Terms of Service

1. Acceptance

By signing in to PeerUp, you agree to these Terms of Service and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the platform. If you are under 18, your use is subject to your school's consent on your behalf, given under the school's agreement with PeerUp and its own parental consent framework.

2. What PeerUp is

PeerUp is a school-managed peer tutoring platform. It connects students who want help (tutees) with students who can help (tutors) at the same school, and gives the school tools to run and monitor that programme. PeerUp does not provide any tutoring itself — all tutoring is between students, and all sessions happen on school premises under your school's supervision and policies.

Depending on what your school has enabled, PeerUp may include automatic weekly matching, availability scheduling, in-app messaging and shared checklists, announcements, session feedback, badges and vouchers, calendar subscription and certificate downloads, replacement tutors when someone cancels, and mark tracking. Features may be added, changed, or removed.

3. Eligibility

You must be a currently enrolled student or authorised administrator at a school that has an agreement with PeerUp.
You must sign in with your official school email address. Personal email addresses are rejected.
One account per person. Do not create an account for anyone else or sign in as anyone else.
Your school controls who has access. When you leave the school, your access ends.

4. Cost

Students never pay for PeerUp. Where PeerUp is paid for, the school pays; billing, tiers, and term are set out in the agreement between PeerUp and your school and are not part of these terms. Tutoring on PeerUp is free between students — no money may change hands for a session arranged on the platform.

5. Acceptable use

You agree to:

Use PeerUp only for legitimate peer tutoring purposes.
Be respectful and professional toward other users. No bullying, harassment, discrimination, sexual content, or threats — in messages, notes, bios, feedback, or in person.
Attend sessions you have committed to, or cancel with reasonable notice.
Not share your login credentials, and not check in on someone else's behalf or falsify session records.
Not attempt to access other users' data, bypass access controls, or manipulate the platform, its matching, or its rewards.
Not copy, share, screenshot, or republish another student's personal information, messages, marks, or feedback outside the platform.
Not record a session (audio or video) without the other person's agreement.
Not use PeerUp for any commercial transaction.

If someone makes you uncomfortable or unsafe on PeerUp, report it to your school administrator, or email us at support@peerup.co.za.

6. Tutor responsibilities

Tutors commit to: showing up to accepted sessions on time, tutoring only in subjects and grades they have marked themselves competent to teach, and maintaining academic honesty — tutoring means explaining, not doing the work for the tutee. Session notes you write are visible to your tutee, so keep them factual and appropriate.

7. Attendance and automatic pauses

Attendance is tracked. If you cannot make a session, cancel it in the app so the other student is told and the slot can be reused. If you repeatedly miss sessions without cancelling, PeerUp may automatically pause your account from booking new sessions and cancel your upcoming ones, and your school administrator is notified. A pause is temporary and reversible.

If you think a pause or a missed-session record is wrong, ask your school administrator to review it, or email us. A person will look at it — you are never stuck with an automatic decision.

8. Vouchers and rewards

Vouchers are earned through tutoring hours and are redeemable at your school's discretion. PeerUp makes no warranty about the value, availability, or delivery of rewards. Your school determines what vouchers can be exchanged for. Vouchers have no cash value, are not transferable, and may be withdrawn if the underlying hours were logged dishonestly.

9. Content you submit

Messages, checklists, session notes, ratings and feedback notes, bios, marks, and announcements you submit must be appropriate for a school environment. You retain ownership of content you create. You grant PeerUp a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, process, back up, and display that content within the platform to the people described in the Privacy Policy, for as long as your account exists. This licence ends when the content is deleted, except for copies in backups, which expire within 30 days.

We reserve the right to remove content that violates these terms. We do not routinely read private messages, and school administrators cannot read them through the admin tools — but we may access content when investigating a reported safety or abuse concern, or when your school instructs us to as part of a disciplinary process.

10. Account suspension and termination

School administrators may suspend accounts for violations of these terms or school policy. PeerUp may suspend or terminate accounts for abuse of the platform, for safety reasons, or where required by law. Suspended users can appeal to their school administrator.

You may delete your account at any time from Profile → Delete account. If your account is suspended and you want it deleted, email support@peerup.co.za and we will do it for you. Suspension does not take away your privacy rights. If your school stops using PeerUp, all student accounts at that school are closed and the data handled as set out in the Privacy Policy.

11. Availability

PeerUp is provided "as is" and "as available". We do not promise uninterrupted service. We may take the platform down for maintenance, and features may change or be discontinued. We aim to give notice of planned downtime through your school.

12. Limitation of liability

To the extent permitted by South African law, we are not liable for any indirect or consequential loss, and we are not liable for harm arising from in-person sessions between students — those are conducted on school premises under your school's supervision and policies. We are not responsible for loss of data due to events beyond our reasonable control.

Our total liability arising out of or in connection with PeerUp is limited to the greater of (a) the amount your school paid for PeerUp in the twelve months before the claim arose, and (b) R5,000. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or under the Consumer Protection Act or POPIA.

13. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of South Africa. If you have a complaint, email us first at support@peerup.co.za and we will try in good faith to resolve it within 30 days. If that fails, disputes will be resolved in the courts of South Africa, and the parties consent to the jurisdiction of the Western Cape Division of the High Court, Cape Town. Nothing here stops you from complaining to the Information Regulator about how your personal information is handled.

14. General

Whole agreement: these terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and PeerUp about your use of the platform. Your school's separate agreement with PeerUp governs the school relationship.
Severability: if any clause is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force.
No waiver: not enforcing a term once does not waive it.
Assignment: you may not transfer your account or rights. We may transfer these terms to a successor operating PeerUp, on notice to your school.
Force majeure: neither party is liable for failures caused by events outside its reasonable control.
Survival: sections 9, 12, 13, and 14 survive the end of your account.

15. Changes

We may update these terms. Material changes will be communicated via in-app notification at least 14 days before taking effect, and the "last updated" date above will change. Continued use after that period constitutes acceptance.

16. Contact

Questions? Email support@peerup.co.za.