Last updated 7 July 2026
These terms are the agreement between you and UpMark when you use our website and service. We've kept them plain. By creating an account or booking a lesson, you agree to them.
A parent or guardian can create and manage an account on behalf of a learner under 18 and is responsible for it. By adding a child, you confirm you’re their parent or guardian and consent to their details being used to arrange tutoring.
A learner under 18 may also hold their own account, but it stays read-only until a parent or guardian confirms the link. Until that confirmation, they cannot book a lesson, message a tutor or join a class. We ask the learner for a parent or guardian’s email and that person has to confirm from their own account or from an emailed link — a confirmed link means someone controlling a different email address agreed to it, which is not the same as us verifying who they are.
UpMark is a marketplace that connects students and parents with independent tutors, and handles matching, scheduling and payments. Tutors are independent providers, not employees of UpMark. We facilitate the connection and the payment; the lesson itself is delivered by the tutor. We verify tutors before they can take lessons, but we don’t guarantee any particular academic result.
Please give accurate information and keep it up to date, keep your password secure, and let us know if you think someone else has accessed your account. You’re responsible for activity that happens under your account.
Lessons are priced and paid in South African Rand (ZAR) through our payments provider, Paystack. When you book, you pay upfront and UpMark holds the payment. The tutor’s share is released once the lesson is confirmed by you, or automatically 72 hours after a lesson whose attendance code was entered, or 7 days after a lesson that nobody confirms and nobody reports a problem with. You have 48 hours after a lesson to report a problem; a report after the share has been released is reviewed but the release is not reversed. We hold the money as the platform; it is not kept in a separate trust account.
UpMark keeps a platform fee of up to 15% of the lesson fee, and the tutor receives the rest. Some tutors are on individually agreed rates. The fee depends on how much the tutor teaches and their rating: it starts at 15%, falls to 12% at four confirmed lesson hours a week and 11% at nine, measured on a rolling four-week average, and a rating above 4.0★ reduces it by up to a further 2 percentage points once the tutor has completed 10 lessons.
The fee for a lesson is fixed when that lesson is booked and does not change afterwards, whatever happens to the tutor’s rate later.
The fee covers secure payments, matching, the lesson tools, scheduling and support. Tutors set their own rates.
The platform fee is calculated on the lesson fee only. If an in-person lesson includes a travel fee, that travel amount goes to the tutor in full — we take no percentage of it. Paystack collects the whole amount you pay at checkout, and the platform fee is simply the part we don’t pay out to the tutor when the lesson is released — it isn’t deducted from your payment separately, and there is nothing extra for you to pay.
You can cancel a lesson at any time, right up to the moment it starts. What comes back depends on how much notice you give:
Any travel fee is always refunded in full, whatever the notice — you’re never charged for a journey that didn’t happen. Moving a lesson is itself free and never charges you on its own. You can move a lesson yourself from your dashboard any time before it starts.
Rescheduling doesn’t reset your cancellation notice. If you reschedule a lesson and then cancel it, the cancellation fee is worked out from whichever notice period is shorter — the original lesson time or the new one. This keeps a late cancellation from being reclassified as an early one by moving the lesson first. It never affects a lesson you go ahead with. And if both your original lesson time and your new lesson time are more than 12 hours away when you cancel, nothing changes for you — a fee only applies if one of the two falls inside the late-cancellation window.
If your tutor cancels a lesson before it happens, you’re refunded in full, automatically. If a lesson has already taken place, a tutor can’t cancel it for a refund — it’s held for an UpMark administrator to review instead. If your tutor doesn’t turn up, tell us within 48 hours of the lesson — use Report a problem on the lesson, or email support@upmarktutoring.com. We don’t detect a no-show automatically, so we need you to tell us; an UpMark administrator will review it and put it right.
Refunds are returned via Paystack to your original payment method. We don’t keep our platform fee on the refunded portion. Group classes use the same graduated scale as 1:1 lessons: a seat is refunded in full more than 12 hours before the class, and 60% under 12 hours, with the tutor keeping 40% for the seat they can no longer refill. A class’s seats are released 12 hours after the class ends once any student’s attendance code has been entered.
If you choose a weekly lesson, we book the same slot each week and charge your saved card before each one, until you cancel. You can cancel the series at any time from your dashboard; the cancellation scale above applies to each lesson individually.
To take lessons you must complete verification (identity and proof of your results) and keep your profile accurate. You’re an independent provider responsible for your own tax and for delivering lessons professionally and safely. UpMark may decline or remove a tutor who doesn’t meet our standards.
Your share is released for payout once the lesson is confirmed, or automatically after the release period set out in the buyer section above. You need to have saved your payout details before anything can be paid out to you. We don’t promise a specific payout timing here; if a payout is delayed, contact us and we’ll tell you where it is.
You can decline a new booking within 24 hours of it being made, as long as the lesson is still more than 24 hours away, up to three times a month; the student is refunded in full. You can also cancel a lesson that hasn’t happened yet, at any time, which refunds the student in full and is recorded — a cancellation within 24 hours of the lesson counts as a late cancellation in your public reliability stats. You can’t cancel a lesson you’ve already taught for a refund; if that comes up, an UpMark administrator reviews it instead. If you don’t answer a booking request in time, it expires and the student is refunded automatically. If we remove a tutor, every lesson that hasn’t happened yet is cancelled and refunded — one that’s already taken place is held for review.
Please don’t use UpMark to:
Lessons and messages should stay focused on tutoring. We may suspend or close accounts that break these rules.
You keep ownership of what you upload, but you give us permission to store and display it as needed to run the service (for example, showing a tutor’s profile, or delivering a message to the other party). Keep messages respectful and relevant to the lesson.
We work hard to match you well and to verify tutors, but tutoring outcomes depend on many things we don’t control. The service is provided “as is”, and we don’t promise a particular mark or result. To the extent the law allows, UpMark isn’t liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from use of the platform.
You can close your account at any time by contacting us. We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms or where needed to protect users or comply with the law. Amounts we are already holding for a booked lesson are handled according to the cancellation rules above.
We may update these terms as the service develops. When we make a material change we’ll update the date at the top and, where appropriate, let you know. Continuing to use UpMark after a change means you accept the updated terms.
These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa, and the South African courts have jurisdiction over any dispute.
Questions about these terms? Email support@upmarktutoring.com. See also how we handle your data in our Privacy policy.