Terms & Conditions

1. About LADDER English and who operates it

LADDER English is an online educational learning platform for AQA GCSE English Language (8700) and English Literature (8702). It provides teaching material, practice activities, guided writing tools, mock papers and an AI study assistant ("the AI Tutor").

LADDER English is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or approved by AQA. Levels, rungs, working grades and feedback shown in the platform are practice estimates designed to guide your next step in learning. They are not official grades, moderated marks or predictions of an exam result.

LADDER English is intended for GCSE English learners and may be used by students aged 13–17, as well as by parents, carers, teachers and schools.

By creating an account or using the platform you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the platform.

2. Intellectual property

The LADDER English software, website, design, branding, logos, the LADDER method, the Kelly Framework, teaching frameworks, lessons, worksheets, questions, extracts written for the platform, model answers, feedback content, mock papers, written resources and other original content are owned by, or properly licensed to, LADDER English and are protected by copyright, database rights, trade mark law and other applicable intellectual property laws.

You are given a personal, limited, non-transferable right to use LADDER content for your own learning (or, for a school or parent account, for the learning of the students covered by that account) for as long as your account and any applicable subscription remain in good standing. Reasonable personal use includes viewing lessons, completing activities, and printing or saving downloadable material for the student's own study.

Without our prior written permission, you must not:

• reproduce, redistribute, republish or publicly post LADDER content;
• commercially exploit LADDER content, including using it in paid tutoring, resources or courses;
• systematically download, harvest, scrape or index content, whether manually or by automated means;
• copy substantial portions of the content, including by re-typing, screenshotting or exporting in bulk;
• sell, rent, sublicense or otherwise transfer access to the content;
• share content outside the permitted use of your account;
• use LADDER content to train, fine-tune or evaluate a machine-learning model;
• remove, obscure or alter any copyright, trade mark, watermark or attribution notice.

Third-party material such as literary texts quoted for study purposes remains the property of its respective rights holders and is used only to the extent permitted by law or licence.

Content you write yourself — your answers, essays and notes — remains yours. You give us the permission we need to store, display and process it in order to run the platform, provide feedback and meet our safeguarding responsibilities, as described in the Privacy Policy.

3. Security and access controls

Parts of LADDER English are available only on particular plans. You must not attempt to obtain or use content or functionality you are not entitled to. In particular, you must not:

• bypass or attempt to bypass subscription or plan restrictions;
• circumvent, disable or interfere with authentication or session controls;
• defeat or attempt to defeat technical access controls, rate limits, quotas or paywalls;
• obtain Plus or Premium functionality without a valid entitlement;
• interfere with, probe or degrade the security or availability of the platform;
• exploit, or attempt to exploit, a vulnerability in the platform;
• use bots, crawlers, scripts or other automated means in a way that abuses the service;
• access content, accounts or data through unauthorised technical means;
• reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to derive the source of the platform except where the law expressly permits it.

If you believe you have found a security vulnerability, please report it to us at tutorenglishelevate@gmail.com rather than testing it further or disclosing it publicly.

4. Accounts and account use

You are responsible for keeping your login details secure and for activity carried out using your account. Do not share your password. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has access to your account.

An individual student account is for one student. Accounts are not to be shared between students, classes, families or organisations. School, class and parent features are provided separately and must be used through those features rather than by sharing a single student login.

You must give accurate account information and must not impersonate another person, a teacher, a school or LADDER English.

We may suspend or terminate access where there is a serious breach of these terms, repeated breaches after being asked to stop, unlawful use, a genuine safeguarding or security risk, or unresolved payment problems. Where it is reasonable and lawful to do so, we will tell you why and give you an opportunity to respond. You can stop using the platform and ask us to close your account at any time.

5. Subscriptions, payments and cancellation

LADDER English offers a free tier and two paid monthly plans:

• LADDER Plus — £4.99 per month
• LADDER Premium — £12.99 per month

Paid plans are recurring monthly subscriptions. Unless cancelled, they renew automatically each month and the plan price is charged again for the next month. Prices shown at checkout include any applicable tax, and may be displayed in your local currency.

Purchases by an adult. Subscriptions and payment details must be provided or authorised by a parent, carer or other responsible adult. If you are under 18, please ask a parent, carer or responsible adult to complete or authorise the purchase.

Who takes your payment. Payments and subscription management are handled by Paddle, our payment provider, acting as merchant of record for the sale. Paddle's Buyer Terms and Refund Policy apply to payment, billing, tax, invoicing, cancellation and refund handling. LADDER English never sees or stores your card details. Your access inside the platform is determined by the subscription records supplied by that payment system.

Cancelling. You can cancel a subscription at any time using the "Manage subscription" button on the Membership page, which opens Paddle's secure subscription management page, or by emailing tutorenglishelevate@gmail.com. Cancelling stops future renewals. You keep access to the plan you have paid for until the end of the billing period you have already paid for, after which the account returns to the Free tier. Your saved progress is not deleted when a paid plan ends.

Refunds and the right to withdraw. Your statutory rights as a consumer are not affected by these terms, and nothing here removes them. Under UK consumer law you normally have a 14-day right to withdraw from a distance purchase of digital content or services, subject to the conditions and exceptions that apply — including where you have asked to begin using the service immediately and acknowledged that you may lose the right to withdraw once supply has begun. Refunds and withdrawal requests are handled by Paddle under its refund policy; you can request one through paddle.net or by emailing us and we will help. We do not operate a blanket "no refunds" rule and we do not add cancellation restrictions of our own.

Feature sets, content and plan contents may develop over time as the platform is improved. If we make a change that materially reduces what your current paid plan provides, we will act reasonably and, where appropriate, tell you in advance.

We reserve the right to suspend or withdraw access where there is fraud, a chargeback or other payment problem, or serious misuse of the service, subject to applicable law and your legal rights.

For professional review before launch: the exact wording of the withdrawal / cooling-off clause for digital content and services, and how the acknowledgement of immediate supply is captured at checkout, should be confirmed by a qualified UK consumer-law adviser against Paddle's current buyer terms.

6. Educational scope and outcomes

LADDER English is an educational learning platform. It provides educational information, teaching explanations and learning tools.

It does not replace a teacher, a school, a parent or carer, a qualified professional or any other appropriate source of support and advice. It is a study aid used alongside those things, not instead of them.

Educational outcomes cannot be guaranteed. Progress depends on many factors outside our control, including how much the student practises, their starting point, teaching received elsewhere and the exam itself. Nothing in the platform is a promise of a particular grade or result.

Students remain responsible for their own use of the platform and their own learning decisions, including what work they submit to their school and how they use feedback given here. Exam entries, coursework rules and academic-honesty requirements are matters for the student's school and exam board.

7. Mental health and wellbeing

LADDER English is an educational learning platform. It is not a medical service, not a mental-health service and not an emergency service. It cannot assess, diagnose, monitor or treat any medical or mental-health condition, and it should not be relied upon for crisis or emergency support.

The platform, including the AI Tutor, is not staffed as a support line and is not monitored continuously. Messages are not guaranteed to be read by a person at the time they are sent.

If a student is worried about themselves or someone else, they should speak to a trusted adult — a parent or carer, their teacher or their school's designated safeguarding lead — or to a qualified professional. If someone is at immediate risk of harm, contact the emergency services or an appropriate urgent-help service straight away.

We take wellbeing seriously and build safeguarding measures into the platform, which are described on our Safeguarding page. Those measures exist to help direct a student toward appropriate human support; they are not a substitute for it.

8. The AI Tutor

The AI Tutor is an educational tool that uses automated systems to generate replies about GCSE English study. It is designed to stay within that subject scope and includes additional safety checks.

• AI-generated responses may occasionally be incorrect, incomplete or out of date.
• You should use your own judgement, check important points, and rely on your teacher, your set text and official AQA materials where accuracy matters.
• AI responses are not professional medical, mental-health, legal, financial or emergency advice, and must not be treated as such.
• Where something matters beyond English study, speak to a teacher, a parent or carer, or an appropriate qualified professional.
• Do not enter unnecessary personal information — full name, address, phone number, school name or social-media details — into the AI Tutor.
• Do not use the AI Tutor to produce work that you then present as your own where your school's rules do not allow it.

Usage limits apply on some plans, and we may apply fair-use limits to keep the service available for everyone.

9. Acceptable use

When using LADDER English you must not:

• abuse, harass, threaten, bully or discriminate against any person;
• use the platform for anything unlawful, or to encourage unlawful activity;
• submit content that is obscene, hateful, or harmful to others;
• attempt to compromise the security, integrity or availability of the platform;
• scrape, crawl or automatically extract content or data;
• copy content for commercial exploitation;
• impersonate another person, a school, a teacher or LADDER English;
• attempt to circumvent subscription, plan or entitlement controls;
• upload malicious code, or interfere with another user's use of the service.

We may remove content and restrict or end access where this section is breached.

10. Availability and changes

We aim to keep LADDER English available and working well, but we cannot promise uninterrupted access. Maintenance, updates, third-party outages and technical faults can interrupt the service.

We may add, change or remove features, and we may update these terms. Where a change to these terms is significant, we will take reasonable steps to make it clear. Continuing to use the platform after a change means you accept the updated terms.

11. Our responsibility and limits on liability

We will provide the service with reasonable care and skill, as required by UK law.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes our liability where it would be unlawful to do so. In particular, we do not exclude or limit liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law — including your non-excludable rights as a consumer.

Subject to that, and to the extent permitted by law: we are not liable for loss or damage that was not reasonably foreseeable, for loss caused by your own breach of these terms, or for business losses such as loss of profit, business, contracts or commercial opportunity (the platform is provided for personal and educational use).

We are not responsible for the content, accuracy or availability of third-party websites, services or materials that we link to or that process payments, and we are not responsible for decisions made by a school, exam board or other third party.

Where we are liable to a paying user for loss caused by our breach of these terms, our total liability is limited, to the extent permitted by law, to a reasonable amount, and we will act fairly and proportionately having regard to the amounts paid for the service.

12. Law and complaints

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction. If you live elsewhere in the UK, you keep the benefit of any mandatory consumer protections available to you locally.

If something has gone wrong, please tell us first — most issues are resolved quickly. Email tutorenglishelevate@gmail.com. The tutor aims to respond within 24 hours, although she may be teaching.

13. Contact

Questions about these terms, your account, your data or safeguarding can be sent to tutorenglishelevate@gmail.com.