Contents
1. About These Terms
These Terms and Conditions govern the use of Teacherwave ("Teacherwave", "the Platform", "we", "us", "our"). By using the Platform you agree to them.
Three further documents apply depending on who you are: the Tutor Agreement if you teach, the Student Terms if you learn, and the Academy Agreement if you run an academy that employs tutors here. Where any of them conflicts with these Terms, that document prevails for the person it applies to.
When you first sign in, and again whenever the rules change materially, the Platform shows you a short summary of the rules that apply to your role and asks you to accept it before you continue. That summary is a summary of these documents, and accepting it is accepting them.
If you do not agree to these Terms, do not use the Platform.
2. What Teacherwave Is, and What It Is Not
Teacherwave is software that tutors use to run their own teaching: booking and a calendar, a video classroom, groups of their students, levels and checklists, assessments they write themselves, report cards, a progress page for each student, and messaging.
An academy — a school, a language centre or anyone who employs tutors — can use it to run several of them together: it holds one subscription covering all of its tutors, writes the teaching plan its tutors work from, decides which student goes to which tutor, and sees how those students are getting on. The teaching itself is still done by the tutor, with the student.
Teacherwave is not a marketplace. We do not introduce students to tutors. There is no directory, no search, no ranking and no recommendation. A student reaches a tutor only by following an invitation from that tutor, and cannot reach any other tutor through us.
Teacherwave is not a party to the teaching arrangement. The contract for tutoring is between the tutor and the student. We do not employ tutors, do not supervise teaching, do not verify anyone's qualifications and make no representation about any user to any other user.
AI is used only where a tutor or an academy asks for it. A tutor can download a written brief and take it to an AI assistant of their own choosing to draft questions or a learning plan, then upload the reply; we send nothing to that assistant. A tutor or an academy that buys Finn, our own AI add-on, can instead ask it to build a test or a learning plan: we then send what they typed into Finn's form, their own section names and, if they ask Finn to reuse them, their own bank questions, to an AI model provider, never anything about a student. The Privacy Policy and our AI providers page say which provider and where it processes requests.
We provide the tools. What happens between the two people using them is theirs.
3. Accounts and Eligibility
There are three kinds of account. Tutor accounts may be created by anyone aged 18 or over. Student accounts can only be created through a tutor's invitation link. Either kind can be created with an email address and password, or by signing in with a Google account.
Academy admin accounts are the third. Registering an academy creates one, and an academy's admins invite the rest — their fellow admins, and the tutors who will teach for the academy. An invitation is single-use, expires, and can only be accepted by the address it was sent to; an address that already has an account of any kind cannot be invited. Registering an academy and accepting an invitation are done with an email address and a password; there is no Google route to either. An academy admin does not teach and holds no students of their own — anyone who does both holds two separate accounts.
If the student is under 18, a parent or guardian who is themselves at least 18 must set up and supervise the account, and accepts these Terms on the student's behalf. There is no minimum age for a student.
Keep your credentials secure. You are responsible for activity through your account, and must tell us promptly if you believe it has been accessed by someone else.
4. Money: Who Pays Whom
There are exactly two money flows, and only one of them involves us.
- A tutor, or the academy that employs them, pays Teacherwave a monthly subscription for the software: an independent tutor pays for themselves, and an academy pays one subscription covering every tutor it employs, priced on how many of them there are. A tutor an academy employs is never charged by us and is shown no billing at all. This is processed by Stripe. It is the only payment we take from anyone.
- A student pays their tutor for lessons, directly, by whatever means the two of them agree. This never passes through the Platform — including where the tutor teaches for an academy.
Teacherwave charges students nothing — no fee, no membership, no commission — and takes no share of what a tutor earns.
Because lesson payments do not reach us, we cannot refund one, reverse one, hold one, recover one, or decide a dispute about one. Nothing about them is recorded on the Platform: there are no prices and no payment records here.
A tutor may show their own PayPal subscription button on the Platform. Where we have switched this on for a tutor, their own students can open a page carrying a button for that tutor's own PayPal account. This does not change anything above: the subscription it starts is between the student, the tutor and PayPal, the money goes to the tutor, and Teacherwave is not a party to it, is told nothing about it, records nothing about it, and cannot refund, change or cancel it. We show the button; we do not process, receive or hold the payment, and it remains the case that the tutor's subscription to us is the only payment we take from anyone.
Nothing in this section limits either party's rights against the other, including a student's rights under consumer law against their tutor. It states what we are able to do.
5. Lessons, Groups and the Classroom
A student asks for a lesson from the availability their tutor publishes. A request does not reserve the time; more than one student may hold a request for the same hour. The tutor reserves the time by approving a request, and other requests for that time are then declined automatically. A lesson the tutor books themselves is booked straight away. A tutor may reverse an approval, which returns the lesson to a request.
A tutor may put several of their own students into a group. A group has one level and one set of checklists for all of its members, and a student who joins one takes the group's level and gives up any individual checklists they had from that tutor. A group class is booked, moved and cancelled by the tutor alone; a student cannot cancel their place in one. Every member of a group can see the other members' names and everything written in the group's chat. The Student Terms and the Tutor Agreement describe groups in full.
The Platform provides a video classroom for booked lessons. We do not monitor lessons as they happen, and we do not assess teaching quality.
Lessons held in the classroom are recorded. Recording starts automatically when a lesson begins and applies to every lesson, including group classes. Nobody in the room, the tutor included, can pause or stop it. Recordings are kept for safeguarding, security and quality purposes, and are handled as described in the Privacy Policy.
Recordings are not available to tutors or to students: there is no playback, download or sharing feature in the Platform, and neither party can obtain a copy through it. They are accessible only to Teacherwave, and are deleted when the account they belong to is erased.
Cancellation notice for one-to-one lessons is set by each tutor and shown to their students. A group class is booked, moved and cancelled by the tutor alone; a student cannot cancel their place in one. Anything about money already paid is between the tutor and the student.
Either party may connect their own Google Calendar. That is optional. If you do, your booked lessons are written into a calendar the Platform creates in your Google account, and you can disconnect at any time. The Privacy Policy explains what is sent to Google.
6. Acceptable Use and Safety
You must not use the Platform to:
- break the law, or help anyone else to;
- harass, abuse, threaten, defraud or discriminate against anyone;
- send unlawful, obscene or harmful content;
- impersonate anyone, or misrepresent your identity or credentials;
- attempt to access another user's account or data;
- make your own recording of a lesson, or share another person's messages or teaching materials outside the Platform, without their agreement;
- interfere with the Platform's operation, including by scraping it, probing it or circumventing its access controls.
If you use an outside AI assistant with material you took from the Platform, what you share with that assistant is between you and it. Never give an AI service — your own assistant or Finn — another person's personal information.
Report anything that concerns you, particularly anything involving a child's safety. We may investigate and may suspend an account while we do.
7. Intellectual Property
The Platform, its software and its branding belong to us. You may not copy, modify, distribute or create derivative works from them except as the law permits.
Content you create — teaching materials, questions, checklists, assessments, feedback, messages and attachments — remains yours, including anything you drafted with an assistant of your own and uploaded. You grant us a non-exclusive licence to host, store and display it so that we can operate the Platform for you and for the people you have shared it with.
You are responsible for having the right to use anything you upload.
8. Data Protection and Privacy
Our Privacy Policy explains what personal data we collect, why, and what rights you have. Our Cookie Policy explains what is stored in your browser.
A tutor can see the information needed to teach their own students: their name and photo, their lessons with them, the work they set, results, attendance, whether the student is under 18 and, where a parent or guardian holds the account, that person's name. A tutor cannot see a student's lessons or records with a different tutor.
A student can see everything their tutor records about them — their level, checklists, results, report cards and attendance — except notes the tutor keeps for themselves.
9. Availability of the Platform
We aim to keep the Platform available but do not guarantee it. We may suspend it for maintenance, and features may change, be added or be withdrawn.
We are not responsible for failures caused by events outside our reasonable control, including network failures, third-party service outages, and acts of government.
10. Limitation of Liability
The Platform is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis, without warranties of any kind except those that cannot be excluded by law.
We are not liable for anything arising out of the relationship between a tutor and a student, including the quality or outcome of teaching, a tutor's conduct, a student's conduct, or any payment between them. We are not liable for the content of anything an outside AI assistant or Finn produced for a user, which the user checks before it is created.
Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud, and nothing affects a consumer's statutory rights.
Subject to the paragraph above, our total liability to any user in any twelve-month period is limited to the amount that user paid us in that period. For a student, who pays us nothing, our liability is limited to the maximum extent permitted by law.
11. Indemnity
You will indemnify us against claims, losses and costs arising from your use of the Platform in breach of these Terms, from content you upload, or from your conduct towards another user.
12. Suspension and Termination
We may suspend or terminate an account for breach of these Terms, where required by law, or where we reasonably believe it necessary to protect users or the Platform. Where we can, we will explain why.
A tutor whose subscription lapses keeps read-only access rather than losing their account: their existing lessons go ahead and their records remain visible. The Tutor Agreement explains this.
A registration whose email address is never confirmed is deleted after seven days.
You may close your account at any time by asking us. The Privacy Policy explains what is removed.
13. Changes to These Terms
We may update these Terms. We will give reasonable notice of material changes and publish the date of the most recent update at the top of this page.
The rules summary you accept on the Platform carries a version number. When it changes materially, we ask every user to accept the new version before they continue, and we keep a record of which version each user accepted. Continuing to use the Platform after a change to these Terms takes effect constitutes acceptance of it.
14. Governing Law and Disputes
These Terms are governed by Greek law, and the courts of Ioannina, Greece have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them. This is without prejudice to any mandatory protection available to you as a consumer under the law of the country where you live, including the right to bring a claim in your own courts where that law gives you one.
If you have a complaint, contact us first — most things are resolved that way. A consumer in the European Union may also use the European Commission's online dispute resolution platform.
15. Company Information and Contact
The Platform is operated by Dale Daniel Earnshaw, trading as Teacherwave, of Ioannina, Epirus 45500, Greece. You can reach us at [email protected].