Terms of Use

THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND SEPTA

Academic Connect (Pty) Ltd, trading as Septa · Reference SEPTA-01 · Version 1.3

Effective 28 September 2026 · Next review 28 September 2027

About These Terms

These Terms of Use are the agreement between you and Academic Connect (Pty) Ltd, trading as Septa, when you use the Septa website or mobile application. Please read them before you create an account.

Septa is used by school learners, by university students, and by tutors who are often students themselves. Many people here are under 18, on both sides of a session. Where a term applies differently to someone under 18, or to the parent or guardian who consents on their behalf, we say so in that section rather than leaving it to be worked out.

These Terms should be read with our Privacy Policy and POPIA Notice, which explains how we handle personal information.

Some of the sections below limit what we are responsible for. Those sections are marked and written in plain language, because section 49 of the Consumer Protection Act requires that any term limiting our liability is brought to your attention before you agree to it. Please read them rather than skip them.

Who We Are and How to Reach Us

These details are provided in terms of section 43 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act 25 of 2002.

We are not currently a member of a self-regulatory or accreditation body, and we do not subscribe to an external code of conduct. If that changes we will say so here.

Definitions

• "Child" means a person under the age of 18, as defined in the Children's Act 38 of 2005 and POPIA.
• "Competent person" means a person legally able to consent on behalf of a Child, ordinarily a parent or legal guardian.
• "Learner" means a user registered to find tutoring, study material or information about further study.
• "Tutor" means a user registered to offer tutoring or academic support through the Service.
• "Session" means a tutoring session booked through the Service.
• "Credit" means value held on your account, either bought in advance as a package or given back to you instead of a cash refund.
• "Content" means anything a user posts, uploads, sends or otherwise makes available through the Service.
• "Service" means the Septa website, mobile application and related services.
• "We", "us" and "our" mean Academic Connect (Pty) Ltd, trading as Septa.

What Septa Is, and What It Is Not

Septa is a marketplace and a learning community. We connect learners with tutors, host the tools they use to arrange and run a session, and publish information about universities, courses and bursaries.

When you book a session, the tutoring agreement is between you and the tutor. We are not the tutor. We do not employ tutors, we do not set what they teach or how they teach it, and we are not a party to that agreement. We provide the platform on which it is made, we take the payment, and we pass it on.

This matters for what we can and cannot be responsible for, and the section headed Limitation of Liability says so directly.

Bursaries listed on Septa are published for information. You apply to the bursary provider on their own site and under their own rules. We are not the provider, we do not decide who receives funding, and we do not submit anything on your behalf.

University and course information, and the APS calculator, are also published for information. Every institution sets its own admission requirements and can change them. Always confirm against the institution before you rely on anything you read here.

Who May Use Septa

A learner may use Septa at any school-going age. Because most learners are under 18, and because POPIA sections 34 and 35 prohibit processing a Child's personal information without the consent of a competent person, a learner under 18 needs a parent or guardian's consent to hold an account.

Under South African law a person under 18 has limited contractual capacity. An agreement concluded by a Child without the assistance of a guardian can be set aside at the Child's instance. That is why a parent or guardian consents, and why a parent or guardian is responsible for payments made on a Child's account.

A tutor may also be under 18. A matriculant who did well in a subject can help a learner in a lower grade, and we would rather that happened here, where it is checked, than not at all. A tutor under 18 needs their own parent or guardian's permission before their profile can go live. That permission is one of two things we require; the other is our own check of their identity and qualification documents. Neither on its own is enough.

Where a learner under 18 books a tutor who is also under 18, we tell the learner's parent or guardian the tutor's age before anything is agreed, and they give permission for that tutor. We ask once for each tutor, not once for each session. Where the learner is 18 or over there is no guardian to ask, so the tutor's age is shown on their profile and again when booking, and the learner decides for themselves.

You may not use Septa if we have previously closed your account for a breach of these Terms, unless we agree in writing that you may return.

When you register we ask whether you are 18 or older. If you are not, we also ask for the month and year you were born, never the day, so that messaging can open for you in the month you turn 16. Adults are not asked. You must answer honestly and keep the rest of your details accurate. Answering these questions untruthfully is a breach of these Terms, and we will act on it when it is reported to us. Where you apply as a tutor, we check your answer against the identity document you upload.

Your Account

You are responsible for what happens on your account. Keep your password to yourself, and tell us at support@septa.co.za if you think someone else has access to it.

One person, one account. Do not share an account, and do not create an account for someone else except where a parent or guardian is setting one up for their own child and consenting to it.

A learner account and a tutor account cannot share an email address. If you want to be both, use a different address for each.

You may close your account at any time from Settings. What happens to your information afterwards is set out in our Privacy Policy.

Booking a Session

You choose a tutor, a subject, a date and a duration, and you write a short brief describing what you need help with. The tutor sees the request and the brief.

A booking is confirmed when payment is completed, or when you spend Credits you already hold.

Sessions run online through the video tool built into the Service. You will need a device with a camera, a microphone and a working internet connection. We cannot be responsible for a session that fails because of your connection or your device.

Be on time, and treat the tutor's time as you would want yours treated. If you cannot make a session, cancel it rather than leave the tutor waiting. The section on Refunds and Cancellation explains what happens to the money.

Tutors

If you register as a tutor you are offering your services independently. You are not our employee, our agent or our partner, and nothing in these Terms creates an employment relationship between us.

You are responsible for your own tax affairs, including registering with the South African Revenue Service where you are required to and declaring what you earn through the Service.

When you register you tell us your subjects and your qualifications, and you upload documents supporting them. You confirm that what you tell us is true and that the documents are genuine. We may check them, and we may suspend or remove an account where they are not.

You set your own availability, and you are responsible for keeping it accurate. Repeatedly failing to appear for booked sessions is a breach of these Terms.

You must hold any registration or clearance the law requires for working with children in the context in which you are working. That obligation is yours, not ours.

If you are under 18, we ask for a parent or guardian's email address when you apply and we write to them for permission. Your profile cannot go live until they give it and your documents have passed our check. We also tell the parent or guardian of any learner under 18 that you are under 18, before they agree to you tutoring that learner.

You must not take a learner off the platform in order to avoid our fees, arrange payment outside the Service, or ask a learner for personal contact details for that purpose. This is set out again in What You May Not Do, and it is one of the breaches we act on most firmly.

Fees, Payment and Credits

Tutoring on Septa is paid. The price of a session, and the fee we charge on it, are shown to you before you pay. Nothing is charged until you confirm.

Payment is taken through a third-party payment provider. We do not receive or store your full card number. The provider currently in use is named in Schedule A of our Privacy Policy, and we will update that Schedule if it changes.

You may buy sessions in advance as a package. Prepaid sessions are treated as prepaid credit under section 63 of the Consumer Protection Act, which means the value stays available to you. We do not put an expiry date on them.

Prices are in South African Rand and include value added tax where it applies.

Refunds and Cancellation

A full Refund and Cancellation Policy will be published before Septa opens to the public. It will set out how cancellations, no-shows and poor sessions are handled, and where you can choose credit towards another session instead of money back. Credit avoids the charges a payment provider applies to a cash refund, and it can be used with any tutor for the same value.

Until that policy is published, the position set out here applies, and it reflects what the law gives you in any event.

If a session does not take place because the tutor does not appear, or is cancelled by the tutor, you are not charged for it. Where you have already paid, you receive the value back.

If a session is not performed to a reasonable standard, section 54 of the Consumer Protection Act entitles you to ask us to put it right or to refund you a reasonable portion of what you paid. Write to support@septa.co.za and tell us what went wrong.

Section 44 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act gives a consumer a cooling-off right on certain electronic transactions. Where it applies to what you bought, you may cancel within the period that section allows and receive a refund.

Prepaid sessions and credit you hold are prepaid credit under section 63 of the Consumer Protection Act. The value remains available to you for the period that section requires, and we cannot agree with you to shorten it.

Where a refund is due it is paid to the payment method used for the purchase. Where the account belongs to a Child, a refund in money is paid to the parent or guardian who authorised the payment.

Nothing in this section limits a right you have under the Consumer Protection Act or the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act. Where anything we have written conflicts with those Acts, the Acts apply.

Tutor Payouts

Where you are a tutor, we collect payment from the learner and pay you what is due after our fee and the payment provider's fee.

You give us your banking details so that we can pay you. They are stored encrypted and shown back to you only in masked form.

We may hold a payout where a session is disputed, where we are investigating a report about you, or where we are required to by law. We will tell you why, and we will not hold it longer than the reason requires.

What You May Not Do

This section is the heart of these Terms. Most of it exists because our users are children.

You may not:

• Contact a learner off the platform, or ask a learner for a personal phone number, social media handle or private address, except where a parent or guardian has asked you to and is part of that contact.
• Arrange or accept payment for tutoring outside the Service, or ask anyone to.
• Post, send or upload sexual content, or content that sexualises a child in any way.
• Attempt to develop a personal or romantic relationship with a learner.
• Bully, threaten, intimidate, stalk or harass anyone, or encourage anyone else to.
• Post content that incites violence, or that promotes hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability or any other protected ground.
• Post or send content that encourages self-harm, suicide or disordered eating.
• Share another person's personal information without their permission.
• Impersonate anyone, or claim qualifications, experience or an identity that is not yours.
• Sell, advertise or promote anything that is not tutoring or study support, including recruiting users to another platform or service.
• Upload anything that infringes another person's copyright, trade mark or other rights, including past examination papers or textbooks you do not have the right to share.
• Upload malware, or anything designed to damage, disable or gain unauthorised access to the Service or to another user's device or account.
• Scrape, crawl, harvest or copy the Service or its content by automated means, or build a dataset or model from it, without our written permission.
• Attempt to access another user's account, or any part of the Service you have not been given access to.
• Interfere with the Service, including circumventing rate limits, security controls or any technical measure we put in place.
• Use the Service for anything unlawful, or to help anyone else do anything unlawful.
• Submit work produced by a tutor or by the Service as your own where the institution assessing you does not allow it.

We act on breaches of this section. Depending on what happened, we may remove content, restrict an account, suspend it, close it permanently, or report the matter to the South African Police Service. Where a child may be at risk we will report it, and we will not wait to be asked.

Content You Post

You keep ownership of what you post. You are responsible for it, and for having the right to post it.

By posting content you give us permission to store it, display it to the users you intended it for, and reproduce it as far as running the Service requires. That permission ends when you delete the content or close your account, except where we must keep something to meet a legal obligation or to deal with a report already made.

We do not review everything that is posted before it appears. We do review content that is reported to us.

We may remove content that breaches these Terms, that we are required to remove by law, or that we are notified about under the procedure set out in the next section.

Reporting, Blocking and Takedown

Every post and every comment can be reported from the menu on it. Every session can be reported from My Sessions once it has taken place. You can block another user from their profile, and you can see and undo your blocks in Settings under Privacy.

Reports about a child's safety go to the front of the queue. Everything else is looked at in turn.

If you believe content on Septa infringes your rights or is unlawful, you may send us a take-down notification under section 77 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act. Send it to support@septa.co.za, or by post to the Information Officer, Academic Connect (Pty) Ltd, 1 Inyanga Cl, Sunninghill, Sandton, Johannesburg, 2157. It must carry the detail that section requires: your full name and address, your signature, the right you say is affected, the material and where to find it, the remedial action you want, your contact details, a statement that you are acting in good faith, and a statement that the information in the notice is true to the best of your knowledge.

Section 77(2) of that Act makes a person who knowingly misrepresents in a take-down notification liable for damages. Please do not send one unless you mean it.

We will act on a valid notification. Acting on it is not an admission that we agree with it.

We do not monitor everything posted on Septa, and section 78 of that Act does not require us to. We act on what is reported to us, and on what our own checks find.

Child Safety

We build for learners, which means we design for children. If you see something that worries you about a child on Septa, report it. If you would rather tell a person than use a form, write to support@septa.co.za.

Tutors: keep contact with a learner on the platform, keep it about the work, and involve the parent or guardian where anything falls outside that. If a learner tells you something that worries you, tell us.

Learners: you never have to move a conversation off Septa, give out your phone number, or meet anyone in person. Anyone who asks you to is breaking our rules, and you can report them. If someone makes you uncomfortable, block them, and tell an adult you trust.

Parents and guardians: you can ask us what we hold about your child, ask us to correct it, or ask us to close the account. The Privacy Policy sets out how.

Suspension and Termination

We may restrict, suspend or close an account that breaches these Terms. Where the breach puts a child at risk, or where the law requires it, we may act immediately and without notice.

Otherwise we will tell you what we believe happened and give you a chance to respond before we close an account, unless doing so would defeat the purpose.

If we close your account, any prepaid value you have not used is refunded to you, unless it was obtained through fraud.

You may close your account at any time. Closing it does not cancel a session already booked and paid for, and does not end an obligation that was already owed.

Availability of the Service

We work to keep Septa available, but we do not promise that it will be available without interruption. We may take it down for maintenance, and parts of it depend on services we do not control, including the video tool, the payment provider and the network you are on.

We may change, add or remove features. Where a change materially reduces something you have paid for, we will tell you and put it right.

Limitation of Liability

Please read this section. It limits what we are responsible for, and section 49 of the Consumer Protection Act requires us to draw it to your attention.

We are responsible for running the Service with reasonable skill and care. We are not responsible for what a tutor or a learner does, because the tutoring agreement is between them and not with us. If a tutor behaves badly, tell us and we will act under these Terms, but the service itself was theirs to deliver.

We are not responsible for a decision made by a university, a college or a bursary provider, or for a change in their requirements, or for information published by them that turns out to be wrong.

We are not responsible for a loss caused by something outside our reasonable control, including a failure of your internet connection or device, a failure of the payment provider or the video provider, or an event neither of us could have prevented.

Where we are liable to you, our liability is limited to the greater of two amounts: what you paid us in the three months before the event that caused the loss, and R1,000.

The floor of R1,000 applies even if you have paid us nothing. Much of Septa can be used without paying, and a limit worked out only from payments would leave those users with no remedy at all.

Nothing in this section limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit. Nothing in it takes away a right you have under the Consumer Protection Act.

Indemnity

If someone brings a claim against us because of something you did on Septa that breached these Terms or the law, you agree to cover the costs we reasonably incur in dealing with it. This does not apply where the claim arises from something we did.

This section does not apply to a Child. A person under 18 gives no indemnity under these Terms, and a parent or guardian who consented to a Child's account does not give one for what the Child did.

Privacy

How we collect, use, share and protect personal information is set out in our Privacy Policy and POPIA Notice, which forms part of these Terms.

In short: we collect what the Service needs, we do not sell personal information, we apply extra protection to a Child's information, and we tell you who processes what on our behalf.

We do not use your content to train artificial intelligence models. Not your messages, not your posts, not your sessions, and not what you search for. If that ever changes we will tell you before it does and ask for your agreement. The Privacy Policy states the same thing in its list of what we do not do.

Intellectual Property

The Septa name, the Septa logo, the design of the Service and the material we publish on it belong to us. You may not copy, adapt or reuse them without our written permission.

Content posted by users belongs to those users, as set out above.

Material published by a university, a college or a bursary provider belongs to them. We reproduce it for information.

Complaints and Disputes

Tell us first. Write to support@septa.co.za and set out what happened. We will acknowledge it and give you an answer.

If we cannot resolve it between us, you may refer a consumer complaint to the National Consumer Commission, or to a consumer court or ombud with jurisdiction. A complaint about personal information may be referred to the Information Regulator, as set out in the Privacy Policy.

Nothing in these Terms takes away your right to approach a court.

Changes to These Terms

We may change these Terms. Where a change is material we will tell you before it takes effect and, where your agreement is needed, we will ask for it again.

The version and effective date at the top of this document tell you which version you are reading. We keep a record of which version each user accepted.

General

These Terms are governed by the law of the Republic of South Africa, and the courts of South Africa have jurisdiction.

If a court finds any part of these Terms unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.

If we do not enforce a term immediately, that does not mean we have given it up.

These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and POPIA Notice, are the whole agreement between us about your use of the Service.

You may not transfer your rights under these Terms to someone else. We may transfer ours if the business is sold, on condition that the same protections continue to apply to you.

In Plain Language, for Learners

Septa connects you with tutors. The tutor is not us. If a session goes wrong, tell us and we will sort it out, but the lesson was theirs to teach.

If you are under 18, a parent or guardian has to say yes to your account. That is the law, not our preference.

You pay for tutoring before the session. If the tutor does not show up, you get your money back. If the session was poor, tell us and we will put it right.

Nobody on Septa should ask you to chat somewhere else, ask for your phone number, ask to meet you, or say anything sexual to you. If that happens, block them and report them. You will not be in trouble for reporting someone.

Do not post other people's work as your own, do not share exam papers you are not allowed to share, and do not post anything you would not want a teacher to see.

If anything here does not make sense, write to support@septa.co.za and ask. We would rather explain it.