Privacy Policy

1. Two kinds of information, two roles

Learners' scripts usually belong to children. Please upload only what marking needs. Name files by learner number rather than by name, and leave names out of your comments.

2. What we collect

About you:

• Account: name, email address, and a sign-in identifier, through our sign-in provider, Clerk.
• Payments: amounts, dates, PayFast payment references, and the name and email PayFast sends back with each payment confirmation. We never see your card or bank details.
• Usage: batches marked, exam titles, number of scripts and questions, credits charged, and your email domain (for example "school.co.za"), for billing and support.
• Technical: IP address and request records in our system logs, for security.

In the work you upload:

• question papers and memos, and the mark schemes you set up;
• images of learners' answer scripts, including any cover page, and the file names you give them;
• the text we read from those scripts, and the marks, ticks, comments and corrections produced while marking and moderating.

3. Why we use it

• To provide the service: read and mark scripts, show and download results, and run your account.
• To take payment and keep accounting records.
• To email you about your account: receipts, "your scripts are marked", and failed batches. Our emails never contain learners' information.
• To keep the service secure and stop abuse.
• To improve marking, using anonymised corrections only (section 6).

The legal grounds:

• performing our agreement with you;
• our legal obligations (for example, tax records);
• our legitimate interest in security and improving the service;
• for learners' information, your (or your school's) instructions.

4. Who we share it with (our service providers)

We use the providers below to run ExamMark AI. Each receives only what its job needs, under its own security and confidentiality commitments.

We do not give personal information to anyone else, unless the law requires it.

5. Information sent outside South Africa

Several providers above are in the United States. We use them because they provide the AI and services ExamMark AI depends on. POPIA (section 72) allows this when it is necessary to provide the service you asked for, or when the recipient is bound to protect the information to a standard similar to POPIA. Under their business terms, Anthropic and OpenAI do not use data sent through their APIs to train their models.

6. Anonymised learning

When you change a mark during moderation, we keep a record that helps our marking improve:

• what it contains: the subject, the question number and type, the AI's mark and yours, a short description of the answer's shape (for example, its length), and the comment you wrote;
• what it never contains: learners' names, or the learner's answer text;
• who it is linked to: nobody. Your account is not attached; the exam is replaced by a scrambled code.

These records are kept indefinitely. Because your comment is stored as written, please do not put learners' names in moderation comments.

7. How long we keep it

8. How we protect it

• Encryption: all traffic is encrypted (HTTPS), and our database and storage are encrypted at rest.
• Access: each teacher can see only their own exams and results. Access to our systems is limited to the people who run the service.
• Retention: we delete scripts automatically, as above.
• Your part: keep your password private and sign out on shared computers.

If a security breach affects your information, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.

9. Cookies and browser storage

• Sign-in cookies: our sign-in provider, Clerk, sets cookies that keep you signed in. They are essential, and the service does not work without them.
• Browser storage: we store small settings in your browser, such as your current batch, your last subject and whether the guide panel is open.
• No advertising or tracking cookies.

10. Your rights

You may ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you, and give you a copy;
• correct it;
• delete it (we keep payment records for as long as the law requires);
• stop processing it, or object to its use.

Email jenni@aigrading.co.za. We will reply within 30 days.

For learners' information, contact the teacher or school that uploaded it. We will help them respond.

If you are unhappy with how we handled your information, you may complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa): www.inforegulator.org.za.

11. Information Officer

12. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will tell you by email or in the app before the change takes effect.

13. This website

This section covers aigrading.co.za, the website you are reading, rather than the marking app.

• Pilot enquiries: if you ask for a pilot conversation, we collect your name, email address, contact number, institution, role, the number of papers you mark a month and any question you add. We use them only to arrange and hold that conversation, and we are the responsible party for them. Every field except the question is needed to arrange the call.
• How long: we keep an enquiry for 24 months after you send it, then delete it. You can ask us to delete it sooner.
• Bot protection: the pilot form uses Cloudflare Turnstile to check that a person, not a bot, is filling it in. Cloudflare sees your IP address and browser details to do this.
• Visit counts: we count page visits with Vercel Analytics, which uses no cookies.
• Fonts: this website serves its own fonts, so loading it does not contact Google Fonts.

Sending your enquiry outside South Africa is necessary to respond to the request you made (POPIA section 72). Your rights in section 10 apply to it.