Last updated 17 September 2026
Termlee holds something precious: your child's school record. This policy explains what we keep, why we keep it, and what you can do about it. We have tried to write it in plain language rather than legal language.
Termlee is operated from South Africa. We are the responsible party for your personal information under the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).
You can reach us at hello@termlee.com for any question about your data, including anything in this policy.
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your name | So the app can greet you and so we know whose account it is |
| Your email address or phone number | To sign you in, and to help you back into your account if you change phones |
| Your preferred language | To show the app and your child's teacher comments in your language |
| Your child's name and grade | To keep each child's reports separate and to show the right curriculum |
| Your child's school and province (optional) | To work out school term dates, and which curriculum applies |
| Photographs or PDFs of report cards | This is the core of the service — we read them so you do not have to |
| Goals you set with your child | To show you how they went when the next report arrives |
| Messages you send to Lee, our assistant | To answer your question, and so you can come back to the conversation |
| Feedback you send us | To fix things and improve the app |
When you add a report card, we extract the marks, subject names, achievement codes and teacher comments from it. We keep the original image or PDF as well, so you always have the document itself.
We do not use an advertising identifier. We do not track you across other apps or websites. We do not collect your location.
Your account, your children's records and your report card images are stored with Supabase, our database and storage provider, on servers in Ireland. They are protected by row-level security rules, which means our database will only return your family's records to your own signed-in account.
Because our servers are outside South Africa, your information is transferred across a border. POPIA permits this where the receiving country's laws provide comparable protection, and Ireland is subject to the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation, which does.
We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers, data brokers, schools or the Department of Basic Education.
We use a small number of service providers to make the app work. They process information on our instructions only, for the purpose described, and may not use it for their own purposes.
| Provider | What they receive, and why |
|---|---|
| Supabase | Hosts our database and file storage, and handles sign-in |
| Google (Gemini) | Reads your report card images to extract the marks, and generates the plain-language explanations and Lee's answers |
| Google (Cloud Translation) | Translates teacher comments into your language |
| Google (Firebase Cloud Messaging) and Apple | Deliver notifications to your device |
| Resend | Sends your sign-in code by email |
| Google and Apple sign-in | If you choose to sign in that way, they confirm to us that the account is yours |
We may also disclose information if the law requires it, or to protect someone from serious harm.
Termlee uses artificial intelligence in three places: reading your report cards, explaining teacher comments in plain language, and answering your questions through Lee.
Two things are worth knowing.
Your report card images and your messages to Lee are sent to Google's Gemini service to be processed. Google processes them on our behalf and does not use them to train its models.
Termlee is for parents and guardians. Accounts are held by adults, and we do not knowingly allow anyone under 18 to create one.
The app does hold information about children, because that is what a school report is. You provide that information as the child's parent or guardian, and you may remove it at any time. We treat it with the extra care POPIA requires for a child's personal information: we do not use it for advertising, we do not sell it, and we do not share it with anyone beyond the service providers listed above.
We keep your family's records for as long as your account exists, because the whole point of Termlee is a record that lasts from Grade R to Matric.
When you delete your account, we delete it.
Under POPIA you may:
When you delete your account we keep one thing: a one-way scrambled version of your email address or phone number, and the date. It cannot be turned back into your address or number, and it holds nothing about you or your children. We keep it so that if you ever sign in again we can tell you honestly that you deleted the account, rather than showing you an empty one and leaving you to wonder whether your family's records had been lost.
To exercise any of these rights, use the app where you can, or write to hello@termlee.com.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information, we will notify you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top. Where a change materially affects how we handle your information, we will tell you in the app before it takes effect.
For any question about your privacy, or to exercise any right above, write to hello@termlee.com. We read every message.
You may also contact the Information Regulator of South Africa: inforegulator.org.za.