Terms & Conditions: Politics Online

Last updated: 11 August 2026

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

These terms and conditions (“Terms”) govern your use of Politics Online (“the Platform”): our website, shop, revision resources, and interactive lessons, quizzes and progress tracking. You reach the Platform at politicsonline.co.uk. The interactive lessons are hosted for us by Vercel at learn.politicsonline.co.uk and open inside a page on politicsonline.co.uk. It is all one platform, run by one company; these Terms apply to all of it.

The lessons are currently a beta (test) release. Section 10 explains what that means, what it does not affect, and what you can do if a beta change or data reset spoils what you paid for. Please read it before you buy.

The Platform is provided by Politics Online Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 15985148), registered office: 3rd Floor, 86–90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE (“we”, “us”, “our”). Contact: admin@politicsonline.co.uk.

By creating an account, purchasing a subscription, or using the Platform, you agree to these Terms. If you are purchasing on behalf of a school or college, you confirm you have authority to bind that institution. If you are a student, section 8 summarises what these Terms mean for you.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle personal data and forms part of these Terms.

2. Definitions

Individual Subscription: a personal subscription purchased through our shop, which includes access to the Platform’s interactive lessons where stated in the product description at purchase.
Centre Licence: a licence purchased by a school or college giving its staff and students access to the Platform.
One-off purchase: a single product bought through our shop that is not a subscription, such as a revision event or webinar.
Content: all lessons, slides, quizzes, videos, model answers, articles and other materials on the Platform.
Beta: the current test release of the lessons, described in section 10.
Task: work a teacher sets a class or a student through the Platform, which the student can open from a task link and which records their progress against it.
Live lesson: a lesson a teacher opens for use during a class, so the class works through it together.

3. Eligibility and age requirements

You must be 16 or over to register an individual account.
If you are under 18, a parent or guardian must consent to your purchase of any subscription and to these Terms on your behalf.
Under-16s may not register directly. Access for under-16s may only be arranged by a parent, guardian, or school that has secured appropriate parental consent.
Student access to the Platform’s lessons is provided in one of two ways: through a subscribing school or college, which authorises and creates student accounts, or through an Individual Subscription, purchased directly by a student aged 16 or over (with parental consent if under 18).

4. Your account

You have one Politics Online account, which works across the whole Platform.
Keep your login details confidential and do not share your account with anyone.
You are responsible for activity under your account. Tell us promptly if you believe your account has been compromised.
Information you give us when registering must be accurate and kept up to date.
You must not attempt to access another user’s account or data.

5. Individual subscriptions, payment and cancellation

Prices are shown at checkout in pounds sterling. Payment is taken by Stripe or PayPal; we never see your full card details.
Your subscription starts when we confirm your order and payment has cleared.
Subscriptions do not renew automatically; access simply ends at the end of your subscription period unless you choose to renew.
Where your Individual Subscription includes the Platform’s interactive lessons, your learner profile is set up when your order is confirmed. Sections 7 and 8 apply to your use of the lessons, and for that data we act as data controller (see our Privacy Policy).

Your 14-day cancellation right

If you are a consumer, you may cancel your subscription for any reason within 14 days of purchase and receive a full refund, even if you have already accessed the content. To cancel, email admin@politicsonline.co.uk within the 14-day period. Refunds are made to your original payment method within 14 days of your request. This goes beyond the minimum required by the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013.

Nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights, including your rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 to digital content that is of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described.

If a beta change spoils what you paid for

Beyond the 14-day right above, you may cancel at any time and receive a refund for the unused part of your subscription if we make a beta change that materially reduces what your subscription delivers, or if your learning data is reset or lost as described in section 10 and that materially affects your use of the Platform. Email admin@politicsonline.co.uk. The same applies to a Centre Licence, pro rata to the remainder of its term.

One-off purchases

The same 14-day cancellation right applies to one-off purchases. For live events (such as revision webinars): if the event takes place within your 14-day period and you attend, you agree that the service has been supplied and a proportionate deduction may be made from any refund; if you cancel before the event, you receive a full refund.

6. Centre licences (schools and colleges)

Centre Licences are supplied under the order form or invoice agreed with the school, which together with these Terms forms the agreement.
Each subscribing school enters into a Data Processing Agreement with us covering student personal data, as required by Article 28 UK GDPR.
Centre Licences are sold during the beta release (section 10). The school is responsible for making its staff, students and, where appropriate, parents aware that the Platform is in beta and that learning data may be reset. We notify the school before any planned reset and export its data first on request.
The school is responsible for: authorising student access, obtaining any parental consents it needs, ensuring accounts are used only by its own staff and enrolled students, and telling students and parents about our Privacy Policy.
Teacher accounts may view the progress of students in their own classes only, and may set tasks, open lessons for live class use, and lock or unlock lessons for their own classes.
When a licence ends: student data is exported to the school within 30 days and then permanently deleted from our systems. Teachers are notified before deletion.
Fees for Centre Licences are as agreed on the order form and are payable within 30 days of invoice.

7. Acceptable use

The Platform is provided for educational use only. You must not:

Use the Platform for any unlawful purpose;
Attempt to interfere with, disrupt, probe, or gain unauthorised access to the Platform, other accounts, or our infrastructure;
Upload or share content that is offensive, harmful, defamatory, or infringes anyone’s rights;
Scrape, bulk-download, or systematically extract Content;
Share, resell, or make your access available to anyone who is not licensed to use it.

8. Students

This section is the plain-English summary for students using the Platform’s lessons. It sits alongside, not instead of, the rest of these Terms.

Who it’s for

The lessons are for A-Level Politics students, primarily aged 16–18, in England and Wales. You can use them in one of two ways:

Through your school: your school has an active subscription and has authorised your access. If your school has not set you up with an account, you should not use the lessons this way.
With your own subscription: you (or your parent or guardian, if you are under 18) have purchased an Individual Subscription that includes the lessons. You must be 16 or over.

Your account

Your account is created by your school or teacher, or by us, when you purchase an Individual Subscription
You must not share your login details with anyone
You must not try to access other students’ accounts or data
If you access through a school, your teacher can see your progress but not your login details. If you subscribe individually, no teacher or school sees your data. In limited circumstances our own support staff can access an account to help fix a problem; every such access is logged, supervised and time-limited (see our Privacy Policy)

Using it well

Use the Platform for learning and revision related to your A-Level Politics course
Don’t attempt to interfere with, disrupt, or exploit it
Don’t upload or share anything offensive, harmful, or unrelated to your studies
Report any bugs or issues to your teacher, or to us

Your data

We collect minimal data to make the lessons work: your first name, last initial, school (if you have one), and learning progress. No tracking tools, no advertising, no analytics cookies in the lessons. If you access through a school, your data is only visible to you and your teacher and is never shared outside your school; if you subscribe individually, it is visible only to you. Full details, including how to see or delete your data, are in our Privacy Policy.

Deleting your account

Ask your teacher (school access), or email admin@politicsonline.co.uk (any account). Teachers can also delete a school-provisioned account directly from their dashboard. Personal data is removed within 30 days; anonymised learning statistics may be retained for platform improvement.

When your school leaves

If you access through a school: when the school’s subscription ends, all student data is exported to the school within 30 days and then permanently deleted. Your teacher is notified before this happens. (This section does not apply to Individual Subscriptions.)

Tasks and live lessons

Your teacher can set you tasks, can open a lesson for the class to work through together, and can lock or unlock particular lessons for the class, so what you can open may change during your course. Your teacher sees your progress on tasks they set, in the same way as the rest of your progress. Task links are for you and your class: don’t pass them to anyone outside it.

Videos

Lesson videos are streamed by Vimeo with its tracking disabled; see our Privacy Policy for details.

This is a beta

The lessons are still being built and tested (section 10). Things may break, change, or move, and your progress could be reset, so keep your own notes of anything important. Use the Platform alongside your teacher, your specification and your textbooks, never as your only source. Tell your teacher or us when something looks wrong: that is how it gets fixed.

Your wellbeing

We want you to use the Platform in a way that is healthy and helpful. After 45 minutes in the lessons, we’ll gently remind you to take a break. There are no penalties for stepping away.

If the rules are broken

If an account is used in a way that seriously or repeatedly breaks these Terms, for example attempting to access other students’ data or deliberately disrupting the Platform, we may suspend or close it. For school-provisioned accounts we will tell your school, and your school decides what happens next; for Individual Subscriptions we will tell you (and the parent or guardian who purchased, if that applies). Suspension does not affect your data rights: you can still request a copy or deletion of your data at any time.

9. Content and intellectual property

All Content is owned by Politics Online Limited or its licensors and protected by copyright and other intellectual-property laws.
We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the Content for your own learning (or, for teachers, for teaching your own classes) during your subscription or licence.
You must not copy, redistribute, publish, or create derivative works from the Content without our written permission. Schools may use Content in their own classrooms as part of their licence.
Content is aligned to the Edexcel A-Level Politics specification, is written to be balanced and factual, and presents differing political viewpoints for educational purposes. We do not advocate any political position.

10. Availability, accuracy and the beta release

The Platform is provided “as is”. We aim for high availability but do not guarantee uninterrupted access; maintenance, updates, or events outside our control may cause interruptions.
We work hard to keep Content accurate and current, but we do not guarantee it is error-free. The Platform is a revision and learning aid; it does not guarantee any exam result. Students should always follow their teacher’s guidance.
Any demonstration or trial access we provide is supplied as-is and may be changed, reset, or withdrawn at any time.

Beta release

The lessons are a beta (test) release, provided “as is” and “as available”. This means:

You may meet errors, bugs, missing pieces, or interruptions, and the Platform may be unavailable at times.
We add, change and remove content, lessons, questions and features regularly, including without advance notice.
Learning data may be reset or lost. During beta we cannot guarantee that progress, scores, saved work or an account will be retained, backed up, or recoverable. Please keep your own copy of anything important, and do not treat the Platform as your only record of your work. Where we act as processor for a school, we will notify the school before any planned reset and, on request, export its students’ data first.
The Platform supports study; it does not replace teaching. It must not be used as a sole learning source for A-Level content: use it alongside your teacher, the official specification, textbooks and other resources. We do not guarantee that Content is complete, accurate or aligned with the current specification or exam requirements, and we do not guarantee any exam result. Exam performance depends on many things outside our control, so we are not liable for it. This does not exclude our responsibility, under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, for supplying digital content that is of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described.

Acknowledgement at first login. Everyone who signs in reads a short beta notice and must accept it to continue. We record the account, the date and time, and the version accepted, as evidence of what was agreed. Declining signs you out; if you have paid and do not wish to accept, you can ask for a refund under section 5.

For a student on a school-provisioned account, that acknowledgement is an awareness notice, not a separate contract: the contract for that access is between us and the school, and nothing the student clicks limits our liability to that student beyond what the law allows. A student who does not want to accept should speak to their teacher.

What beta does not affect. This section does not exclude or limit anything that cannot lawfully be excluded (see section 12), does not remove your statutory rights under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, and does not remove the refund rights in section 5. If a beta change materially reduces what you paid for, section 5 applies. Our obligations under data protection law and the Data Processing Agreement with each school apply in full during beta.

11. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or terminate an account that seriously or repeatedly breaches these Terms (including the acceptable-use rules), subject to notice where practicable. For school-provisioned student accounts, we will inform the school.
You can stop using the Platform at any time. Individual subscribers can request account deletion as described in the Privacy Policy; personal data is removed within 30 days.
On termination for breach, no refund is due for any remaining subscription period, except where the law requires otherwise.

12. Our liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be excluded or limited by law. Nothing in these Terms affects consumers’ statutory rights.
We are not liable for: loss or damage that is not foreseeable; loss caused by events outside our reasonable control; or loss arising from use of the Platform other than for its intended educational purpose.
For paying customers, our total liability arising out of or in connection with the Platform is limited to the amount you (or your school) paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.
We are not responsible for third-party websites linked from the Platform.

13. Changes to the Platform and to these Terms

We continually improve the Platform and may add, change, or remove features. During the beta release these changes are frequent and may happen without advance notice (section 10). If a change materially reduces what a paid subscription delivers, the refund right in section 5 applies.
We may update these Terms. Significant changes will be notified to account holders (the purchaser, or the subscribing school) by email at least 14 days before they take effect. The latest version always appears on this page. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance.

14. General

These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction (consumers resident elsewhere in the UK may also bring proceedings in their local courts).
If any provision of these Terms is found invalid, the remainder continues in force.
A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it.
These Terms, the Privacy Policy, and (for schools) the order form and Data Processing Agreement are the entire agreement between us.

15. Contact

Politics Online Limited
3rd Floor, 86–90 Paul Street
London, EC2A 4NE, United Kingdom
Email: admin@politicsonline.co.uk
Company number: 15985148