Terms of Service

Last Updated: April 2026

Welcome to Scholar ("the Service"), an educational technology platform operated by EduTechSA ("we," "us," or "our"). These Terms govern your access to the Service. By accessing or using the Service, you agree to be bound by these Terms, which are compliant with the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 (CPA) and the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002 (ECTA) of South Africa.

1. Subscriptions, Payments & CPA Rights

Scholar operates on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) subscription model. We offer monthly, annual, and "Founding Scholar" (fixed-term) access passes.

  • Cooling-off Right (ECTA s44): You are entitled to cancel any new subscription within seven (7) days of your initial payment without reason or penalty, provided you have not excessively consumed the Service's AI resources during this period.
  • 20-Day Cancellation (CPA s14): For fixed-term agreements (such as the Founding Scholar pass), you may cancel the agreement at any time by providing us with twenty (20) business days' written notice. Upon cancellation, you remain liable for any amounts owed up to the cancellation date, and we reserve the right to impose a reasonable cancellation penalty based on the pro-rata standard monthly rate for the duration you had access.

2. Service Level Agreement (SLA) & Beta Phase

We leverage high-availability enterprise infrastructure. However, Scholar currently operates in a "Beta" phase.

  • Uptime Target: We strive for a 99.0% monthly uptime for all Paid Subscribers, excluding scheduled maintenance.
  • SLA Remedies: If uptime falls below this threshold in a given month, Paid Subscribers are entitled to request a pro-rata service credit for that month. Because we rely on external LLM APIs (Google Gemini), intermittent latency or "Oracle Overloaded" responses do not constitute downtime, provided the platform falls back gracefully to manual grading modes.

3. Data Ownership & Intellectual Property

We respect the separation of data rights:

  • Customer Data: You retain full ownership of all personal data, school marks, and direct inputs you provide to the platform.
  • Derived Data & Platform IP: EduTechSA retains all rights, title, and interest in the Scholar software, the underlying "Oracle Engine" algorithms, and all anonymized and aggregated telemetry/mastery data derived from your usage of the platform. We use this derived data to improve our global Elo ranking algorithms.

4. Acceptable Use & AI Quotas

To protect platform integrity and prevent infrastructure abuse:

  • Accounts are strictly for individual use. Credential sharing will result in immediate termination without refund.
  • AI Tutor interactions are governed by a "Spark" quota system. We reserve the right to throttle or suspend accounts employing automated scraping, bots, or exhibiting abusive behavior toward the AI models.

5. Amendments to Terms

We will not unilaterally change the material terms of your agreement without warning. We will provide thirty (30) days' written advance notice of any material changes to these Terms or pricing structures. If you do not accept the changes, you have the right to terminate your subscription without penalty before the changes take effect.

6. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa. Any disputes arising from this agreement shall be resolved under the jurisdiction of the South African courts or via a mutually agreed arbitration body (e.g., AFSA).

Statutory Disclosures (ECTA s43): EduTechSA is a registered entity in South Africa. Support inquiries can be directed to support@edutechsa.org.