Educator Agreement

Version 2026-08-03

This draft has not been reviewed by a lawyer. It was written to cover the commercial arrangement as the platform actually implements it, and the mechanics it describes match the code. It is not legal advice, and it should be reviewed by a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction before you rely on it. Sections marked [REVIEW] raise choices that need a decision rather than drafting.

This agreement is between Apex Altitude ("we", "us") and you, the educator ("you"), and applies to every question, test, explanation and other material you submit ("your Content"). You must accept it before your first contribution.

1. Your warranty that the work is original

You warrant, for every submission, that:

  1. You wrote it. Your Content is your own original work, created by you.
  2. It is not copied. It does not reproduce, translate, or closely paraphrase any published exam item, textbook exercise, question bank, or other third-party material. Using a standard method, a classic setup, or a well-known theorem is not copying; reusing someone else's specific question with the numbers changed is.
  3. It is not encumbered. You have not assigned, licensed, or promised the same material to anyone else, and submitting it does not breach any employment contract, institutional policy, or agreement you are subject to. If you wrote it in the course of employment, your employer may own it — that is your responsibility to establish before you submit.
  4. Any third-party element is cleared. If your Content quotes, adapts, or depends on anything you did not write, you have the right to use it and to grant us the licence in section 3, and you have told us what it is.
  5. It is accurate. The answer you mark as correct is, to the best of your knowledge, correct, and your explanation is sound.

We run an automated originality screen on submissions. It does not discharge your warranty. A submission that clears the screen is not thereby warranted by us to be original; the screen catches what it catches.

2. Indemnity

If a third party brings a claim against us alleging that your Content infringes their copyright, trade mark, database right, or other intellectual property right, or breaches an obligation of confidence, you agree to indemnify us against the losses, damages, and reasonable legal costs we incur as a result — provided that we:

  • tell you about the claim promptly;
  • do not admit liability or settle without your written consent, which you will not unreasonably withhold; and
  • give you reasonable opportunity and assistance to defend it.

This indemnity does not cover claims arising from our own modifications to your Content, or from material we added ourselves under section 4.

[REVIEW] Whether to cap this indemnity — for example at the total amount paid to you, or at a fixed sum — is a commercial decision. An uncapped indemnity against an individual educator is unusual and may be unenforceable in some jurisdictions, and may deter exactly the contributors you want.

3. What you keep, and what you grant us

You keep the copyright in your Content. You are not assigning it to us.

You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-bearing (that is, paid for under section 5), sub-licensable licence to host, reproduce, display, adapt, translate, and distribute your Content as part of the Apex Altitude service, and to use extracts for marketing the service.

The licence survives termination for material already published, so that students who have paid for access retain it — see section 9.

4. Ownership of platform-generated enrichment

When your question passes verification, we generate supporting teaching material for it: a simpler explanation, an analogy, and links to learning resources ("Enrichment"). You review, edit, and approve Enrichment before your submission completes.

  • You own the question, the options, the marked answer, and your own explanation. These are your Content under section 3. We do not alter your stated answer, and nothing we generate is written into those fields.
  • We own the Enrichment, including any edits you make to it. Enrichment is derived from your Content, so we can only use it under the licence you grant in section 3 — and you can only use it separately from the platform with our permission.
  • Together they are a combined work. Neither of us can exploit the combined question-plus-Enrichment elsewhere without the other's agreement.

If you take your Content elsewhere after termination, you take the question, the options, the answer and your explanation. You do not take the Enrichment.

[REVIEW] This is the fair reading of what the system does, but "we own the edits you made to our generated text" is the kind of clause that reads badly to contributors even where it is defensible. Consider instead licensing Enrichment back to the author for non-commercial use.

5. How you are paid

5.1 The pool

We do not pay a fixed amount per attempt. Instead:

  1. Each period is a calendar month.
  2. A set percentage of that period's subscription revenue becomes the author pool. The current percentage is shown on your earnings dashboard.
  3. Every time a student completes an attempt on a test, each authored question in that test accrues one unit for its author.
  4. At the end of the period the pool is divided by the total number of units accrued in that period, giving a unit price.
  5. You are paid the unit price multiplied by your units.

5.2 What this means

Your earnings are a share of revenue, not a promise of a fixed sum. If the number of attempts doubles while revenue stays flat, the unit price halves and the total paid to all authors is unchanged. This is deliberate: it is the only structure under which we can commit to paying a share at all, rather than running up an obligation we cannot meet in a quiet month.

Consequently, the value of a unit is not knowable until the period is settled, and we will not quote you one in advance.

5.3 What counts

  • Attempts are counted per completed attempt, per authored question, and the attempt must have at least one answer recorded.
  • You are not paid for attempts on your own questions.
  • Attempts by students with no live subscription may be excluded from the split, since the pool is a share of subscription revenue. Your dashboard shows which of your attempts counted.
  • A question that has been withdrawn from circulation does not accrue.

5.4 Changes to the percentage

We may change the pool percentage. A decrease takes effect no earlier than 30 days after we notify you, and never retrospectively: a period already settled keeps the percentage it was settled at.

[REVIEW] 30 days' notice is a suggestion, not a legal requirement. Decide what you can actually commit to.

6. Payout timing and the clearing period

  1. Accrual happens as students complete attempts. Nothing is priced at this stage.
  2. Settlement happens after the period ends, when we know the revenue.
  3. Clearing. Settled earnings are held for a clearing period — currently 30 days from the end of the period they were earned in — before they can be paid out. This exists so that refunds and chargebacks against the revenue the pool was calculated from land while we still hold the money.
  4. Payout. Once cleared, you can request payment from your dashboard.

Payments are made through Stripe Connect. To be paid you must:

  • be 18 or over, verified against the date of birth on your account;
  • complete Stripe's identity and bank-detail onboarding, and be approved by them; and
  • have a cleared balance at or above the minimum payout amount shown on your dashboard. Below that, your balance rolls forward rather than being lost.

We do not see or store your bank details. Stripe's terms apply to the payment itself, and we are not responsible for delays or refusals originating with Stripe or your bank.

If a payment fails, your balance remains payable and you can try again.

7. Tax

You are responsible for your own tax. You are an independent contributor, not an employee, worker, partner, or agent of Apex Altitude, and nothing in this agreement creates an employment relationship.

Specifically:

  • We do not withhold income tax, national insurance, social security, or any equivalent, except where we are legally obliged to.
  • You are responsible for declaring your earnings and paying any tax, and for registering for VAT, GST, or sales tax if you are required to.
  • You must give us the tax information we reasonably need to meet our own reporting obligations. We may withhold payment until you do.
  • If a tax authority requires us to withhold from your payments, we will, and the amount paid to you will reduce accordingly.

[REVIEW] US contributors will generally need a W-9 and may need a 1099-NEC; non-US contributors a W-8BEN. Stripe Connect can collect and file some of this, but which obligations fall to you depends on how the arrangement is structured. Get this checked.

8. Content standards

Your Content must:

  • be accurate, and be pitched at the exam and level it is submitted for;
  • be your own work, per section 1;
  • be free of material that is discriminatory, harassing, sexual, gratuitously violent, or otherwise unsuitable for students who may be under 18;
  • not identify real individuals, or use real personal data, without consent;
  • not contain advertising, promotional links, or contact details;
  • not attempt to influence students toward any other product or service.

We verify submissions automatically, but we do not pre-approve Content against these standards, and passing verification is not a finding that your Content meets them.

We may withdraw Content from circulation at any time — including automatically, when enough students independently report a problem with it — without that being a finding against you. Where Content of yours is withdrawn we will tell you, and tell you why.

9. Termination

By you. You may stop contributing at any time, and may ask us to withdraw your Content from circulation by writing to us.

By us. We may suspend or end your educator account if you materially breach this agreement, if your Content repeatedly fails verification or is repeatedly upheld on report, or if we stop running the educator programme.

On termination:

  1. Earnings already accrued are settled and paid on the normal cycle, including the clearing period. Ending the relationship does not forfeit money already earned. This does not apply where we terminate for a breach of section 1 (originality) that we have upheld.
  2. Content already published stays published for up to 12 months, so that students who have paid for access are not deprived of it, and continues to accrue for you during that time. After that we will remove it on request.
  3. Sections 1, 2, 4, 7 and this section survive termination.

[REVIEW] The 12-month tail is the point most likely to be argued over. Shorter is friendlier to contributors; longer protects subscribers mid-course.

10. General

  • Changes. We may update this agreement. Material changes require your acceptance before your next contribution, and we record which version you accepted and when.
  • No exclusivity. Nothing here stops you writing for anyone else, subject to section 3.
  • Assignment. You may not assign this agreement. We may assign it as part of a transfer of the business.
  • Governing law. [REVIEW] Not yet set. It should name the jurisdiction you are actually established in.

Contact: questions about this agreement — see the contact route published on the site.