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. When you register you tick a box to accept these terms (and our Privacy Policy), and we keep a record of the version you accepted. The course terms then apply to each place you confirm, as Section 6.1 explains.

"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.
• If you register yourself, you confirm your email address with a code we email you while you fill in the form. Accounts our staff create for you come with an email to set up your own password, or with a temporary password, which you must change when you first sign in.
• Tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account.

3. Children's accounts and who can enrol

• A child under 18 is enrolled and managed through a parent or legal guardian's account. When you register a child, you can also give them a login of their own for learning from your account. A student aged 18 or over holds their own account outright.
• Each course is for a stated age range, shown as "Ages" on the course page, and some courses are for one gender only, shown as "Open to". Both are checked against the student's own details (not the details of the parent filling in the form), and we cannot register a student the course is not open to. A student up to two years outside the age range can still register, but the registration is held until we have looked at it, and the student gets a place only if we agree.
• 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.
• Course materials, assignments and announcements are available on the portal while the student is enrolled on the course. Access to them is not paused because fees are unpaid (see Section 6.3 and Section 7.5), and the student's own grades, attendance record and submitted work are never withheld because of fees.
• 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 covers, its teachers, any prerequisites, the day and time of classes, where they take place, the ages and (where it applies) the gender the course is open to, and the monthly fee. Where a term has start and end dates, the page shows them together with the number of monthly payments and the total for that term, and the price of paying for the course in full. A course with no end date is open-ended, and its page shows no end date.

You take a place on the registration form, in one go:

• Confirm your email address with the code we email you. If you are already signed in, your address is already confirmed.
• Read the course conditions, which the form shows you, to the end, tick "I have read all of the conditions above." and confirm that you agree to them. The conditions, as a student taking their own place reads them, are:
  1. I agree to attend all the lessons. However, in the unforeseen circumstances of absence, I must inform you in advance via the portal. More than four absences per year will cause concern for my academic progress and eligibility to take the exam.
  2. I agree to be punctual to the lessons.
  3. I agree to do the required homework & practice sessions outside the class.
  4. I agree to engage actively in discussions, group work, and class activities.
  A parent or guardian agrees to the same conditions on the child's behalf, and the form words them about the child, for example "I agree that your child will be punctual to the lessons."
• Send the form. Nothing is paid when you do.

Places are decided when the form is sent, in the order families send it. If there is room, the place is confirmed there and then — that is when your contract for the course is made, and the 14-day period in Section 6.5 starts on that day. If the group is full and we are running a waitlist, the student is added to the waitlist instead and nothing is owed until a place is offered. If a registration is held for us to check (for example, the student's age, Section 3), the place is decided when we have checked it. If a registration cannot be finished there and then, we email you how to finish it in the portal; a registration that is not finished within 14 days expires, and you would need to register again. We email you when the place is confirmed, with the course, the term, the class times, the date of the first lesson, where classes take place and the attendance expectation. These terms are always available on this page, and the version you accepted is recorded on your account.

6.2 The fee

Every course is priced as a monthly fee, shown on the course page before you register. It is fixed once the place is confirmed — we will not increase it for that place. Fees for future courses may change, but you will always see the fee before you register. If a course page says "Fee on request", contact us before registering.

6.3 Ways to pay

Nothing is paid when you register or when the place is confirmed, and there is no joining fee or deposit. We ask for payment after the student's first class: once it has taken place, if nothing has been paid, we email you, and leave a notification in the portal, asking you to choose how to pay on the Payments page. You see the amount before you go to payment. The ways to pay are:

• Monthly. Offered on every course. The monthly fee is taken each month, starting on the day you set up payment. It is due for every month — including months with holidays and months in which the student does not attend. On a course with an end date, monthly payments stop automatically when the course ends. On a course with no end date, they continue until the place ends (Section 7.2 explains how).
• In full. Offered on a course with an end date that runs for more than a month. One payment covers the whole of the course the place covers, and costs the total of its monthly fees less one month's fee.
• In two instalments. Offered on the same courses as paying in full. The total of the monthly fees less £5, split into two equal payments, the second taken a month after the first.
• Annually. Offered only on courses with no end date. One payment covers a year, and costs the monthly fee × 11 — a year for the price of 11 months. It does not renew automatically: we remind you before the year ends, and you then choose again how to pay. If you already pay monthly on a course with no end date, you can switch to paying annually from the Payments page; the switch takes effect when the month you have already paid for ends, with no part-payments or credits.

Access to the course is not paused because fees are unpaid. About a week after the student's first class, if payment still has not been set up, we send you one reminder. If it still has not been set up after that, the office will contact you. Payments are made by card, or by another method our secure payment page offers. We do not charge interest, late-payment fees or any fee for paying monthly.

6.4 Family discounts and fee waivers

We may agree a family discount, or a fee waiver or reduction for an individual student, in individual cases. Any discount or waiver is recorded on the account, applied to the amounts you are asked to pay, and shown on the Payments page.

6.5 Your 14-day right to change your mind

Because you enrol online, UK law gives you 14 days to cancel for any reason, with no explanation needed, whichever way you pay. The 14 days are calendar days counted from the day the place is confirmed (Section 6.1), and a request made on the 14th day is in time. For a student who was on the waitlist, that is the day the student is given the place, not the day you registered.

• How to cancel. Contact the office: email info@ihyainstitute.co.uk or write to us at the address above, saying that you want to cancel. You only need to tell us before the 14 days end.
• Your refund. We refund everything you have paid for the place, in full and with no deduction, within 14 days of hearing from you. The refund goes back to the card or account you paid from. Any further payments are stopped.
• Lessons in the 14 days. The student can start attending straight away. We do not ask you to request an early start, and we make no deduction for any lessons the student attended before you cancelled.
• 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. The "End course" option in 7.2 cannot be used during those 14 days.

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

On a course with an end date, the fee is for the whole of the course the place covers — the term the student starts in and any later terms of the course (Section 6). On a course with no end date, the place and its fee carry on until the place ends under this section. Either way, simply stopping attendance, or cancelling a payment, does not end the fee. But you are not locked in either: 7.2 gives you a clear way to end the place early and says what you owe if you do. Nothing outside this section adds to that amount.

A course with an end date is divided into terms. Each term's start and end dates are shown on the course page where they have been set. A course with no end date has no term to end, so notice on it works differently — see 7.2.

7.2 Ending the place by giving notice

• You can end the student's place at any time by giving notice, on a course with or without an end date. You do not need to give a reason. Use the "End course" option on the Payments page in your account (available to a parent or guardian, and to a student aged 18 or over who pays for their own place), or email info@ihyainstitute.co.uk. Your notice counts from the day we receive it. If you use the Payments page we email you a confirmation straight away; if you email us, we will confirm in writing within 2 working days. The confirmation gives the date the place ends and the total you owe.
• When notice takes effect: courses with an end date. 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 current term.
• When notice takes effect: courses with no end date. There is no term to end, so the place ends one calendar month after the day we receive your notice. If the following month has no such day, the place ends on its last day: for example, notice received on 31 January ends the place on 28 February (29 February in a leap year). If we close the course before then, Section 7.4 applies instead.
• What you owe. Fees up to the date the notice takes effect, and nothing after that. The student keeps the place and is still expected in class until then. Fees are worked out at the monthly fee, after any family discount or fee waiver (Section 6.4), with part of a month counted as a whole month. The lower price of paying in full, in two instalments or for the year is the price of the whole period, so it does not apply to a place that ends early.
• The limit. On a course with an end date, the most you can ever owe for the current term and after it is the fee for the current term plus, if your notice was late, one further month's fee. Fees for earlier terms that have already finished remain payable in full. You will never owe more than that.
• Payments and refunds. Monthly payments, and instalments, continue until the notice takes effect and then stop automatically — you do not need to cancel anything. If you have already paid more than you owe, we refund the difference to the card or account you paid from within 14 days of our confirmation. Once the last payment has been taken, we check the total you have paid against what you owe and refund anything over it.
• 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 the "End course" option is not available. For some places the portal cannot work out when the place would end, for example where its course has dates for only some of its terms, and the "End course" option cannot be used. Email us instead, as above, and we will confirm in writing the date the place ends and the total you owe under this section.

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 card payment fails, it is tried again automatically over the following weeks, and we email you a reminder every few days while it is overdue. Lessons, and access to the course on the portal, continue while the payment is being retried. You can update your card from the Payments page, or contact us if you need help.
• If the payment still cannot be taken, the office will contact you. Access to the course is not paused because of it. Missing a payment does not end the place, and does not end the fee (Section 7.1) — to end the place, give notice under 7.2.
• 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. Anything a student needs before starting a course is listed under "Prerequisites" on the course page, where the course has any.

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, you keep the place until the end of the period you have already paid for, and nothing further is charged: billing stops straight away, and any unpaid invoice still open for the course is cancelled. Where we need to act immediately to protect someone, we may also suspend the account straight away, as described above.
• 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.