mebobox institution terms

Version 0.1 · August 2026

These terms apply when an organisation — a school, college, library, club, home-education group, charity, camp or business — sets up an institution on mebobox and invites staff and students into it. They sit alongside the Account Terms and the Privacy Notice, which continue to apply to every individual account.

If you do not agree to these terms, do not set an institution up.

1. Who is agreeing

The person who sets the institution up ("the administrator") confirms that they are authorised to agree to these terms on behalf of the organisation. The organisation, not the individual, is the party to this agreement.

2. What an institution is

An institution is a group of accounts with roles:

an administrator manages the institution, its staff and its members;
an instructor runs classes, sets assignments, and can see and edit the work of students in their own classes;
a student belongs to classes and does the work set for them.

Every member has their own ordinary mebobox account. A person belongs to at most one institution at a time; accepting an invitation from a second institution moves them, and they lose access to their classes at the first.

3. Staff places

Your plan includes a number of staff places (administrators and instructors). The free plan includes two. Students do not use staff places; classes are limited to 40 students each. We will tell you before any plan becomes chargeable, and nothing in this version of the service is charged for.

4. Children, and your responsibility for them

This is the part that matters most.

You are asking us to show children's work to adults. By setting an institution up and inviting students, you confirm that:

you have a lawful basis for processing the personal data of the students you invite, and where consent is required — including from a parent or guardian where the child is below the age of digital consent in their country — you have obtained it;
you are responsible for deciding which of your staff may see which children's work, by putting them in the right classes;
you will remove staff and students from the institution promptly when they leave your organisation.

In UK and EU data-protection terms, for the classroom data described here your organisation is normally the controller and mebobox is a processor acting on your instructions. If you need a written data-processing agreement, contact us at the address below before inviting students.

We do not knowingly hold more about a child than their account details and the games they make.

5. What staff can see and do

An instructor can open, read and edit the games of students in classes they run. While an instructor has a student's game open, that student's editor is read-only and says so. Every open is recorded.

An administrator can see every class in the institution, manage members, and see institution-wide summaries.

Staff cannot delete a student's account, publish their games, or enter them for competitions. Those remain the student's own.

6. Assistance from mebo

mebo, our assistant, is available to students under the house rules and the limits described there. Staff may see summaries of what a student has asked mebo about, and may lift a temporary block on a student's use of mebo where they judge that appropriate.

Summaries of what children are finding difficult are generated by a language model from the questions they have asked. They are an aid to a teacher's judgement and not an assessment of a child. Do not rely on them as one.

7. Leaving

Removing a member from your institution ends the institution's access to their work. It does not delete their account or their games, which remain theirs.
A member deleting their own account removes them and their work from your institution too. Classes and assignments they created as staff are passed to another member of staff.
Closing your institution: contact us. We will remove the institution and its classes; member accounts and the games they made are unaffected.

8. Acceptable use

You will not use an institution to monitor staff, to collect information about children beyond what the service shows, or to give access to anyone who is not entitled to it under your own safeguarding policies.

9. Availability, and changes to these terms

The service is provided as-is while it is free of charge. We may change these terms; the version in force is the one published here, and we will tell administrators by email about material changes.

10. Contact

Stephen Hardisty · steve@hardisty.me