Terms of Service

These terms are an agreement between you - a member of teaching or administrative staff with an account - and Youssef Mohamed Hamdy, who operates Distil EDU from Sheikh Zayed, Giza, Egypt.

Where a school, college or tutoring organisation has its own written agreement with the operator, that agreement takes precedence over these terms wherever the two disagree.

There is no public sign-up. Accounts are created by an administrator, or by a teacher for their own assistants. Signing in with Google only opens an account that already exists - it never creates one. If your Google address is not attached to an account, you will be refused.

• You are responsible for what happens under your account. Do not share your password, and do not let somebody else work under your sign-in - every mark change is recorded against the account that made it, and an account somebody else was using no longer records anything true.
• Tell an administrator immediately if you think your account has been used by anybody else. Pausing an account blocks further protected requests and is reversible; it cannot erase information already downloaded.
• An administrator may pause or remove an account at any time, typically when somebody leaves. Pausing keeps every class and mark exactly where it is.

• An assistant does the daily teaching work inside their teacher's classes: students, assignments, marking, rosters, syncing an already-linked Google course and announcements. They cannot create, configure or delete classes, link or unlink Classroom, set grade boundaries, or manage accounts.
• A teacher can do all of that within their own classes, plus create, configure and delete classes, link Classroom, update live sheets, set grade boundaries, decide when and how parents are contacted, and create their own assistants.
• An administrator manages staff accounts, platform statistics and the platform-wide activity log. This role does not grant access to class workspaces, rosters or grade sheets. Activity records can include names of records acted on and action details. Administrators can assign an unassigned class to a teacher, seeing its name and subject for that repair.

One account may hold both administrator and teacher roles; its teaching access still covers only its own classes. An assistant belongs to one teacher and cannot hold another role. Teachers can create, pause and remove their own assistants within the account-management safeguards.

These limits are enforced by the platform, not merely suggested by it. Attempting to work around them - by calling the platform directly, or by using somebody else's account - is a breach of these terms.

You agree not to:

• enter information about a student you have no legitimate reason to hold, or use a parent's contact details for anything other than contacting them about that child's work;
• attempt to reach data belonging to another teacher's classes, or to probe, scan or interfere with the platform's security;
• upload anything unlawful, or anything you do not have the right to store;
• use the platform to send parents messages that are not about their child's schooling - it is not a marketing channel.

Distil EDU calculates. It does not decide. T-scores, quartiles, at-risk flags, grade boundaries and every statistic on screen are tools to inform your judgement, and the grade a student receives is awarded by you.

You are responsible for the accuracy of what you enter and for checking what the platform produces before it is acted on, sent home, or handed to a school. The operator gives no warranty that a calculated figure is fit for any particular assessment, syllabus or awarding body, and does not replace your professional review. Any limitation of liability is subject to section 10 and applicable law.

The platform proposes who might be worth contacting. It never sends anything on its own: a member of staff reviews the list on a confirmation screen, can remove anybody from it, and only then does anything go out.

• You are responsible for having a lawful basis - and any consent your school requires - before a family is contacted.
• A message cannot be unsent. Neither WhatsApp route offers a recall, and the platform does not claim to provide one.
• On the automated route, delivery is Meta's. Their approval of a message template, their delivery, and their quality limits are theirs to control, and the operator cannot guarantee any of them.
• A student record can be opted out of alerts until staff change that setting. Honouring a request to stop contacting a family is your responsibility as their teacher.

The manual route prepares a WhatsApp chat; you must send it in WhatsApp and confirm the alert afterwards. That confirmation is not a delivery receipt. On the API route, provider acceptance does not prove that a parent received or read the message. An unconfigured dry run sends nothing. A report shared separately through WhatsApp is also sent by you.

Linking a class to Google Classroom is optional. When you link one, you grant Distil EDU permission to act on your behalf within the permissions you approve, and your use of Google's services remains subject to Google's own terms.

Sync works in both directions: rosters, coursework and submission states can be imported, while assignments, announcements and returned marks can be sent to Google. Refreshes can happen when you sign in, open a class or export. Manual submission overrides and corrected names can take precedence over imports. Check sync results: permissions, network failures and Google restrictions can leave the two systems out of step. Saving a gradebook draft does not return it to Classroom.

Update Live Sheet can also publish a Grades material to a linked Classroom course as part of the same action. Included names, marks and hand-in information become visible to the course, and future sheet updates replace the contents at the same link. This is described in full in the Privacy Policy, and using the feature is your decision to make on your school's behalf.

Review the export selections and obtain any authority and permissions needed for class-wide disclosure before updating the sheet. A privacy notice alone does not authorise sharing classmates' results. Manage existing file access in Google Drive as well as the Classroom post; unlinking or deleting a class here does not recall external copies.

The operator aims to keep Distil EDU running and working, but provides it as is and does not guarantee that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or available at any particular moment.

Depending on how it is hosted, the service may sleep when unused and take up to a minute to respond to the first request after that. Planned maintenance, provider outages and failures at Google, Meta or the hosting provider can all interrupt it.

Do not rely on Distil EDU as the only copy of anything you cannot afford to lose. Marks can be exported to a spreadsheet at any time, and before a deadline that matters, they should be.

You and your organisation retain your rights in the material you provide and authorise the operator to process it to deliver the service. This does not limit students' or parents' rights over their personal information. What is stored, who it is shared with and how long it is kept is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms.

Deleting a class deletes its students, marks and hand-in records. The record of who changed which mark is deliberately kept, so that a disputed grade can still be investigated afterwards. Critical activity records also remain. Deleting one student does not remove their previous parent-alert records; deleting the class removes those alert records. Removing a staff account is separate from removing class data, and a teacher account with classes or assistants cannot be deleted until those dependencies are resolved. See the Privacy Policy for retention limits and requests that need the operator's help.

To the fullest extent the law allows, the operator is not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for lost data or lost profit, or for any decision taken on the basis of a figure the platform calculated.

Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

These terms may be updated. The date at the top of this page changes when they are, and a material change will be communicated to the schools using the platform rather than left to be noticed. Continuing to use Distil EDU after a change means accepting it.

You may stop using the platform at any time and ask an administrator to remove your account. The operator may suspend an account that breaches these terms.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Arab Republic of Egypt, and disputes are subject to the competent courts in Egypt, subject to any mandatory rights or rules that applicable law does not permit these terms to exclude.

Questions about these terms go to privacy@distiledu.com.