At Outschool, we aim to provide an easy and consistent experience for our families and learners, and we have policies for teachers to guarantee this. If you need to make changes to one of your classes, including but not limited to canceling a section or meeting, withdrawing a learner, and handling late and/or low enrollments, please refer to our policies below for guidance.

Outschool’s Policy Team may reach out to you with a warning when you’ve repeatedly missed class, canceled class, or started class late, without notifying families. Receiving too many warnings could lead to restriction or removal of your Outschool teaching account.

To avoid cause for concern, you can document your reasons for canceling a class in your cancelation refund note in addition to communicating with affected families directly when making any changes to a class section. These communications should appear in the classroom or within private messages on your Conversations tab.

If you have any questions or concerns about the policies described here, please reach out to Support.

The changes described here affect the overall class section, while the changes in the below section apply to individual meetings within a multi-day or ongoing class section. If you need to cancel a section for any reason, you must do so more than 24 hours prior to the scheduled class start time (exceptions apply for an emergency or an extenuating circumstance). You are responsible for canceling a section for any other reason more than 24 hours prior to the scheduled class start time. In most cases, Outschool will automatically cancel sections with no enrollments 24 hours ahead of start time, so you generally will not need to take action on your side.

You are, however, responsible for canceling sections in the following cases, as these types of sections are not automatically canceled 24 hours ahead of start time, even when there are no enrollments:

The changes described here affect individual meetings within a multi-day or ongoing class section.

All class meetings within a section should occur as planned, whenever possible. Canceling or rescheduling a class meeting within 24 hours of start time violates Outschool policy, with the following exceptions:

When canceling or rescheduling a meeting in a fixed-length class with a syllabus, teachers have the following options:

When rescheduling a meeting, families will not receive an email notification, so it is the teacher's responsibility to communicate any schedule changes directly to them. In cases where a family cannot attend the rescheduled meeting, they are eligible for a refund.

When canceling a meeting, teachers must issue refunds to families who have already paid or have a weekly payment scheduled for the impacted meeting.

Teachers must contact Support to request the cancellation of a section if they have already received payment. This will allow support to refund families and stop any further weekly payments.

Please note that any teacher cancelation in a 1-on-1 class automatically refunds the family. Teacher cancelations include teacher schedule changes, unexpected emergencies, and instances where you cannot proceed with the session (e.g. the family did not provide homework or tutoring materials).

You may ask families to submit homework or tutoring materials at least 24 hours before class meets, allowing you to cancel with at least 24 hours' notice if you do not have the necessary tutoring content. If your class relies on learner-provided content, we recommend communicating deadlines and expectations with parents in advance. As a reminder, Outschool policy still requires that classes requiring learner content be canceled with at least 24 hours' notice to enrolled families to avoid being penalized for a late class cancelation.

If a parent requests cancelation in a 1-on-1 class, they should cancel the meeting using the parent instructions outlined here. Families will receive an automatic refund if eligible according to Outschool refund policies. Alternatively, parents and teachers can reschedule class meetings up to 48 hours in advance.

Families will often request that their learner(s) be transferred between class sections for scheduling purposes, or withdrawn from class entirely. These requests should be handled promptly to ensure a positive experience for families.

Withdrawing learners from a class section or transferring learners between class sections should only be done at the request of enrolled families. However, please note that if your learner misses 3 consecutive class meetings without communicating with the teacher, the teacher may cancel the class or withdraw the learner at their discretion.

We highly recommend that teachers advise families that their learner will lose access to the classroom and its content when their enrollment is withdrawn. Withdrawing or transferring learners without parental consent violates Outschool policy, and may result in a warning from our team.

If you do not cancel an open section with 0 enrolled learners at least 24 hours ahead of start time (see above for sections that are not automatically canceled), you are still responsible for teaching any last-minute learners. In some cases, learners can enroll and join class up to 5 minutes into class start time. Please make sure that your email settings are set to notify you of all new enrollments.

When your class section has fewer than the minimum enrollments set when creating your class listing, you are still always expected to either:

As in the scenario described in the section above, when your class remains open to enrollments at the 24-hour ahead mark, you are expected to teach. Failure to start the Zoom meeting and remain in it for 10 minutes is a policy violation and may result in a warning.