Athena Global School — Parents Portal

Terms and Conditions

Last updated: 09 September 2026

These Terms and Conditions ("Terms") govern the use of the Athena Global School Parents Portal at parents.athena.edu.in ("the Portal") and the online payment of school fees and related charges through the Portal. By registering on, logging into, or making a payment through the Portal, you ("Parent", "Guardian", "you") accept these Terms in full. If you do not accept these Terms, please do not use the Portal.

1. The Institution

The Portal is operated by Athena Global School, which comprises three campuses run by two registered educational trusts:

Every payment made through the Portal is received by, and is a payment to, the trust that operates the campus in which the student is enrolled. The trust operating your child's campus is the merchant for your transaction.

2. Eligibility and Accounts

• The Portal is intended solely for parents and legal guardians of students currently enrolled at, or admitted to, an Athena Global School campus.
• Login credentials are issued by the school. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for all activity carried out under your account.
• You must inform the school office immediately if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.
• Sessions expire automatically after a period of inactivity. You must log in again to continue.
• The school may suspend or withdraw access to the Portal where credentials are misused, shared, or used in a manner that compromises the security or privacy of student data.

3. Fees and Online Payments

• All fees displayed on the Portal are in Indian Rupees (INR / ₹) and are inclusive of applicable taxes unless stated otherwise.
• Fee amounts, due dates, instalment schedules, and late-payment charges are determined by the school and are notified to parents through the Portal, circulars, and the school office.
• Payments are processed by an RBI-authorised payment aggregator/payment gateway. Card, UPI, net-banking, and wallet details are entered on the payment partner's secure page and are never stored on the school's servers.
• A transaction is treated as successful only when the school receives confirmation from the payment gateway. A debit message from your bank alone does not constitute a successful payment.
• The official receipt generated by the Portal is the school's confirmation of payment. Please retain it.
• Convenience fees, payment-gateway charges, or bank charges, where applicable, are displayed before you confirm the transaction. Such charges are levied by the payment partner and are non-refundable.
• You confirm that the payment instrument (card, bank account, or UPI ID) used belongs to you or is used with the lawful authority of its holder.

4. Failed, Pending and Duplicate Transactions

• If an amount is debited from your account but the Portal does not show a successful payment, the amount is normally auto-reversed by your bank within 5 to 7 working days.
• If the reversal does not appear within 7 working days, raise a grievance as described in the Contact & Grievance section with the date, amount, and bank/UPI reference number.
• Duplicate payments for the same fee head are handled under the Refund and Cancellation Policy.

5. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

• attempt to access data relating to any student other than your own ward;
• probe, scan, reverse-engineer, or attempt to breach the security of the Portal;
• use automated tools, scripts, or bots to access the Portal;
• upload any unlawful, defamatory, or malicious content; or
• use the Portal for any purpose other than managing your ward's school records and payments.

6. Availability

The school endeavours to keep the Portal available at all times but does not guarantee uninterrupted access. The Portal may be unavailable during maintenance, network failures, or events beyond the school's reasonable control. The school is not liable for loss arising from such unavailability; fees remain payable by the due date and may be paid at the campus office if the Portal is unavailable.

7. Intellectual Property

All content on the Portal, including its design, text, logos, and software, is the property of Athena Global School and the operating trusts, and may not be copied, reproduced, or distributed without written permission.

8. Limitation of Liability

To the extent permitted by law, the school and the operating trusts shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, or consequential loss arising from the use of the Portal. The school's total liability in respect of any transaction shall not exceed the amount of that transaction. The school is not responsible for failures, delays, or errors originating with your bank, card issuer, UPI provider, or the payment gateway.

9. Changes to these Terms

The school may amend these Terms at any time. The revised Terms take effect when published on this page. The "Last updated" date above indicates the current version. Continued use of the Portal after publication constitutes acceptance.

10. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

These Terms are governed by the laws of India. Disputes shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts at Chidambaram, Cuddalore District, Tamil Nadu, in respect of the Chidambaram campus, and the courts at Chengalpattu, Tamil Nadu, in respect of the Chengalpattu and Chennai campuses.

Privacy Policy

Last updated: 12 September 2026

Athena Global School and its operating trusts (GR Educational Trust and Karuna Educational Trust) respect the privacy of students and parents. This Policy explains what personal data we collect through parents.athena.edu.in, why we collect it, how we use and protect it, and the choices available to you. It is issued in accordance with the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the rules made thereunder, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

1. Data We Collect

2. How We Use Your Data

• To provide and administer the Parents Portal and the school's academic and administrative services.
• To process fee payments and issue receipts and fee statements.
• To send you notices, circulars, attendance and examination alerts, and fee reminders by in-app notification, email, SMS, or WhatsApp.
• To maintain records required by CBSE, Cambridge International, and the education authorities of Tamil Nadu.
• To detect and prevent fraud, misuse, and unauthorised access.

We do not sell, rent, or trade personal data. We do not use student data for advertising or profiling.

3. Legal Basis

We process personal data on the basis of the consent you give at registration, the contractual relationship arising from your ward's admission, and our legal and regulatory obligations as an educational institution. Data of students, who are children, is processed for the purposes of education and school administration, in the interest of the child, with the consent of the parent or guardian.

4. Sharing of Data

We share personal data only where necessary, and only with:

• Payment partners — our RBI-authorised payment aggregator/gateway, to process your transaction;
• Examination and affiliating bodies — CBSE, Cambridge Assessment International Education, NIOS, as required for registration and examinations;
• Government and regulatory authorities — where disclosure is required by law or by an order of a competent court or authority;
• Service providers — hosting, database, SMS, and email providers who process data on our instructions under confidentiality obligations.

5. Security

• All traffic between your device and the Portal is encrypted using HTTPS/TLS.
• Passwords are stored in hashed form and are never stored or displayed in plain text.
• Access is controlled by row-level security so that a parent account can retrieve only its own ward's records.
• Sessions expire automatically after a period of inactivity.
• Access by school staff is restricted by role and is logged.

No system can be guaranteed to be completely secure. If a personal data breach occurs that is likely to affect you, we will notify you and the relevant authority as required by law.

6. Data Retention

Student academic and fee records are retained for the period required by the affiliating board and by law, and thereafter as part of the school's permanent institutional record. Login and technical logs are retained for up to 12 months. Payment transaction records are retained for at least 8 financial years to meet accounting and audit requirements.

7. Your Rights

Subject to law, you may:

• ask for access to the personal data we hold about you and your ward;
• ask us to correct data that is inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date;
• withdraw consent for optional communications;
• ask for erasure of data that we are no longer required to retain; and
• raise a grievance about how your data has been handled.

Requests may be sent to the Grievance Officer at the address in the Contact & Grievance section. We will acknowledge within 48 hours and respond within 30 days.

8. Cookies

The Portal uses only strictly necessary cookies and local browser storage to keep you signed in and to remember your display preferences. We do not use advertising or third-party tracking cookies.

9. Children's Data

The Portal is used by parents and guardians, not by students. All student data is accessed through a parent or guardian account. We do not knowingly permit a child to create an account or to provide data directly.

10. Mobile Applications

This Policy also covers the school's mobile applications — Athena Parents for iOS and Android ("the App") — which use the same accounts and the same data as the Portal. References to the Portal in this Policy include the App unless stated otherwise.

• Accounts are created by the school as part of your ward's enrolment. The App does not allow self-registration.
• Sign-in uses your registered mobile number and your password. Setting or resetting a password additionally requires a one-time code sent to the contact registered with the school.
• Your sign-in session is held in the device's secure storage (Keychain on iOS) and is removed when you sign out.
• The App does not collect, use, or store your device's location. The transport map shows the position of the school vehicle, reported by the GPS unit fitted to that vehicle, together with your ward's allotted stop. Your phone is not tracked.
• The App contains no advertising and no third-party analytics or tracking. We do not track you across other companies' apps or websites, and we do not use the Advertising Identifier.
• Documents you choose to save or share from the App (for example an admit card) are written to a temporary file on your device and deleted after sharing.

11. Push Notifications

• If you allow notifications, Google Firebase Cloud Messaging issues an anonymous device token. We store that token against your parent account for the sole purpose of delivering school notices, and attendance, fee, examination and school-transport alerts to your device.
• The token identifies the device installation only. It contains no personal information and is never used for advertising or profiling.
• Messages are delivered through Google Firebase Cloud Messaging and, on Apple devices, the Apple Push Notification service. Google LLC and Apple Inc. act as processors for delivery only.
• You may switch notification categories off in the App under Settings, or turn notifications off entirely in your device settings. Signing out deletes the token from our records.

12. Closing Your Account

Parent accounts are created and administered by the school and cannot be created from within the App. To close your account and have your login data deleted, write to grievance@athena.edu.in or contact your campus office (see Contact & Grievance), giving the student's name, admission number and campus. We acknowledge within 48 hours and complete the closure within 30 days.

On closure we delete your Portal and App login, password, push-notification device tokens and notification history. Your ward's academic, attendance and fee records form part of the school's statutory institutional record and are retained for the periods set out in Data Retention above, as required by law and by the affiliating board.

13. Changes

We may update this Policy from time to time. The current version is always published on this page with the date of last update.

Refund and Cancellation Policy

Last updated: 09 September 2026

1. General Position

• Fees are collected against the seat reserved and the academic services provided for the academic year and are not refundable once paid.
• Fees paid for one student cannot be transferred to another student, another campus, or another academic year, except with the written approval of the school management.
• Admission fees, registration fees, and application fees are non-refundable in all circumstances.
• Payment-gateway charges, convenience fees, and bank charges are levied by the payment partner and are not refunded or reversed even where the principal amount is refunded.

2. Circumstances in Which a Refund Is Made

A refund will be processed where any of the following is established from the school's and the payment gateway's records:

1. Duplicate payment — the same fee head for the same student was paid more than once. The excess amount is refunded, or, at the parent's written option, adjusted against the next instalment.
2. Amount debited, payment not credited — your account was debited but the transaction failed at the gateway and the amount was not received by the school. Such amounts are normally auto-reversed by your bank within 5–7 working days; where they are not, the school will pursue the reversal with the payment partner.
3. Excess payment — an amount higher than the fee due was collected on account of a system or data-entry error.
4. Payment against a wrong student or wrong fee head — reported in writing within 15 days of the transaction.

3. Cancellation of a Transaction

Once a fee payment is authorised and confirmed by the payment gateway, it cannot be cancelled by the parent through the Portal. A transaction that has not been confirmed by the gateway is not a payment and requires no cancellation.

4. Withdrawal or Transfer of a Student

• Fees already paid for the current academic year or term are not refunded on withdrawal, transfer, or discontinuation.
• The refundable caution deposit, where one has been collected, is refunded after the issue of the Transfer Certificate and after adjustment of all outstanding dues, library dues, and damages.
• Any refund on withdrawal beyond the above is entirely at the discretion of the school management and is governed by the admission terms accepted at the time of admission.

5. How to Claim a Refund

1. Write to the campus office or to the Grievance Officer (see Contact & Grievance) within 15 days of the transaction.
2. State: student name, admission number, class, campus, date and amount of the transaction, the Portal receipt or order ID, and the bank/UPI reference number.
3. Attach the bank or UPI statement entry showing the debit.

6. Refund Timelines and Method

• All approved refunds are made to the same payment instrument and account from which the payment was received. Refunds are not made in cash and not to a third-party account.
• Where the original instrument cannot be credited, the refund is made by NEFT to the bank account of the parent recorded with the school, on written request.
• The school will inform you of the refund reference number once the refund is initiated.

7. Rejection of a Refund Claim

Where a claim is rejected — for example, because the school's records and the gateway's records both show a successful, single, correctly applied payment — you will be told the reason in writing within the timelines above, together with the transaction evidence relied upon.

Service Delivery Policy

Last updated: 09 September 2026

Athena Global School provides educational services. No physical goods are sold and nothing is shipped or delivered by courier through this Portal. This section is provided because payment partners require a statement of how the paid-for service is delivered.

• What is paid for: school tuition fees, term fees, transport fees, examination fees, and other charges relating to a student's enrolment at an Athena Global School campus.
• Delivery of service: educational services are delivered at the campus in which the student is enrolled, during the academic year, in accordance with the school calendar published by the school.
• Confirmation of payment: an electronic receipt is generated on the Portal immediately on successful payment and is available at any time under the Fees section of the Portal. A confirmation is also sent to the registered email address and mobile number.
• Ledger update: the student's fee ledger is updated in real time on successful payment.
• Currency: all transactions are in Indian Rupees (INR).
• International payments: the Portal accepts payments only from within India.

Contact Us and Grievance Redressal

Last updated: 09 September 2026

1. Legal Entities

2. Campus Contacts

Office hours: Monday to Saturday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM IST. Closed on Sundays and school holidays.

3. Grievance Redressal — Payments

Any complaint relating to an online payment, a refund, or the handling of personal data may be raised as follows:

1. Level 1 — Campus Office. Contact the campus office using the details above, or raise a ticket on the school helpdesk at athena.edu.in/desk. Acknowledgement within 48 hours; resolution normally within 7 working days.
2. Level 2 — Chief Grievance Officer (Payments & Data Protection). If not resolved at Level 1, or within 7 working days, write to:
   Mr. Prithvi Chandrsekar
   Chief Grievance Officer & Executive Director
   Athena Global School
   T. Neduncheri Road, Thunisiramedu, Chidambaram – 608602, Tamil Nadu, India
   Email: grievance@athena.edu.in
   Alternate email: executivedirector@athena.edu.in
   Phone: +91 75488 88780 (Mon–Sat, 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM IST)
   Acknowledgement within 48 hours; resolution within 30 days of receipt.
3. Level 3 — Chief Executive Officer. If still unresolved, write to ceo@athena.edu.in.

Please include the student's name, admission number, campus, transaction date and amount, and the Portal receipt or order ID in every communication so that we can trace the transaction.

4. Payment Partner

Online payments on this Portal are processed by an RBI-authorised payment aggregator. Complaints that relate to the payment instrument itself — for example a card decline, a UPI mandate, or a bank-side reversal — may also be taken up with your bank or card issuer. The school will assist by providing the transaction reference details on request.