Terms of Use

1. About these terms

IhyaPortal is the student and course management portal run by Ihya Institute ("we", "us", "our"). These terms cover two things:

• Using the portal (Sections 2–5, 8 and 10). These apply to everyone who creates an account or uses the portal.
• Enrolling on and paying for a course (Sections 6, 7 and 9). These form part of your contract with us for each course you enrol a student on. Section 6.1 explains when that contract is made.

By creating an account or using the portal you agree to the portal terms. You agree to the course terms when you enrol on a course — we ask you to confirm this at checkout, and we send you a copy with your enrolment confirmation.

"You" means the account holder: the parent or guardian who enrols a child, or an adult student enrolling themselves. "The student" means the person taking the course.

How we handle personal data is covered separately in our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy.

2. Your account

• Give accurate information when you register, and keep your contact details up to date.
• Keep your password to yourself. Your account is personal — do not share it or let someone else sign in as you. You can add two-factor authentication in your account settings for extra protection.
• If you registered yourself, you must verify your email address before you can sign in. Accounts created for you by our staff come with a temporary password you must change.
• Tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account.

3. Children's accounts and who can enrol

• A child under 16 is enrolled and managed through a parent or legal guardian's account. A student aged 16 or over may hold their own login for learning purposes.
• Whatever the student's age, the person who enrols and agrees to pay the fees — the account holder — must be 18 or over. If the student is under 18, a parent or legal guardian must be the account holder.
• Guardians are responsible for the accuracy of the details they give about their children and for the use of any account they manage.

4. Acceptable use

The portal includes messaging, course streams and file sharing. When using them you must not:

• bully, harass, threaten or abuse anyone, or post content that is offensive or inappropriate;
• post or share anything unlawful, or anything that puts a child at risk;
• share another person's private information without their agreement;
• try to access accounts, records or parts of the portal you are not authorised to see; or
• do anything that damages or disrupts the portal or its security.

Messages can be reported from within the portal, including for safeguarding concerns, and reported messages are reviewed by staff.

5. Content and materials

• Course materials on the portal are provided for the personal study of enrolled students and their families. Do not republish or redistribute them without our permission.
• Materials for a course remain available on the portal until the end of the course period.
• Anything you upload (homework, messages, attachments) remains yours, but you must have the right to share it, and you give us permission to store and show it within the portal for the purpose it was uploaded for.
• We may remove content that breaks these terms. Where reasonable, we will tell you why.

6. Fees and payments

6.1 Your contract for a course

Each course page shows what the course includes, how and when it is taught, its start and end dates (the "course period"), its term dates, and the fee. Your contract for the course is made when we email you confirmation of your enrolment, and the 14-day period in 6.5 starts on that day. The confirmation email includes a copy of these terms, your payment plan and the cancellation form.

6.2 The fee

The fee is for the full course period, however you choose to pay it. It is fixed once you have enrolled — we will not increase it during the course period. Fees for future courses may change, but you will always see the fee before you enrol.

6.3 Ways to pay

You choose one of these at checkout. The total fee and, for instalment plans, the amount and date of each payment are shown before you confirm.

• Monthly. A monthly fee, shown on the course page before you enrol, due each month on the date your enrolment began, for that month's place on the course. The monthly fee is due for every month of the course period — including months with holidays and months in which the student does not attend — and stops when the course period ends. Your commitment is to the course period, and Section 7 sets out exactly how you can end the place early and the most you can owe if you do. Monthly plans never run beyond 12 payments or 12 months; for longer programmes, each academic year is a separate course period with its own fee.
• Pay in full. One payment for the whole course period when you enrol, with a discount equivalent to one month's fee.
• Two payments. The fee for the first half of the course period when you enrol, and the fee for the second half at the start of the second half, with a £5 discount.

Whichever plan you choose, the total for the course period is the same unless you take the pay-in-full or two-payment discount. Payments are taken by card through Stripe's secure checkout. We do not charge interest, late-payment fees or any fee for paying in instalments.

6.4 Fee waivers

We may agree a fee waiver or reduction in individual cases; any waiver is recorded on the account.

6.5 Your 14-day right to change your mind

Because you enrol online, UK law gives you 14 days from the day we send your enrolment confirmation to cancel for any reason, no explanation needed, whichever way you chose to pay.

• How to cancel. Email info@ihyainstitute.co.uk, use the cancellation form we send with your confirmation, or use the "Cancel enrolment" option in your account. If you use the account option we will email you an acknowledgement straight away. You only need to tell us before the 14 days end.
• Your refund. We refund everything you have paid within 14 days of hearing from you, to the payment method you used.
• If you asked us to start within the 14 days. At checkout you can ask, as a separate step, for the student to start before the 14 days are up. If you do and then cancel, we keep a proportionate part of the fee for the lessons delivered before you cancelled — [lessons delivered ÷ total lessons in the course] × the total fee — and refund the rest. If the student started attending without you asking us to, you owe nothing for those lessons and get a full refund.
• After the 14 days, Section 7 applies.

6.6 Refunds

6.7 Your legal rights

Nothing in these terms takes away rights that UK law gives you and that cannot be excluded by agreement — including your right to have the course provided with reasonable care and skill, and the remedies the law gives you if it is not.

7. Ending a course early

This section applies once your 14-day right to change your mind (Section 6.5) has ended. If you tell us you want to stop within the first 14 days, that is a cancellation under Section 6.5 and you do not need this section.

It covers four situations: you decide to end the student's place (7.2); a change in your circumstances means the student cannot continue (7.3); we cancel or significantly change a course (7.4); payments stop without notice (7.5).

7.1 What you are committing to

The fee is for the full course period, however you chose to pay it (Section 6). Simply stopping attendance, or cancelling a payment, does not end the fee. But you are not locked in for the whole period either: this section gives you a clear way to end the place early and sets a fixed limit on what you can owe if you do. Nothing outside this section adds to that amount.

Each course period is divided into terms. The term dates for the student's course are shown on the course page and in your enrolment confirmation.

7.2 Ending the place by giving notice

• You can end the student's place at any time by telling us in writing — email info@ihyainstitute.co.uk or use the "End course" option in your account. Your notice counts from the day we receive it, and we will acknowledge it in writing within 2 working days.
• When notice takes effect. Your notice takes effect at the end of the current term, as long as we receive it at least 4 weeks before that term ends. If we receive it later than that, it takes effect one month after the start of the following term. Notice received between terms counts as received on the first day of the next term. If there is no following term, notice takes effect at the end of the course period.
• What you owe. Fees up to the date the notice takes effect, and nothing after that. The student may keep attending until then.
• The limit. The most you can ever owe after giving notice is the fees for the rest of the current term plus, if your notice was late, one further month's fee. You will never owe fees beyond that, whichever way you chose to pay.
• If we fill the place. If another student takes the student's place before your notice takes effect, we stop charging you from the day the new student starts and refund anything you have paid for the period after that.
• If you pay monthly, payments continue until the notice takes effect and then stop automatically — you do not need to cancel anything. We will confirm the date of your final payment in writing.
• If you paid in full or in two payments, we refund the part of what you have paid that relates to the period after your notice takes effect, within 14 days of that date, to the payment method you used. We work out the fee for the period the student was enrolled at the standard monthly rate before calculating the refund.

7.3 Ending the place because of a change in circumstances

• If something happens that makes it impracticable for the student to continue, you can ask us to end the place straight away, without the notice period in 7.2. This includes: serious illness or injury of the student, or of a parent or carer the student depends on; a bereavement in the student's immediate family; a significant loss of household income; a move, or a change in the student's schooling, work or care arrangements, that makes the timetable impracticable; any other serious change in circumstances that we accept makes continuing impracticable.
• Tell us in writing at info@ihyainstitute.co.uk with a short explanation. We may ask for reasonable supporting information (for example, a doctor's note) but we will keep this proportionate.
• We will decide and tell you in writing within 14 days. If we agree, the place ends — and payments stop — from the date we received your request, not the date of our reply. We refund anything paid for the period after that date within 14 days of confirming, to the payment method you used.
• Your request also counts as notice under 7.2 from the day we receive it, unless you tell us you would rather keep the place. So if we cannot agree to end the place straight away, you are never worse off than if you had simply given notice.
• We can also agree to end a place early, or reduce fees, in circumstances not listed here (Section 6.4). If you disagree with a decision we make under this section, you can use our complaints process (Section 12).

7.4 If we cancel or significantly change a course

• If we cancel a course before it starts — for example, because too few students have enrolled — we refund everything you have paid within 14 days and you owe nothing.
• If we cancel a course after it has started, or stop running it before the end of the course period, we refund all fees paid for the part of the course we have not delivered, within 14 days of the cancellation, and you owe nothing for it — however you chose to pay.
• If we make a significant change — for example, moving the timetable to different days or times, changing from live teaching to recorded lessons, changing the named teacher on a course sold on the basis of who teaches it, or materially reducing the teaching hours or content — we will tell you in writing at least 4 weeks in advance, or as soon as we reasonably can if the change is outside our control. You can then end the place from the date of the change, with the same refund, and nothing further is owed. Occasional teacher cover or the rescheduling of individual lessons is not a significant change.
• Lessons we cancel will be rescheduled. If we cannot reschedule a lesson, we credit or refund a proportionate part of the fee. (Lessons the student chooses not to attend are different — see Section 6.6.)

7.5 If payments stop without notice

• If a payment fails, we will tell you and give you 14 days to bring it up to date. Lessons continue during that time.
• If the payment is still outstanding 14 days after the reminder period ends, we will treat the first missed payment as notice under 7.2, given on the date that payment was due. What you owe is then worked out exactly as in 7.2 — with the same limit — and nothing beyond it. We will write to confirm the amount and the end date.
• We do not charge interest or late-payment fees.
• If you are having difficulty paying, tell us as early as you can — 7.3, or a fee reduction under Section 6.4, may apply.

7.6 Fees for the time the student was enrolled

Fees for the period up to the end date remain payable, including for any lessons in that period the student chose not to attend (Section 6.6). Any refund under this section relates to the period after the end date.

7.7 Pausing or transferring instead of ending

If the student needs to stop for now but may want to return, ask us about deferring to a later cohort or transferring to another course. Where we can offer this, fees already paid carry over to the new place.

7.8 Your legal rights

Nothing in this section affects your 14-day right under Section 6.5, or your legal rights if we do not provide the course with reasonable care and skill.

8. Availability of the portal

We work to keep the portal available and secure, but we do not promise it will always be online or error-free. We may take it down briefly for maintenance or updates. The portal supports our teaching — if it is unavailable, classes and communication continue by other means. If a live lesson cannot go ahead because the portal is unavailable, we treat it as a lesson we have cancelled (Section 7.4).

You are responsible for the device and internet connection the student uses. Any minimum requirements are shown on the course page.

9. Our responsibility to you

We are responsible for foreseeable loss or damage we cause by breaking these terms or by failing to use reasonable care and skill. We are not responsible for losses that were not foreseeable, or for problems caused by events outside our reasonable control — but if such events mean we cannot provide all or part of a course, Section 7.4 sets out your refund. Nothing in these terms excludes or limits our liability where the law does not allow it — for example, for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud — and nothing in this section limits your rights under Section 6.7.

10. Suspending or closing accounts

• We may suspend or close an account, or end a student's place, if these terms are seriously or repeatedly broken, or if it is needed to protect other users (especially children). We may also close an account that is no longer connected to an enrolled student or member of staff.
• Except where we need to act immediately to protect someone, we will warn you first and give you a chance to respond. We will tell you our reasons in writing, and you can ask us to review the decision through our complaints process (Section 12).
• If we end a student's place under this section, fees are payable to the end of the current term, and we refund anything you have paid for the period after that within 14 days, to the payment method you used.
• You can ask us to close your account — and to erase your data, as described in the Privacy Policy — at any time. Closing your account does not by itself end a course place or the fees for it; to end a place, use Section 7.

11. Changes to these terms

• We may update the portal terms (Sections 2–5, 8 and 10) to reflect new features, changes in the law or regulatory guidance, or to improve security or protect users. We will tell portal users about significant changes at least 14 days before they take effect. The "Last updated" date at the top always shows the current version.
• Changes to fees, payment plans or the course terms (Sections 6, 7 and 9) do not apply to a course you have already enrolled on. They apply from your next enrolment, and you will see them before you enrol.
• If we make a change to these terms during a course that is significantly to your disadvantage, you can end the place with the refund described in Section 7.4.

12. Complaints

• If something has gone wrong, tell us by email at info@ihyainstitute.co.uk or by post at the address above. We will acknowledge your complaint within 3 working days and aim to give you a full response within 15 working days. If we need longer, we will tell you why and when to expect our response.
• If we cannot resolve your complaint, we will tell you so in writing and give you the name and website of an accredited alternative dispute resolution (ADR) provider that could consider it. We are not required to use ADR and do not take part in it, but you may still contact the provider for information about your options.
• Using our complaints process, or ADR, does not affect your right to take legal action.

13. Which law applies

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and you can bring a claim about them in the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland, you can also bring a claim in the Scottish courts; if you live in Northern Ireland, in the courts of Northern Ireland. Nothing in this section takes away protection you have under mandatory rules of the law of the part of the UK where you live.