend not consenting to this option, as it significantly jeopardises families’ ability to protect a child’s digital footprint. Educators can still include your child in learning updates without distributing their image to other families.
Consent to photos and videos used for student training and external education
What this means: Images may be shared outside the service with external assessors, training institutions, placement supervisors, or education bodies.
Watch-outs:
External organisations may have different policies for storage, retention, or deletion.
You may not be clearly informed about how widely the images travel or who will ultimately see them.
Recommendation: A strong no as you’ll soon lose all visibility over where images are being used, who sees them, how the images are shared, and in what context they are being discussed. This consent option brings a significant risk of oversharing: photos may end up in PowerPoint presentations that are emailed to students (an inherently insecure medium), and published on online learning platforms, where they are potentially accessible to 1,000s of people.
Consent to photos and videos used for marketing
What this means: Your child’s image may appear publicly online; on websites, social channels, newsletters, advertising, or search-indexed pages.
Watch-outs:
Anything online can be saved, copied, scraped, and reused without your knowledge.
Public images cannot be meaningfully retrieved once released.
Strong privacy practice does not require putting children online.
Recommendation: No. Always. If a service needs photos for marketing, they should obtain them through appropriate channels, commission professional photography, use adults or trained talent, obtain well-documented release forms, and ensure images are produced and managed with proper privacy, security, and storage controls. A consent form isn’t the right place to agree on this. In fact, we argue that children’s everyday educational experiences should never be relied upon as a source of free marketing content.
Consent to photos and videos used for the family’s personal use
What this means: Photos or videos are created so that you can receive them directly, often via a private platform, app, or email.
Watch-outs:
The risk comes from how the files are stored before they reach you.
Some systems keep these photos in cloud storage that may not be properly secured.
Recommendation: A reasonable yes, provided the provider uses a secure and reputable storage platform.
Important watch-outs, regardless of what you tick
If consent forms use vague language, assume it covers broad usage. Phrases like “for service purposes”, “for community engagement”, or “for marketing” can include a lot more than you expect.
A consent form is a contract. You’re entitled to a copy of it for your own record-keeping: it’s your proof of what you actually agreed to, and arguably, you can’t withdraw what you don’t remember. But it also helps you spot overreach and helps you prevent or resolve disputes.
Also, remember that you can change or withdraw consent at any time. A responsible provider will have a process for removing images if you request it, and will also provide a seamless mechanism to update your consent options. You might have inadvertently ticked one box upon enrolment, and you might change your mind later on. You’re totally in your right to do so.
Group photos multiply exposure. Even if your child isn’t the main subject, their face can still appear in widely shared content.
