Policy and obligations: the chain from the Act to the evidence
A policy on the website is the middle of a chain. Behind it sits an Act and an obligation; in front of it sits the recurring work and the evidence that proves the school does what the policy says.
Policy and obligations, in EthosOne's terms, is the traceable chain from a piece of legislation to the proof that a school complies with it: an Act recorded from its authoritative source, an obligation mapped from it with an accountable owner, a controlled policy that answers the obligation, a recurring compliance item that keeps the policy true, and accepted evidence at each occurrence.
What we keep hearing
It is 2:10 on a Thursday. A privacy question has arrived from a parent, the child-safe policy is due for review, and a WHS regulation changed last month without anyone at the school hearing of it. The principal is accountable for all three and is currently in a classroom; the library is a folder of PDFs with uncertain owners, and the question underneath it is which obligations apply to this school at all. Somewhere in that day, the chain from the Act to the evidence still has to hold. This is the room where it does.
An Act, recorded from its authoritative source
The chain starts with the law as published, not as remembered. In PolicyAI's obligation register, a school sets up its applicability profile (country, state, sector, school type and conditions) and enables the jurisdictions in scope. Every record carries its authoritative source, version and effective date, with a status that distinguishes current from review-required, and superseded from not applicable. Legislative change is watched by our team and reported in the Sector Signal, and the corpus is updated annually. PolicyAI
An obligation with an owner
Obligations are what the Act requires of this school, organised into operating domains such as child safety or privacy. Each shows its requirement, owner, status and evidence, and links to the policy, compliance item, risk, procedure or assurance record that answers it. A Health Check asks whether ownership and evidence are complete, without pretending legal certainty. An obligation register is simply this: every mapped requirement, who owns it and what proves it.
A policy that answers it
A policy is an authoritative statement of intent, held as a controlled version with an owner, reviewer and approver. Upload a PDF or Word file and review the extracted content before a draft exists, or write one with Draft with AI. Proposed changes show the exact difference and rationale, Version History keeps every earlier version, the Legislation tab traces the policy to the obligations it covers, acknowledgements record who has read the current version, and approval replaces it only after the authority signs the exact content. A group can publish a standard for entities to adopt with a local overlay. Policies and procedures
A recurring compliance item that keeps it true
A policy that says "annually" needs a record that makes it happen. A compliance item captures the requirement, owner, reference, a recurrence rule (weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, term or once-off) and an evidence definition with a reviewer, and one template generates the dated occurrences. Overview, Calendar and Table views show the same population, so the state-specific compliance calendar and the board's monthly snapshot agree. Compliance calendar
Follow this chain into the live school compliance calendar.
Three views, one picture. Each one reads from the same live records.
01Evidence that proves it
Submitted is not Compliant. Evidence is submitted against an occurrence, a reviewer accepts or returns it, and only accepted evidence moves the item to Compliant.
02PolicyAI, the intelligence layer
PolicyAI, in beta, reads the chain from above, policy by policy. It counts which of a school's obligations are addressed across 25 policy domains, marking each Addressed, Partly addressed or Not yet addressed against source law, and proposes wording for the rest inside the policy lifecycle, so every proposal passes through review and approval.
03Free template pack
Free to download: AI Risk Register and Policy Register by Domain.
At every link the helper knows your context and drafts what you need.
In Legislation it explains a domain from cited sources, summarises obligation text and suggests evidence. In Policies, AI Chat and Draft with AI propose answers and copy with disclosed sources. In Compliance it drafts requirement text and evidence checklists, suggests a cadence from the source and checks submitted evidence against the criteria. The determinations stay with people. The helper makes no legal determination; applicability is an accountable review, not an inference. It never publishes a policy or decides approval, and it cannot infer compliance, accept evidence or decide that an item is not applicable.
Sovereign frontier AI, hosted in Sydney and Melbourne.What it does not do
- It does not provide legal advice or infer applicability without accountable review.
- It does not treat an uploaded document as an approved policy.
- It does not treat a calendar event as proof of compliance.
- Stored in AustraliaAWS Sydney and Melbourne, one database per school
- AI stays in the country tooHosted in Sydney and Melbourne; never trained on your content
- Published, not describedOur policies in the Trust Centre · How we handle your data
“It meets all of the real frustrations of business directors in one place.”
Nick MillerDirector of Business, Blackfriars Priory SchoolThe five we are asked every time.
Still weighing something up? Thirty minutes with us, on your own registers, answers the rest.
Get in contact01What is an obligation register for a school?
Every requirement the school's legislation and frameworks place on it, each mapped to its source, an accountable owner, a status and the evidence that satisfies it. In EthosOne each obligation also links to the policy and compliance item that answer it.
02How do we know which legislation applies to our school?
Set up the applicability profile with country, state, sector, school type and conditions, enable the jurisdictions, and the catalogue scopes to that context. An accountable person confirms applicability, and legislative change is reported in the Sector Signal.
03What is the difference between a policy and a procedure?
A policy states the organisation's intent and rules; a procedure is the executable steps, roles and records that put it into practice. EthosOne holds them as separate controlled documents, each with its own approval, so a policy statement is never mistaken for a procedural step. Procedures
04How often should school policies be reviewed?
On the review date set on the policy's Overview, and whenever the law it answers moves. Our team reports legislative change in the Sector Signal, so the owner knows which policies a change touches.
05Policy and obligations for schools, Act to evidence, in full: what does it cover?
EthosOne, governance, risk and compliance software built only for schools, holds every link as a record with an owner, and PolicyAI, in beta, reads across the chain to score coverage. Legislation, policies and the compliance calendar sit in the Regulatory Readiness, Personnel and Risk and Compliance focus modules; PolicyAI is a premium module.
What are the AI paragraphs you are currently missing from your policies? Watch how we do it.
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“It meets all of the real frustrations of business directors in one place.”
“School governance and risk is a complex area without a clear solution.”
We would be glad to take one ofyour own policies and trace it with you
Defines the chain from an Act to an obligation, a policy, a recurring compliance item and evidence, PolicyAI on top.