E-sign student contracts in compliance with EduTrust 4
Quickly set up Zegal’s workflow platform to manage student contract e-Signing so that your PEI achieves full Edutrust certification.
Leading universities and private schools trust Zegal
EduTrust is a certification scheme in Singapore, specifically for private educational institutions (PEIs). The scheme is administered by the Committee for Private Education (CPE), which is part of SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG).
EduTrust certification is aimed at ensuring that PEIs maintain high standards in areas like academic quality, student protection, and financial viability.
To ensure that your PEI maintains its Edutrust Certification status when signing electronically, you must use a fully compliant e-signing system when you enrol new students or make any e-signed changes to their existing contracts.
Complete Edutrust 4 Compliance
Zegal is the only e-Signing platform that has been built ground up to ensure end-to-end compliance with every requirement of Edutrust 4.
“Our institution transitioned to Zegal, and the ease with which we manage compliance is remarkable.”
What are the Edutrust version 4 student signing contract requirements?
The process for signing student contracts is very clearly proscribed in Edutrust 4. If your PEI admissions team are missing any of the following steps, then you may well be in breach of your Edutrust Certification requirements. In particular you should check that your existing e-Signing solution fulfils ALL of the requirements of Item 4.2.1 which concerns student contracts, and states:
Describe/Show how you
- Execute a student contract during course admission. The student contract execution procedure shall provide for the following:
- Ensuring each student contract is meant for the admission of each student into one course
- Explaining the terms and conditions of the contract to each student and ensuring that each student fully understands them
- Ensuring that both you and the student acknowledge any amendment made
- Stipulating a cooling off period of at least 7 working days
- Signing a new contract or issuing an addendum to the existing contract for a student who wishes to repeat a module and when a course deferment or transfer request has been approved
- Ensuring that a breakdown of all fees (inclusive of any non-refundable fees, discounts/rebates and grants/funding given) are declared in the contract and marketing collaterals
- Ensure a copy of your student contract is made available for prospective students
- Review the student contract execution procedure for continual improvement.
How does Zegal ensure Edustrust 4 compliance and how is it different to other e-Signing providers?
The Zegal Edutrust Platform has been built ground-up to ensure that it ticks every one of the Edutrust 4 requirements, and is future proof so that as those requirements evolve over time, you can be sure that the Zegal platform will continue to adapt so that it is remains 100% compliant:
The key features below show how Zegal outperforms other standard e-Signing solutions, the use of which in an Edutrust compliant setting would be risky.
| Edutrust version 4 compliance requirements | Zegal | PDF E-Signing tools |
| Explaining the terms and conditions of the contract to each student and ensuring that each student fully understands them | ✔ this feature is unique to Zegal and cannot be fulfilled using other E-sigining platforms. | ❌ |
| Ensuring that both you and the student acknowledge any amendment made | ✔ | ✔ Available, but only on expensive, enterprise-grade e-Signing plans. |
| Signing a new contract or issuing an addendum to the existing contract for a student who wishes to repeat a module and when a course deferment or transfer request has been approved | ✔ Zegal automatically creates the amended contract using information from the existing contract and stores the contract in your student file alongside the original. | ❌ |
| Ensure a copy of your student contract is made available for prospective students | ✔ The student automatically receives a signed copy to their inbox and PEI has an audit trail of the send receipt. | ✔ Available, but only on expensive, enterprise-grade e-Signing plans. |
100% Compliant
Zegal’s unique, automatic contract summary feature ensures each student has understood what they are signing and that your PEI is 100% Edutrust version 4 compliant.
“Having automatic contract renewal reminders means that we never miss signing deadlines and have to chase late fees“
EduTrust and Zegal
Standard e-signing packages and PDF tools will not provide Edutrust compliance or support integrations or automation.
In the table below, we have compared ourselves to the Enterprise plan offered by DocuSign, which does not comply with the Edutrust 4 standard and would be between 5 and 10 times the annual cost of using Zegal.
| Feature | Zegal | DocuSign Enterprise Plan |
| eSignatures | Unlimited | Up to 100 envelopes/year (more at additional fees) |
| Documents | Unlimited | Up to 100 envelopes/year (more at additional fees) |
| Negotiations and approvals | ✔ | ✔ |
| Recipient analytics and audit logging | ✔ Zegal audit logging is fully compliant with version 4 of Edutrust | ✔ |
| Custom branding | ✔ | ✔ |
| Basic and advanced fields | ✔ | ✔ |
| Bulk send | ✔ | ✔ |
| Forms created and managed for you | ✔ | ❌ |
| Signer attachment | ✔ | ✔ |
| Automatic contract renewal reminders | ✔ | ❌ |
| Document design templates | ✔ | ❌ |
| Document editor | ✔ | ❌ |
| Edutrust version 4 compliant audit trail | ✔ | ❌ |
| CRM and document storage integrations | ✔ Integrations both upstream and downstream included without extra cost. | Additional purchase fees for each integration |
| Support | Local L1, L2 and L3 support from 9am-midnight Asian hours | Premium support |
How does Zegal improve the efficiency of the contract signing process?
Zegal is designed as a plug and play solution that can either work standalone or together with your existing IT and internet solutions to deliver 100% Edutrust compliance and also create massive efficiencies when your team is sending out 1000+ contracts in any year.
Seamless Integration
Zegal integrates with almost any existing software your team is using. Most commonly these are CRMs like Salesforce, or Hubspot; and document or university management systems. In fact we can plug Zegal into any system that has an API.
“We estimate we will save 100+ hours of admissions team time this year alone!”
Common PEI integrations with Zegal
USE CASE 1: Creating contracts for bulk sending from a CRM or a spreadsheet
Data in a CRM or a spreadsheet – however your admissions team currently stores student data, you can connect Zegal directly to that source. Zegal will then automatically pick up the information and complete the contract questionnaire, and add the email addresses for e-Signing.
Your team can review or make changes to the draft contract in Zegal before it is sent if needed.
USE CASE 2: Creating contracts via your student portal
Edutrust 4 FAQ
Is there a limit to the number of contracts our PEI can send out for e-Signing using Zegal?
Your PEI can use Zegal on an unlimited basis. There are no limits on the number of contracts you can send for e-Signing or the number of signers. Unlike other e-Signing platforms, we don’t meter the number or charge for ‘envelopes’ and that means that you can be sure there will be no additional fees ever on top of your subscription.
How many users can we add to our account?
Your Zegal subscription gives you an unlimited number of users for a single annual flat fee. We won’t charge you additional fees ever. Equally there are no limits to the number of e-Signers who can be invited to sign contracts.
What Zegal plan does our PEI need for this service?
Zegal Edutrust compliant e-Signing workflows and other education use cases all require a Zegal Enterprise subscription plan. Talk to us now to learn about using Zegal in your PEI.
Our student contract is tailored for our PEI and there are very specific data we need to collect. How does Zegal handle this?
The Zegal legal ops team onboards each PEI personally. As part of that process we ensure that we use your PEI specific contract template and that we are capturing all of the data and variables you need when you are sending contracts to prospective students.
What systems can Zegal integrate with?
Zegal can receive data directly into contracts for e-Signing from any other software that has an API. In practice this means that almost all modern software can be integrated with Zegal. But a few common examples are LMS, CRM, cloud storage, and spreadsheets.
What technical support does Zegal give to our PEI?
The Zegal Customer Support team offers support throughout the day Singapore time. Our Level 1 support team can help you or your students using livechat directly from the app. For more complex problems, our Level 2 support will work with you to resolve problems over email, and for workflow, automation and document issues, our Level 3 support is by phone and e-meetings. This unparalleled level of support has been the backbone of the Zegal service for ten years in Asia.
We love the Zegal system but we would like to use it for other use cases. Can this be done?
Yes. Several universities, and schools use Zegal for other specialised use cases but the two we see most commonly are for employment; and management of overseas agents. If you would like to talk to us about these use cases or any other, then please get in touch today.