Teacher Agreement

1.Who this applies to#

This Teacher Agreement applies to every teacher, studio or school with a Tooition teacher account (“you”). It is part of our Terms of Service. If the two conflict on a matter covered here, this agreement applies.

“Families” means the parents, guardians, students and other customers you serve through Tooition. “Family data” means personal information about them that you or they put into Tooition.

2.You run your own business#

• You are an independent business. You are not our employee, contractor or agent, and we are not yours, except that we process family data on your behalf as described below.
• You are the merchant and seller of record for your lessons and products, and your agreement with each family is between you and them.
• You are responsible for your own taxes (including GST, VAT or sales tax), invoices and receipts, business registrations, licences, insurance and record keeping.
• You are responsible for your own qualifications and for the accuracy of anything you say about yourself, your experience and your services.

3.Your policies#

Before you take bookings, you must clearly show families your:

• prices, and what is included;
• cancellation, rescheduling and make-up lesson policy;
• refund policy; and
• privacy notice, explaining what you collect about families and how you use it (you can point to our Privacy Policy for how Tooition handles it).

Your policies must comply with the law where you and your families are, including consumer guarantees that can’t be excluded. Apply your policies fairly and consistently.

4.Payments and Stripe#

• To take online payments you need a Stripe Express account and must accept the Stripe Connected Account Agreement. You must follow Stripe’s rules, including its restricted-business list.
• Stripe charges its processing fees to you directly. Tooition’s platform fee is set out in the Terms of Service and depends on your plan.
• Give Stripe accurate information and keep it up to date. Stripe may pause or close your account under its own terms.
• Only charge families for lessons and products you actually provide, at the prices you showed them.

5.Refunds to families#

• You decide refunds for your lessons under your published policy, Stripe’s rules and the consumer law that applies to you and your families.
• You must honour your own policy and any refund the law requires, even if it is more generous than your policy.
• When you refund a payment, we refund our platform fee in proportion. Stripe’s own fees on refunds are governed by Stripe’s terms.
• Tooition doesn’t issue refunds on your behalf and isn’t responsible for refunds you owe.

6.Disputes and chargebacks#

• You handle complaints and disputes with your families.
• You bear chargebacks, disputed payments, reversals and any related Stripe fees on your sales, and you are responsible for responding to them with evidence through Stripe.
• If a dispute or chargeback leaves an amount owing to Stripe or to us, you agree to pay it. We may share information about a payment with Stripe to help resolve a dispute or prevent fraud.

7.Children, consent and recordings#

Many of your students may be children. You agree to:

• Record each student’s age band accurately, so that Tooition can apply its protections for children (for example, keeping the AI assistant off for students under 13 unless a parent turns it on).
• Make sure a parent or guardian has consented before you collect a child’s information, and before you record, or ask a child to upload, any practice recording or other file. Keep a record of that consent and respect a parent’s decision to withdraw it.
• Only give consent on a parent’s behalf where the law allows it. In the United States, a school may authorise collection of a child’s information for the school’s own educational purposes in limited circumstances under the FTC’s COPPA guidance. Outside those limits, consent must come from the parent or guardian through their own guardian account.
• Never share a student’s recordings, files or personal information publicly, and never ask families for more information than you need.

8.Child safety#

• You are responsible for meeting every child-safety requirement that applies to you, such as a Working with Children Check in Victoria or other Australian states, background checks required by US states or school districts, or equivalent checks in your country.
• Follow safe-teaching practices, keep communications with children appropriate, and involve parents or guardians.
• Report concerns about a child’s safety to the appropriate authorities as the law requires.
• We may suspend your account immediately if we reasonably believe a child is at risk, and we may report concerns to police or child-protection authorities.

9.Your local laws#

You must follow the laws that apply to your business and your families wherever they are, including consumer protection, privacy, anti-spam, tax, accessibility, employment and child-safety laws. If you email or message families through Tooition, only send messages they would expect from you, and follow anti-spam law for any marketing.

10.How we handle family data for you#

You decide what family data to collect and why, so you are the controller (or “business” under US state privacy laws) for family data. We are your processor (or “service provider”). For family data, we will:

1. process it only to provide, secure and support Tooition for you, on your documented instructions (which include your use of Tooition’s features), or as the law requires;
2. never sell or share it (as US state privacy laws define those words), never use it for targeted or behavioural advertising, and never use it to market our own products to your families;
3. not retain, use or disclose it outside our direct business relationship with you, and not combine it with personal information from other sources except as the law permits for a service provider;
4. make sure our staff and contractors who can access it are bound by confidentiality;
5. protect it with the security measures described in our Privacy Policy;
6. use only the sub-processors on our Sub-processors list, under written terms that protect the data, and give you notice of changes so you can object;
7. help you respond to requests from families to access, correct or delete their data;
8. tell you without undue delay after we become aware of a data breach affecting family data, with the information you need to meet your own notification duties;
9. delete family data when your account is closed, within the periods in our Privacy Policy, unless the law requires us to keep it; and
10. give you the information reasonably needed to show compliance with this section, and tell you if we believe an instruction breaks the law.

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies to family data you send to us, this section is our data processing agreement with you, and international transfers are covered by the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses (Module 2, controller to processor, or Module 3 where you are yourself a processor) and, for UK data, the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, which are incorporated by reference. If you need a signed copy, email [email protected].

You are responsible for having a lawful basis to collect family data and for giving families a privacy notice. If a family asks us directly about their data, we will usually refer them to you, or help you respond.

11.The AI assistant#

You can turn the assistant off for your studio. If you leave it on, remember its answers can be wrong: review anything you pass on to families, and don’t let it replace your own professional judgement. For students under 13, it stays off unless a parent or guardian turns it on.

12.If you close your account#

Tell your families before you close your account, and make your own copies of anything you need to keep (paid plans can export records as CSV, and anyone can ask us for a copy at [email protected]). After closing, family data is deleted as described in the Privacy Policy. Your obligations for refunds, disputes and chargebacks on past sales continue after your account closes.