Terms of use

Tensile is a structural engineering challenge platform for schools. A teacher creates a class, students join with a code and submit their build results, and the class sees a live leaderboard. These terms cover how schools and teachers may use it. They are written to be read, not to be impenetrable.

Tensile is operated from Ireland by its founder. The agreement is between Tensile and the school, entered into by the teacher or coordinator who signs up, on the school's behalf. Students are not party to these terms and are not asked to accept anything. Because students never create accounts, the school remains responsible for how Tensile is used in its classrooms.

Only teachers and school staff create accounts. You are responsible for keeping your password secure and for activity under your account. Tell us promptly at hello@tensile.ie if you believe your account has been accessed by someone else. Do not share one account between staff who should have separate access.

Challenges involve building and load-testing physical structures. Supervising that activity is the school's responsibility, including risk assessment, materials, and the safe conduct of any load test. Tensile provides the challenge, the guidance and the scoring platform. It does not supervise students and is not present in the classroom.

Students are asked not to enter personal information anywhere on the platform, and the product is designed so there is no field in which to do so. Teachers should reinforce this, particularly in the reflection survey, which accepts free text.

The Beam challenge is available at no cost. Additional challenges and features are covered by an annual school licence. Licence fees, the challenges included, and the number of classes covered are set out in the quote or invoice issued to the school. Schools are billed by invoice or purchase order.

A licence lasts for the period stated on the invoice. We may change pricing for future periods, but not part way through a period a school has already paid for.

You agree not to:

• Submit results you know to be false in a way that misrepresents a competition or another class's standing.
• Attempt to access classes, accounts or data belonging to another school, or to guess class or reflection codes you were not given.
• Probe, scan or test the security of the platform, or interfere with its normal operation, without our written permission.
• Copy, resell or redistribute the challenge materials outside your own school, or use them to run a competing programme.
• Upload unlawful, harassing or offensive content in any free-text field.

Results, reflection answers and class records created by your school remain yours. You give us permission to store and process them in order to run the service, as described in our privacy notice. We may report anonymous, aggregated statistics, for example the number of schools taking part or overall score distributions, in a form that does not identify a school, class or student.

The Tensile platform, challenge briefs, teacher guides, worksheets, branding and code remain ours. A licence grants your school the right to use them for teaching, not to own or redistribute them.

We aim to keep Tensile available and working during school hours, but this is a young product run by a small team and we cannot promise uninterrupted service. We may take it offline for maintenance, ideally outside teaching time. If an outage disrupts a planned session, tell us and we will do what we reasonably can, including credit against a licence where a paid feature was unavailable for a meaningful period.

Tensile is provided as is. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, and our total liability is limited to the amount your school paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

Physical safety during a build or load test is the school's responsibility, as set out above.

A school may stop using Tensile at any time. Deleting a class removes its submissions and team records. We may suspend or end access if these terms are seriously or repeatedly breached, and we will explain why. If we end a paid licence other than for breach, we will refund the unused part of the period.

We may update these terms as the product develops. The date at the top shows the current version. If a change materially affects a school with a paid licence, we will tell the contact on the account rather than change it silently.

These terms are governed by the law of Ireland, and the Irish courts have jurisdiction.

Questions about these terms, or anything your school needs for approval, go to hello@tensile.ie.