It is important, before you enrol on one of our courses, that you have a clear understanding of what you can expect from us - and what your responsibilities are.

This is to make sure there are no misunderstandings between us.

Section 1: What we will do for you

We will:

   1. Establish a learning outcome with you for your course - this will either be your course Diploma, or your NCTJ Preliminary Certificate (if you are doing a course that includes NCTJ exams and you pass them).
   2. Provide you with suitable materials, sufficient for your course, when you ask for them - please note: it is your responsibility to request Modules. We will also provide textbooks, as part of your course fee, if they are required for the course you have enrolled on (ie - Newspaper, Magazine, Broadcast and Photo journalism. We will only supply one copy per book per student and cannot be held responsible if items are lost in the post. Our course fees do NOT include NCTJ registration fees or exam fees. These, and other charges that they make, are payable directly to them.
   3. Ensure that course materials conform to the NCTJ syllabus (if you are doing a course that includes NCTJ exams).
   4. Inform you when, and how, to enter NCTJ exams (if you are doing a course that includes NCTJ exams).
   5. Encourage you during your studies.
   6. Provide you with access to appropriate expertise to support you during your course.
   7. Update your learning materials as and when they require it, by sending you replacement teaching modules. This usually takes place in December and July and on other occasions if we deem it necessary. This constant updating process means that course structures may change after you have enrolled - new subjects may be added, out-of-date subjects removed, and module content / numbers may differ. Changes that relate to courses using NCTJ exams and are made in line with NCTJ syllabuses. We will also provide you with updates, if necessary, when you enter the NCTJ exams, as part of our exam coaching service.
   8. Assign you to a personal tutor with whom you can work on a one-to-one basis.
   9. Deal with your tutorial queries by email or Skype within two working days.
  10. Inform you about contact arrangements and times between yourself and your tutor.
  11. Return marked work to you within three working days (if you are doing a course where we mark assignments for you).
  12. Provide constructive and individual feedback on your progress (if you are doing a course where we mark assignments for you).
  13. Deal with any difficulties promptly and fairly.
  14. Send you a copy of our complaints procedure on request.
  15. Operate an equal opportunities policy.
  16. Remove you from the course, and archive your records, if you do not communicate with us for 12 months without prior arrangement.
  17. Reinstate you on the course, at your request, if you have been removed for any reason, provided any outstanding course fees are brought up to date. If you have not communicated with us for more than 12 months, we will ask you to re-enrol and will charge you of 30% of the original course fee.
  18. Allow you to transfer to another more suitable course, at your request, and after discussion with us. A transfer fee will be charged. This will be in proportion to the amount of the original course you have completed.
  19. Remind you if you have fallen behind with any course fee instalments and only lapse your tuition if you have failed to respond to two warning emails. We will then give you written notice that we have lapsed your tuition and will archive your records. You may rejoin the course at any time if your course fees are brought up to date and on payment of an £50 administration fee.
  20. We will not be able to mark work, offer tutorial advice or provide new modules if your course fee instalments are not paid up to date.
  21. Offer advice and support if you are seeking work placements.
  22. Offer advice and support if you are looking for work.
  23. Offer advice and support if you are going for a job interview.
  24. Offer coaching, advice and support to prepare you for your NCTJ exams (if you are doing a course that includes NCTJ exams).
  25. Consider re-funding your course fees only in exceptional circumstances - see the statement under no 28, below.
  26. Not be held responsible, or liable, for problems or financial losses that are caused by agents or circumstances outside our control - for example, exam boards, overseas agencies, the NCTJ, ISPs, web hosts, Paypal, Western Union.
  27. Remove you from the course if, in our opinion, your behaviour towards us, or any member of our staff, is absuive or unreasonable; or if you indulge in plagiarism by submitting work for marking that is not your own. Refunds will not be made in such circumstances.
  28. Offer you ONE other course at half price, once you have completed, and paid for, one of our existing courses. This offer is limited to one half-price course, per student and cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer.

At the point of enrolment on one of our courses, you will be asked to tick a box that states: 'You must tick this box to confirm you have accepted our Student Learning Agreement'

This agreement is legally binding on you. However, these are the occasions when a refund, or partial refund, will be considered, at our discretion:

1. If you face unexpected hardship: eg injury, bereavement, illness or redundancy.
In these circumstances, we will ask to see evidence - a letter from a doctor, employer, solicitor, or other relevant authority or organisation. The amount we refund will be in proportion to how far you have progressed with the course and we may also deduct up to 15 per cent of the original course fee to cover our administrative costs and any Paypal commission.
2. If we have broken our side of your Student Learning Agreement and have failed to put it right according to our Complaints Procedure.

You also have the right, under the Distance Selling Regulations, to claim a full, unconditional refund of all fees paid within seven days of your first payment being received.

Money back guarantee scheme

You may also take part in our Money Back Guarantee Scheme.  This works as follows:

1.You must inform us by email that you wish to use the Guarantee before you enrol.
2. You then enrol on the course for the half the advertised course price.
Note: the Money Back Guarantee does now apply to our Career Mentor Programme or any course involving
external exams..
3. If we have agreed to give you a scholarship or a discount, the guarantee will apply to the agreed fee.
4. The scheme does not operate if you are paying by instalments.
5. Once you have enrolled, you will complete the course in the usual way.
6. When you have completed the course, you may decide as follows:
a) you are dissatisfied with it - and ask for a full refund of the fee you have already paid.
    This will be refunded unconditionally, though see 7 and 8 below.
OR
b) you are satisfied with it - and pay us the balance of the course fee (50%). On receipt we will award you our
    diploma.
7. The guarantee only operates if you have completed the course.
8. You will invalidate the guarantee if you breach any other terms of this Student Learning Agreement,
    on Section 2, below.

Section 2: Your responsibilities

You will:

   1. Read the relevant course information pages on this website to establish that the course is appropriate for you. You may email us or telephone us (see contact page) if you wish to discuss your options. We are bound by the Association of British Correspondence Colleges Code of Pratice to give honest and impartial advice.
   2. Read the Introduction file thoroughly at the start of the course so that you are fully aware how the course works.
   3. Proceed with the course in the way prescribed in the Introduction file. We may not be able to support you fully, or at all, if you decide to proceed with the course in a different way. This especially applies to courses leading to NCTJ exams.
   4. Ensure that all course fees are paid by the agreed times.
   5. Undertake sufficient private study to maintain progress on your course. This will involve doing your own research to supplement our teaching materials.
   6. Submit work which is your own original work, clearly presented and a true reflection of your knowledge and abilities. Students who commit plagiarism by submitting work that is not theirs will be removed from their course immediately, without refund of fees.
   7. Submit work in the format, and by the method, explained in the Introduction file.
   8. Keep in contact with your tutor by email only, without making unnecessary demands upon his or her time.
   9. Be prepared to email your tutor to ask for help if you find that you are stuck.
  10. Take reasonable precautions against computer viruses if communicating with us online.
  11. Register with any external awarding body if we ask you to do so.
  12. Notify us in advance if you wish to take a break from your course, and tell us for how long (please note: we do not chase students who take a break from their studies without notifying us).
  13. Notify us if you are going to lapse from the course for any reason (please note: we do not chase students who discontinue the course). By failing to communicate with us for 12 months, you are effectively removing yourself from the course for which you have enrolled, and are exonerating us completely from all of the responsibilities we had to you, above, under the Student Learning Agreement. You may re-join the course, but a fee of 30 per cent of the original course fee will be charged.
  14. Accept that your course fee is non-refundable if for any reason you decide not to continue with the course.

Student lounge

Once you have completed your enrolment, you will have full access to our Student lounge - an online social facility.

The following Terms and Conditions will apply to you when using the Student lounge (called the lounge hereafter).

You agree to accept and be bound by these terms and conditions as outlined below. Should you reject the following terms and conditions and not wish to be bound by them, then use of the Lounge is prohibited for you.

We may update these terms and conditions from time to time without any notice to You. In addition to the following terms and conditions, You agree also to be bound by any guidelines or announcements that are made during your membership of  the lounge. In addition, when using particular sections of the lounge. You shall be subject to any posted guidelines or rules applicable to such services which may be posted from time to time. All such guidelines or rules are hereby incorporated by reference into the Terms and Conditions.

1. Acceptable Behaviour

Your use of the lounge shall be in accordance with these conditions, which are non-negotiable.

You agree that you will not:

1. Post, transmit, upload, email or otherwise make available any content that you do not have a right to make available under any law.
2. Post, transmit, upload, email or otherwise make available any content that in doing so infringes upon a trademark, patent, copyright, trade secret or other proprietary rights of any party.
3. Post, transmit, upload, email or otherwise make available any material that contains software viruses, computer code, programs or files that are designed to interrupt, limit the functionality of or destroy any computer hardware or software, or telecommunications equipment.
4. Post, transmit, upload, email or otherwise make available any content that is illegal, abusive, harassing, defamatory, confidential, harmful, threatening, vulgar, libellous, invasive of another’s privacy, or ethnically, racially or otherwise objectionable.
5. Impersonate any person or entity. This includes but is not limited to, any CTJT team member or administrator, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with another person or entity.
6. Manipulate or forge headers or identifiers with the intention of disguising the origin of any content that you provide to the lounge.
7. Register or post in excess of one account with Us. Should it come to our attention that you have registered more than one account, we may remove your posting rights.

2. Forum Use

This section governs use of the discussion forum, and applies to all users either directly or indirectly, registered or otherwise.

You agree that you will not:

1. Provoke others or cause trouble. If you wish to argue with people then go to instant messenger or email.
2. Make personal attacks on anyone during your use of the forum. Do not abuse someone for example, because of their race, colour, sex, or religious beliefs.
3. Reignite inflammatory threads by creating new threads after existing threads on the same topic have been closed.
4. Use excessive and unnecessary use of bad language.
5. Attempt to take threads off-topic or make off-topic posts within threads. Off topic posts may be removed at our discretion. The section marked as a designated “off-topic” area is more relaxed on off-topic posts.
6. Argue a moderator's decision publicly. Any and all complaints directed at a moderating decision should first be addressed to the moderator in question via private message.
7. Reproduce messages sent using the Lounge chat function or anywhere else without permission from the sender, unless requested to by an administrator for site administration purposes.
8. Flame CTJT staff or tutors. Abusive posts will not be tolerated under any circumstances.

You agree that:

1. We may, for content management purposes, close a thread. This would usually be because the discussion in the thread is not moving along, users are not covering new points, or that the discussion is going around in circles. We would also consider whether the discussion is interesting or motivates participation in the context of the forum subject matter.
2. CTJT is a UK-based, English speaking forum, unless you receive prior permission, all posts, articles, signatures or other submissions should be made in English. This is so that we may verify their meaning.

4. Third Party Web sites

You accept that we cannot be held responsible for any third party Web sites that you may access through the lounge, and further agree that any third party content is not our responsibility. We do not endorse any third party Web sites or content unless clearly stated, and therefore cannot be held liable or responsible for any promotion, content, service or product that is located on a third party web site. We further cannot be held liable or responsible for any loss or damage, offence that may be caused, or that you allege has been caused by third party content or Web sites

All and any contact that you have with third party traders or Web sites that you may come into contact with during your use of the lounge, including but not limited to payments for products or services, any conditions made, warranties offered, or contracts entered into, are your responsibility and not the responsibility of CTJT.

5. Our Rights

You will acknowledge and accept that the lounge contains a varied amount of content. We do not check content posted by you prior to it being placed on the web site in line with the EU E-Commerce Directive.

You will acknowledge and accept that we are neither liable nor responsible for the content that you submit. We will only remove objectionable material if there is a complaint, made using the Report Abuse button.

Report Abuse complaints will be dealt with in a timely manner: within 24 hours of a complaint being made. The fact that a complaint has been made does not compel us to remove the content objected to. We retain the right to remove or retain a post, according to our judgement.

You will acknowledge and accept that we have the right to temporarily or permanently remove your ability to post content, and that we further have the right to ban you from the lounge should you break any of these Terms and Conditions.

Site Owners Prerogative: You will acknowledge and accept that while we do have these established site terms of use here at CTJT, it is important to remember that this is a privately owned discussion group. Any requests and/or demands made by the OWNERS on this Forum AT ANY TIME must be obeyed, including those that countermand other established rules and regulations including those displayed in the rules or FAQ. Failure to do so will result in termination of one’s user account.

We reserve the right to terminate any user’s membership for any reason at any time.

You acknowledge and accept that in certain circumstances we have the right to provide information to your ISP at our discretion following but not limited to severe disruption by you, the provision of illegal or abusive content, any attempts made by you to re-register after being banned, or for any other reason that involves you breaking these Terms and Conditions.

You will acknowledge that reproduction of material from this web site without prior written permission is strictly prohibited. All contributions to this site are also copyright of the site owner.

You acknowledge and accept that if you are banned from use of the lounge, you will not in any way attempt to re-register using any other name or identity not known to us, or any other email address not known to us. If you do so, we will pursue the maximum penalty available under your Internet Service Providers Acceptable Use Policy.

You have the absolute right to free speech. If you find it impossible to abide by this document, then please feel free to contact one of the many good web hosting companies out there and set up an account and create your own discussion board.

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