Terms of Service

These Terms of Service govern use of the MyOracy platform by individuals. They are not the commercial contract for the platform. MyOracy sells to institutions, not to individuals, and the agreement that governs price, term, service levels, liability, and data processing is the Master Services Agreement signed by the institution together with its Order Form and Data Processing Agreement. These Terms sit beneath that agreement and describe what a person admitted to the platform may and may not do with it.

Most people using MyOracy are children, and a child cannot meaningfully be made a party to a commercial contract. No pupil is asked to accept commercial terms, no pupil incurs a payment obligation, and no pupil warrants anything about their own eligibility. The institution admits the user, the institution has contracted, and the institution carries the obligations that follow.

There is no route onto the MyOracy platform other than admission by an Institution. There is no public sign-up, no free tier, and no individual subscription. A person who is not admitted by an Institution cannot obtain an account, and MyOracy does not knowingly provide access to any person outside an Institutional Agreement.

Access is by single sign-on against the Institution's own identity provider. There is no password fallback, which means that when an Institution removes a person from its tenant, that person's access to MyOracy ends at the same moment and without any action by us.

Where two documents in the set described at Section 01 conflict on the same point, the order below governs. The order is stated because a school's data protection lead and its bursar will read different documents, and both need to know which one wins.

Nothing in these Terms limits or varies any obligation MyOracy owes an Institution under its Institutional Agreement, and no User can waive on the Institution's behalf a protection that agreement provides.

The Service allows a User to take part in debates, whether in a live online room or in a physical room, and to practise structured speaking in the oracy section. Spoken audio is transcribed by a third-party speech-to-text provider, and the resulting text is assessed by Adjudica AI, which returns a score and written feedback against a published rubric. The Privacy Policy describes what happens to the audio, which is not retained at any point.

In a live online debate the Adjudica engine joins the room as a participant, holding the timings, calling speakers in order, and receiving the audio in the same way any other participant does. Users are told this before a session begins. The Acceptable Use Policy makes that disclosure a duty on staff, and these Terms record it as a property of the Service rather than an optional setting.

MyOracy shows no advertising to any User. There is no advertising-supported tier, no advertising partner, no advertising script, and no advertising cookie anywhere in the Service. No User is profiled for commercial purposes, and no User's data is sold or shared with any advertising or data brokerage business. Introducing advertising would be a material change to these Terms under Section 13 and would require notice to every Institution before it took effect.

MyOracy is funded by per-seat annual licence fees paid by Institutions under their Order Forms. That is the whole of the commercial model, and Users pay nothing.

Use of the Service is governed by the MyOracy Acceptable Use Policy, which is incorporated into these Terms by reference and forms part of them. It is a separate document because it is longer and more particular than a section of these Terms could usefully be, and because it needs to be readable by a fourteen-year-old rather than by a lawyer.

The Acceptable Use Policy sets out, among other things, the debating exception: the principle that a User may argue a position they do not hold, including an uncomfortable or unpopular one, and that the test of acceptability is not what is argued but how and against whom. A User is expected to read it before speaking on the platform, and an Institution undertakes in its Institutional Agreement to bring it to the attention of every User it admits.

MyOracy does not take a licence over Content from Users, and its absence is deliberate rather than an omission. MyOracy processes pupil and staff data as a processor acting on the Institution's documented instructions under the Data Processing Agreement. A processor that also held a broad licence over the same material from the individual would be occupying two inconsistent positions at once. The processing authority for pupil Content therefore runs from the Institution as controller, where it belongs.

MyOracy processes personal data in accordance with the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR. For pupil and staff data the Institution is the controller and MyOracy is the processor, and the processing is governed by the Data Processing Agreement, which takes precedence over these Terms and over the Privacy Policy on any matter concerning personal data.

The MyOracy Privacy Policy describes the categories of data held, the purposes, the sub-processors engaged, the international transfers, the retention periods, and the rights available. It is incorporated into these Terms by reference. A User who wishes to exercise a data protection right should follow the process in the MyOracy Data Subject Rights and Support Process, which routes requests through the Institution because the Institution is the controller.

Speech audio is never written to disk. It exists in memory for the duration of transcription and is then discarded. It is restated here because it is the term most often asked about and because it is a property of the architecture rather than an operational undertaking that could quietly lapse.

Service availability commitments, support response times, and any service credits are set out in the Master Services Agreement and the Order Form. These Terms do not create an availability commitment to an individual User, and a User should raise a problem with the Service through their Institution, which holds the support relationship.

The Service is provided on an as-is and as-available basis. To the maximum extent permitted by law, MyOracy disclaims all implied warranties, including any implied warranty of satisfactory quality or fitness for a particular purpose, and does not warrant that Adjudica AI assessment will be free from error or from bias.

MyOracy's liability to an Institution is governed entirely by the limitation of liability provisions of its Master Services Agreement, and nothing in these Terms increases, reduces, or varies it. As between MyOracy and an individual User, no User pays MyOracy anything, and to the maximum extent permitted by law MyOracy's aggregate liability to a User arising out of these Terms or the Service is limited accordingly. A User who believes they have suffered loss should raise it with their Institution, which holds the contractual relationship and the remedies that go with it.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. Nothing in these Terms affects the statutory rights of a data subject under data protection law, which are not capable of being limited by contract and are not limited here.

A User's access ends when the Institution ends it, ordinarily by removing the User from its identity provider. That is the normal and expected route, and it requires nothing from MyOracy. Access also ends when the Institutional Agreement ends, in accordance with that agreement.

MyOracy may suspend an individual account where there is an immediate risk to another User, or where use is unlawful, and escalation to the Institution alone would not address it. The Institution is notified without delay. Suspension of an Institution's access is governed by the Master Services Agreement and is not a matter these Terms decide. The enforcement ladder is set out in the Acceptable Use Policy, Section 12.

On termination, MyOracy retains and deletes personal data in accordance with the retention periods in the Privacy Policy and the terms of the Data Processing Agreement. An Institution may request an export of its data before deletion, and institution-wide deletion is completed within 30 days of a valid request.

MyOracy may update these Terms to reflect changes to the Service, to applicable law, or to its commercial arrangements. Material changes, meaning those that alter what a User may do, what MyOracy may do with Content, or the allocation of liability, are notified to Institutions at least 30 days before they take effect. The Institution is asked to bring them to the attention of its Users.

Continued use by an individual does not constitute acceptance of a change. That mechanism is a poor fit where the user is a child who did not choose the product and cannot leave it without leaving a lesson. Where a change requires agreement, it is agreed by the Institution.

Non-material clarifications, such as corrected references or improved wording, take effect on publication. The version number and date on the cover identify the current version.

These Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of them, save that an Institution's Master Services Agreement may specify a different governing law or forum where that has been expressly agreed. Nothing in this section deprives a User of the protection of any mandatory provision of the law of their country of habitual residence, and nothing in it affects the right of a data subject to bring a complaint or a claim before the supervisory authority or the courts of their own Member State.

These Terms take effect in August 2026. Next scheduled review: January 2027.