Questions, answered plainly

PrepGraph gains from this. Convening a council earns standing, relationships and access to school leaders that a company would otherwise have to buy. That return is real and should be counted against anything the Council publishes. The name sits on the front for the same reason: a declared interest can be checked, a neutral-sounding one cannot.

Whether it is more than marketing is meant to be testable rather than felt. Three tests. No Council document names a recommended, preferred or approved product, PrepGraph's included. Everything published is free at council.prepgraph.com, without registration, e-mail address or form of any kind, and will also be sent on request; there is no members-only tier. Every document approved for publication is given a number in one unbroken sequence at the moment of approval, so a document approved and then withheld leaves a visible gap in the register. If those three ever fail, the honest answer to this question changes.

Two of those tests can be applied today by reading what is published. The third cannot: the register begins with these founding instruments, and until voting members are in office there is nobody outside PrepGraph's employment holding a copy of it against which the sequence can be compared. Until the first members accept, that control does not exist, and the Council should not be treated as independently checked before that date.

PrepGraph pays for all of it: the secretariat, the convening and the cost of publication. There are no membership fees, no sponsorships and no other funding at present. Any future funding source is disclosed before it is accepted, not after. The single figure PrepGraph spends on the Council in the inaugural term is stated in the annual public record, which the Charter requires to be published within ninety days of the end of the term.

What the money buys is administration, carried out by three named officers of the Secretariat, none of whom holds a vote or counts towards quorum. The controls below are obligations of process, not assurances about anyone's character, and each one fails visibly. Several of them are held by the voting members, and while there are no members those do not operate at all.

Because the offices they hold carry no vote, and every decision that matters here is a vote. Umesh Sharma, Founder and CEO of PrepGraph, is the Council's Founder & Executive Convener. Rekha Sharma, Chief Operating Officer of PrepGraph, is its Executive Director & Secretary-General. Both are officers of the Secretariat. Neither is a member of the Council, and the Secretariat is not the Council.

Four facts answer the question, and each can be checked against the Charter rather than taken on trust. Neither holds a vote — not on publication, not on standards, not on membership, not on a vendor question, not on anything else. Neither counts towards quorum, so the Council is never quorate on the strength of its Secretariat. Publication in the Council's name requires the Founding Chair and a majority of the voting members, and nothing is published while fewer than seven voting members are in office. And all thirteen voting seats — twelve Founding Members and the Chair — are independent seats that no officer of the Secretariat may hold, because Charter Article 6 bars any person who is an employee, director, shareholder or paid adviser of a supplier of AI products to schools, or who otherwise derives material income from one, from holding office and from voting. PrepGraph is such a supplier, so its own officers are barred first.

A partial bar was considered for the Secretary-General — non-voting on vendor-specific or standards decisions, or at minimum disclosing — and was rejected as too weak, because it invites an argument about which decisions counted. The line is stated in one sentence and in the same words wherever the two bodies appear together: "The Council determines the recommendations and principles. The PrepGraph-supported Secretariat enables research, coordination, publication and implementation. The Secretariat holds no vote."

Naming them makes PrepGraph look more present on this site rather than less, and that is the correct impression, because it is more present. An anonymous secretariat is not a more independent one; it is only a harder one to hold to anything. PrepGraph's activity has three parts: a commercial platform sold to schools, an internal research and development function, and this Council. The first two are commercial. This one is not, and the rules in the Charter and the independence policy are what hold the boundary.

The honest limit on all of it is the same as everywhere else in this document. Every restraint above is operated by voting members, and there are none. Until the first Founding Members accept, the answer to this question is a rule rather than a record.

Three named offices, all of them provided and paid for by PrepGraph, and none of them holding a vote. Naming them is the change from the Charter's original arrangement, which had a secretariat but no names against it.

Umesh Sharma, Founder & Executive Convener, who is Founder and CEO of PrepGraph, holds the founding intent and the research direction. He brings emerging research and technology questions to the Council, including the ones that are inconvenient for a company selling AI to schools; identifies where Indian schools are working without guidance; presents implementation evidence with its provenance and its limitations stated, for the Council to accept, discount or reject; funds and organises studies on the terms the Research Agenda sets and no others; and convenes working groups.

Rekha Sharma, Executive Director & Secretary-General, who is Chief Operating Officer of PrepGraph, runs the Council. Meetings, papers circulated in advance, minutes that record disagreement as well as agreement, the register of members, the record of funds received, the work programme between meetings, the convenings and educator programmes, and the passage of a draft through member comment, dissent, approval and publication.

Anisha Sarkar, Director, Education Partnerships & National Outreach, builds the Council's external network: school leaders, school groups and associations, regional roundtables, and outreach for founding membership and Expert Fellowships on the Chair's invitation and over the Chair's signature.

What none of the three does is decide. "The Council determines the recommendations and principles. The PrepGraph-supported Secretariat enables research, coordination, publication and implementation. The Secretariat holds no vote." Each office's limits are published beside its mandate, at the same length as the mandate, because an office described only by what it may do has not been described.

No. There is no office in the Charter from which he could. The Executive Convener proposes; the Founding Chair, and once they are in office the voting members, decide.

Stated as the things he specifically cannot do: he cannot vote on any question; he does not count towards quorum; he cannot approve, amend, delay or withhold a Council publication, which requires the Chair and a majority of the voting members; he cannot sit on the ethics review panel or take any part in its decisions; he cannot be present when the Council decides a matter in which PrepGraph has an interest, and the minutes record that he withdrew; he cannot compel an agenda item, because the Chair may decline one without giving a reason and both the proposal and the outcome are minuted; and he cannot remove the Founding Chair, shorten her term or appoint her successor once the Council has voting members. Removal of the Chair is by two thirds of the voting members other than the Chair, on stated grounds.

What he does get is a hearing and a record of it. Every proposal he makes is minuted with its source named, so a reader of the minutes can see which items came from the funder and what happened to each of them. PrepGraph's separate factual-accuracy pass is the narrow one described elsewhere in this document: ten working days, limited to statements about its own systems, silence publishes, every comment logged and published with the output.

"The Executive Convener may contribute research, evidence and proposals. Council recommendations are determined collectively and are not subject to commercial approval by PrepGraph."

The limit worth saying out loud is this. While there are no voting members, the only person who can refuse the Convener anything is the Founding Chair, whom PrepGraph invited. That is one person against the funder, and it is a large part of why the Council publishes nothing and decides nothing until seven voting members are in office.

Yes, that is what it looks like today, and the count belongs on the face of the page rather than left for a reader to assemble. Four people are named across this site. Three of them — the Founder & Executive Convener, the Executive Director & Secretary-General, and the Director, Education Partnerships & National Outreach — are employed by PrepGraph, hold no vote and do not count towards quorum. The fourth is the Founding Chair. The thirteen voting seats are the twelve Founding Members and the Chair, and every one of the twelve Founding Member seats is vacant. So the visible ratio is three officers of the funder against a single independent office. A reader should be told that rather than have to work it out.

What changes it is appointments and nothing else. Names are published only once those people have accepted in writing, so this site will read like a company's staff list until the first Founding Members accept. From that day the numbers move the other way: the twelve seats are allocated by constituency rather than filled first-come, the Chair appoints the first cohort against published criteria, every appointment after that requires the assent of the Founding Members, and the nomination list may not be derived from PrepGraph's commercial records. Nothing is published or decided in the Council's name while fewer than seven voting members are in office, so the imbalance and the inactivity end together or not at all.

The alternative was to leave the Secretariat as the Charter first had it, an unnamed office "provided and paid for by PrepGraph" with nobody's name against it. That reads as modesty and works as cover: an anonymous office cannot be asked anything, and its staff cannot be held to anything. Naming the three offices, with their PrepGraph roles stated in the same breath and their limits published beside their mandates, makes the imbalance visible — which is the first condition of anybody being able to object to it.

No. The position is fixed: "The Council does not endorse individual procurement decisions or technology vendors. Its role is to advance responsible AI readiness, educator capability and evidence-based innovation in schools." It binds PrepGraph most tightly, because PrepGraph is the convener.

No Council publication will name PrepGraph as recommended, preferred or approved, and none will present PrepGraph's own product evidence as an independent Council finding. If a Council document appears to do either, write to [email protected]. The number of such reports and how each was resolved is stated in the annual public record.

Not through the Council. Member and participant contact details are held on a list separate from PrepGraph's commercial systems and are not loaded into them. They are not used for sales outreach, campaigns or lead scoring, and they are not sold, rented or shared.

The same bar covers what PrepGraph might learn rather than what it might take. Nothing said, seen, collected or observed in Council work may be used for PrepGraph's product development, roadmap, pricing or competitive analysis. The annual public record answers that as a yes or no question rather than by restating the policy.

If your school is approached commercially because it took part in Council work, that breaks the Council's own rule. Report it to the Founding Chair at [email protected]. The count of such reports appears in the annual public record, whether or not it is zero. If your school wants a commercial conversation with PrepGraph, it happens through PrepGraph's ordinary channels and stays outside the Council entirely.

It would be, if the only thing standing against it were an assurance. Anisha Sarkar, Director, Education Partnerships & National Outreach, holds a commercially adjacent role at PrepGraph and therefore carries the sharpest limits of any office in the Secretariat. She wears two hats and the rule that separates them is written to leave a trace rather than to be believed.

Inside a Council activity she may build participation: invite school leaders, work with school groups and associations, convene regional roundtables, organise the logistics and see that a published note follows each one, and represent the Secretariat at school-network and association meetings. She may not raise, invite, accept or continue a commercial conversation about a PrepGraph product, price, pilot or contract. She may not present, demonstrate or describe a PrepGraph product at a Council convening, in any format, including in answer to a direct question.

When a school raises commercial interest during a Council activity, the answer is a referral and the referral goes on the record. She says at that moment that the conversation moves to PrepGraph's ordinary business channel, and the referral is minuted. Participation in a Council activity never becomes a prospect record, and a Council invitation list, attendee list or contact detail may not be used as a prospect list or passed to anyone who would use it as one. That rule already bound the Secretariat as an office; naming the person means there is now somebody who can be asked about it by name.

A Council roundtable that becomes a product demonstration is a breach of the independence policy, reportable to the Reviewer of Concerns like any other. Report it to [email protected], from where matters of substance are put to the Founding Chair, or to the Reviewer of Concerns directly. The count of such reports and how each was resolved appears in the annual public record, whether or not the count is zero.

The rules are written so that an attempt is visible rather than silent. Research questions, methods and the analysis plan are registered and dated before results are known, and the registration entry goes to every member at the time it is made. Findings are published whether or not they favour AI in schools, including negative and null results.

What PrepGraph does get is narrow, and it is stated in the same words in every instrument that mentions it. PrepGraph has no editorial review. It receives one written factual-accuracy pass, limited to statements about its own systems, of ten working days. Silence publishes. Every comment it makes and every change that follows is logged and published with the output. It cannot delay, amend or withhold anything. It may append a signed response, published alongside the finding rather than in place of it.

Because the protocol is already in members' hands, a study that is registered and then never reported is answerable to people outside PrepGraph's employment. Any member may say so publicly, and no term of membership prevents it. That check has nobody to operate it until the first members accept, which is the honest limit on this answer today.

Because the alternative was to pretend. Charter Article 4 bars publication in the Council's name until at least seven voting members are in office, the register of interests is public and current, and the output carries the name of a reviewer with no interest in it. Not one of those conditions is met today. The founding instruments are published anyway. Rather than leave that unexplained, the Charter names the exception and states its limits.

Article 17 defines an exhaustive class of founding instruments that may be issued before the Council is constituted, and requires each to carry, on its face: "Founding draft. Issued by the Founding Chair on the secretariat's drafting, before the Council was constituted. Open for comment. To be reaffirmed, amended or withdrawn by the voting members once seven are in office, and in any case by 31 August 2027."

What that means in practice is worth stating plainly. These documents were drafted by employees of the company that funds the Council, approved by a Chair that company invited, and checked by no independent reviewer, because none has yet been appointed. They are rules the Council can be held to. They are not evidence that anyone has yet held it to them. From the day seven voting members take office, Article 4's gate applies to everything published afterwards.

The Charter. Every other instrument, this FAQ included, is subordinate to it and void to the extent of any inconsistency. The Charter may be amended only on the majorities it states, up to three quarters of the voting members for the entrenched Articles, and the Founding Chair cannot amend it alone.

That rule earns its place because these documents were written quickly and by the same small group, and they have already been found to contradict one another. Where this FAQ paraphrases the Charter, the Charter's words are the ones that bind. If you find a place where a Council document reads more favourably to PrepGraph than the Charter does, that document is wrong; report it to [email protected] and a dated correction should follow within thirty days.

Publication in the Council's name requires the approval of the Founding Chair and a majority of the voting members, and nothing is published while fewer than seven voting members are in office. That is Charter Article 12 and it is the only rule; where any other document reads as though the Chair approves alone, the Charter governs. Working groups draft. The secretariat, which PrepGraph staffs, edits for style, circulates for comment and handles production, and has no authority over substance. Every publication carries the names of those responsible and their declared interests. For a study involving children, the ethics review panel additionally holds a veto over publication; it does not share in the approval.

The instruments in this release are the exception the Charter itself makes for founding drafts issued before the Council was constituted. Everything after them goes through Article 12.

If the Council approves a document that PrepGraph will not produce or host, the Chair may issue it under her own name and circulate it directly to members, and this FAQ is her standing authority to do so. If the Chair resigns, her stated reason is published unedited, or she may publish it herself to the member list. The Council has no means of preventing either, which is the point of stating it here.

Yes, and it cannot cost them their standing. There is no confidentiality clause and no non-disparagement condition attached to membership, and none will be introduced.

Removal is governed by Charter Article 7, which states the grounds and the procedure and is not summarised more narrowly here: removal requires cause, notice and a hearing, and a decision by two thirds of the voting members in office. It is never in the gift of the Chair alone and never in the gift of the funder. Criticism of PrepGraph, of the Chair or of the Council's own work is not among the grounds and will not be made one. Any removal is notified in writing with the ground stated, and both the fact and the ground are entered in the public register and reported in the annual public record.

Write to [email protected] setting out what is wrong and why. Correspondence is acknowledged within five working days and answered within thirty days, which is the service standard for everything sent to that address.

A factual error is corrected within thirty days with a dated note that stays attached to the document and says what changed. Published work is never amended silently. A substantive methodological objection receives either a published response or a published statement that the Council does not intend to respond and why. A member who disagrees with a document they contributed to may have a dissenting note of up to three hundred words published alongside it, in their own words, unedited except for length and law.

No. "The Council is a voluntary, non-statutory initiative. It is not a government, regulatory or accrediting body, and it does not certify, rate or approve schools, curricula or products."

No ministry, board, examination authority or international organisation has been asked for approval of the Council, and none has given any. Council documents may refer to public instruments a school already works within, such as NEP 2020 or the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023. Reference is context, not approval. Nothing the Council publishes carries weight in an inspection, an affiliation process or a tender, and it should not be cited as though it does.

No, and it will not. There is no seal, no accreditation, no rating and no approved-school list, because a body funded by a vendor has no business conferring status on the schools that vendor sells to.

What exists instead is self-assessment: frameworks a school applies to itself, keeps to itself and uses to decide what to change. No school may describe itself as Council-certified, Council-approved or Council-recognised, because no such status exists. If a school or a vendor makes such a claim, the Council will state publicly that the claim is false.

The first task under the research pillar is an agenda, not a study, and it is published in this release as a founding draft. The Research Agenda and Ethics Framework sets out which questions about AI and learning in Indian schools are worth answering, which can be answered honestly at Indian school scale, and the ethical conditions under which the Council would attempt any of them. No study has been designed, funded, approved or begun, and the Council holds no data and has produced no finding.

Any study that follows is voluntary, consented and specific. A participating school's data belongs to that school. The Council receives only what the registered protocol lists, uses it for that study alone, and returns or deletes it when the study concludes. A completed readiness self-assessment sheet is never collected, in any study, by any route.

No. Membership consents to nothing. Taking part in a study is a separate written decision by the school, made after the purpose, the exact data items, the retention period and the publication plan are set out in advance.

Where children's data is involved, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 is treated as a floor rather than a ceiling. Each study names its Data Fiduciary, which is the school or PrepGraph and never the Council, states the method of verifiable parental consent and who verifies it, and names a grievance officer who answers within thirty days. The Council's protocol binds as processing instructions. Individual records are not used where an aggregate or de-identified dataset can answer the question, and a protocol that asks for individual records must state in its registration entry why the question cannot be answered without them. A school may withdraw at any time and require the return or deletion of its data.

Two further things are fixed. A completed self-assessment sheet is never collected, requested or accepted, so what a school writes about its own gaps cannot reach the Council or PrepGraph by any route. And the duty under section 19 of the POCSO Act 2012 is a personal legal duty on every Council researcher and office-holder to report to the Special Juvenile Police Unit or the local police, which no consent form, confidentiality undertaking or agreement with the Council may qualify or route through a school instead.

They are used for Council business only: meeting notices, drafts circulated for comment, approved documents and the register.

There is a limitation worth stating plainly, and the office that carries it is named rather than left as an anonymous function. The register of members and the contact list are kept by the Executive Director & Secretary-General, Rekha Sharma, who is also PrepGraph's Chief Operating Officer, and the secretariat is otherwise staffed by PrepGraph employees. PrepGraph personnel therefore do see member contact details. The controls are that the list is held separately from PrepGraph's commercial systems, that it is not transferred into them or used for commercial outreach, and that you may have your details removed by writing to [email protected]. Removal is completed within fourteen days and confirmed to you in writing.

One category is kept away from the secretariat altogether. Declarations of interest, including anything about a member's school's commercial relationship with PrepGraph or with another supplier, are received, held and published by the Reviewer of Concerns, not by the secretariat. A register of who is licensing, piloting or negotiating with whom, maintained by the funder's own employees, would be a market map, so the secretariat is barred from holding it.

Nothing. There is no membership fee, joining fee, paid tier or paid sponsorship of Council publications. Members are not asked to buy anything, at any stage, as a condition of participation.

If this changes, the change is published before it takes effect and no one is charged retrospectively. A member who does not accept a change may leave without any obligation.

There is no fee. Founding membership means that a person joined during the inaugural 2026-27 term and agreed to do the work of that term. Founding Members are the Council's voting members alongside the Chair, and the vote is the substance of the office: publication requires the Chair and a majority of them, the Chair can be removed by two thirds of them, and the entrenched Articles cannot be amended without three quarters of them. Expert Fellows, Observers and the secretariat do not vote. It confers no ownership, no equity, no permanent seat, no entitlement to a seat in any later term and no priority in anything PrepGraph sells.

The Charter says what it is not, in terms: "Membership of the Council does not constitute endorsement of PrepGraph or any technology vendor. Members participate in their individual professional capacity to advance responsible, ethical and evidence-informed use of AI and innovation in school education."

As at 29 August 2026 the Council has no members. Founding membership is capped at twelve Founding Members and the Founding Chair, and the seats are allocated by constituency rather than filled first-come. Any list of founding members will be published only once those people have accepted in writing.

No. Ms. Sri Lakshmi holds the chair as an honorary appointment for the inaugural term of twelve months, without salary, honorarium, fee, commission or equity from the Council or from PrepGraph for the role.

Reasonable travel and accommodation costs on Council business may be reimbursed by the secretariat. The total reimbursed over the term, and the number of persons reimbursed, is stated as a figure in the annual public record. The Chair's declared interests, including any commercial or shareholding relationship with PrepGraph, are published with the founding record rather than summarised here, and any change to this arrangement is stated publicly before it takes effect.

There are twelve Founding Member seats and each belongs to a constituency, so the answer depends on which seat is in question: three for school leadership, two for teacher development and pedagogy, two for responsible AI and technology, and one each for child development and age-appropriate use, equity and inclusion, school innovation, education policy and systems, and one at large. The three school leadership seats require a current role in a school or school trust, across CBSE, state board and ICSE schools: principals, correspondents, trustees, managers and heads of department. The nine other seats are for the constituency named, and a person who does not work in a school may hold one. A council made up only of school operators friendly to the convener would read as a customer advisory board, and the composition is the answer to that objection rather than a paragraph denying it.

Everyone else who wants to contribute is considered as an Expert Fellow or as an Observer. Fellows are appointed for expertise and do not vote; Observers attend, are minuted by name and do not vote. Membership is individual and held in a personal capacity, so joining does not commit, badge or represent your school. More than one person from the same school may join.

Anyone may nominate anyone, including themselves, by writing to [email protected]. There is no closed circle, no referral requirement and no advantage in knowing someone already involved. The nomination and invitation list may not be derived from PrepGraph's commercial records, and the Reviewer of Concerns tests that once a year. The Founding Chair appoints the first cohort alone against published criteria; every appointment after that requires the assent of the Founding Members. An application may be refused, and a refusal is given in writing with the reason stated, so that it can be disputed.

One bar applies to both classes. A person who is an employee, director, shareholder or paid adviser of PrepGraph or of any other supplier of AI products to schools, or who otherwise derives material income from one, may not hold office as a Founding Member or Expert Fellow and may not vote.

Honest participation and a declaration of relevant interests, including any commercial relationship with a supplier of AI products to schools.

The commitment is fixed in the Membership Terms rather than left to an average: four convenings in the term of one hundred and twenty minutes each, attendance at at least three of the four, about thirty minutes of reading before each, and one piece of work of four to six hours delivered before the fourth convening. That is fourteen to sixteen hours across twelve months. It is an estimate for work that has not started, and what members were actually asked to do is reported against it in the annual public record. Members are not asked to fundraise, to recruit schools, to promote any product, or to lend a name to a document they have not read.

Yes. Everything the Council publishes is free at council.prepgraph.com to read, use, adapt and circulate within your school without joining, registering, giving an e-mail address or asking permission, and it may be reproduced with attribution. Nothing is withheld from non-members and there is no members-only tier.

Members do get one thing a non-member does not, and it is a burden rather than a benefit: they see drafts before publication and are expected to read them and either put their names to them or dissent on the record. No member receives a published output, a rating, a certificate or a commercial advantage that any other reader cannot have.

The single limit on use is that using a framework does not entitle a school to claim Council endorsement, membership, recognition or approval.

Yes, and for most schools that is the stated default rather than a concession. There is no registration, no declaration form, no logo and no obligation to inform the Council that you have adopted anything. The Principles say the same thing in the same words: resolve internally, put the principles where staff can see them, and publish to parents when the exceptions are closed. A school in an admissions market has no obligation to hand its competitors a list of the gaps it has just written down. A self-assessment is most useful when a school runs it privately and finds something uncomfortable, which is unlikely if the result is visible to a vendor.

The corollary is that the Council verifies nothing and knows nothing about your school's practice, so no public claim of Council recognition can rest on having adopted a document.

Not in any office, and not in any working group. A person who is an employee, director, shareholder or paid adviser of any supplier of AI products to schools, or who otherwise derives material income from one, may not hold office as a Founding Member or Expert Fellow, may not vote, and may not sit on a group that drafts or reviews a Council output. That is the Charter's bar and it applies to every supplier, not to PrepGraph alone. There is no quota or ratio permitting a proportion of vendor staff, because a quota would imply an eligibility the Charter denies.

Vendor staff may be heard as invited Observers. They may be asked to explain how a system works, and the fact of their attendance and their declared interest are minuted and published. They hold no office, take no decision, draft nothing, and may not describe attendance as endorsement or as participation of any other kind. The composition of every working group is published beside the output it produced, so the bar can be checked rather than trusted.

PrepGraph's position is not equivalent to that of any other vendor, because it founded, funds and staffs the Council. That asymmetry is disclosed rather than flattened, and it is why the bar is written to cover the convener first.

It changes nothing. Council frameworks name no product, so they are as usable by a school running another vendor's system, or none at all, as by any other school. A Council document that names a product as recommended or preferred is a defect, and reporting it to [email protected] should produce a dated correction.

The Council does not ask which platform a school uses and has no need to know. A school uneasy about telling a PrepGraph-convened body what it has bought should simply not say.

By binding each working group to a dated deliverable and publishing the record either way. A group that produces nothing within twelve months is closed, and the closure is named in the annual public record alongside the work that was completed.

Eight instruments are published in this release as founding drafts. That is where the term starts, not what it delivers: they are rules and frameworks, and none of them is evidence of anything the Council has done. The readiness framework, in particular, is eight domains of school practice, each mapped to one of the six pillars, and a sitting of about ninety minutes for a school's own leadership team. What is genuinely not drafted is listed after it, so that the gap is visible rather than implied, and each item is reported against in the annual public record.

The inaugural term runs for twelve months from 29 August 2026 and ends on 29 August 2027. Continuation is not automatic.

Before any second term the Council publishes the annual public record, within ninety days of the end of the term, setting out what was promised, what was delivered, what was not, and what PrepGraph spent. The chair for any second term is elected by the voting members who served the inaugural term, from nominations; PrepGraph takes no part in that election, proposes no candidate and holds no veto. PrepGraph cannot remove the Chair. Removal is by two thirds of the voting members other than the Chair, on stated grounds, and the office is otherwise vacated only on death, on written medical incapacity, or on a failure to act for a stated period.

There is one genuine gap and it is stated rather than covered over. If the office falls vacant before any member has accepted, there are no voting members to elect a successor: PrepGraph may nominate, but the appointment takes effect only on the written concurrence of the Reviewer of Concerns and is published with the nominee's declared interests. PrepGraph may withdraw its funding, which would end the Council. If there is no honest case for a second term, the correct outcome is to stop and say so.

Then it should close by name and in writing rather than fade out. A closing note would record what was published, what was promised and not delivered, and why.

Everything already published stays free to reproduce with attribution, so its usefulness does not depend on PrepGraph continuing to host it or on this body continuing to exist. Member data is deleted or returned on request, and no list is left in anyone's hands.

The Council is unincorporated and signs nothing itself, so PrepGraph contracts, holds copyright and acts as data fiduciary as bare trustee for the Council on the terms of the Charter, under a signed deed between PrepGraph and the Chair. On a change of control, an insolvency or a sale of the assets, that deed requires the successor to reaffirm the Charter in writing, and research data is deleted or returned without any further decision by anyone being required.

Write to [email protected]. For a nomination, give the person's name, school or institution, role, and a few lines on which constituency and which pillar their experience would strengthen. Self-nomination is welcome and treated no differently.

The same address takes applications, corrections, objections, breach reports, research enquiries and requests for removal from the list. Correspondence is acknowledged within five working days and answered within thirty days, the fact of any unanswered item is recorded in the annual public record, and matters of substance, including anything alleging a breach of the rules in this document, are put to the Founding Chair.

Two limits on that invitation are worth knowing before you write. The address is a mailbox on PrepGraph's own domain, administered by its employees, which means a person reporting a breach by PrepGraph is writing to PrepGraph; the Council has no address that the funder does not administer, and until it does, that is a real weakness in every route described in this document. And the Council gives no advice it does not publish, so it will not tell a school privately whether a product is safe, a policy adequate or a deployment wise. What a question gets is an acknowledgement, a correction where something is wrong, or an answer by a published output available to every reader at the same time. A question many schools share is more likely to become one.