How to vet a private tutor

Start with identity, not credentials

Credentials can be impressive and still belong to someone else. The first question is not "what qualifications does this person have" but "is this person who they say they are" — because every later check inherits the answer. A diploma verifies a name; it does not verify that the name belongs to the person in the video call.

Ask to see government photo identification on a live video call, with the person holding it. Compare the name against the name on every qualification document they send you. If the names differ and there is no explanation — marriage, transliteration, a legal change — treat that as unresolved rather than minor.

• Photo ID shown live on video, not as a forwarded image file
• Name consistency across ID, diplomas and any professional registration
• An online footprint that predates the tutoring profile
• A working phone number you have actually called

Separate subject expertise from teaching ability

These are genuinely different skills, and the market conflates them constantly. A first-class degree in mathematics says a person understands mathematics. It says nothing about whether they can diagnose why a fifteen-year-old keeps dropping signs when expanding brackets.

In England, that distinction is formalised. Qualified Teacher Status is a separate credential from a subject degree — it certifies pedagogical competence rather than subject expertise, and completing a PGCE does not by itself confer it. QTS is required in state schools but not in academies, free schools or independent schools, which is why "taught at a good school" is weaker evidence than it sounds.

For a private tutor, neither credential is mandatory. What matters is that you know which one you are being sold. A working examiner with no teaching qualification may be exactly right for A-Level exam technique, and entirely wrong for rebuilding a struggling Year 9 student's confidence.

Take references properly, or do not take them at all

A reference that is never contacted is decoration. If a tutor supplies referees, call one — and ask questions whose answers cannot be guessed: how long did the arrangement run, what was the starting position, what specifically changed, and would you hire this person again for a different child.

Be alert to referees who cannot describe the work in any detail, who share an email domain with the tutor, or whose contact details route back to the tutor's own phone. Those are the three patterns that turn up most often when a reference has been manufactured.

Ask what the first month is supposed to produce

Good tutors answer this concretely and slightly pessimistically. Weak ones answer with enthusiasm and no measurable content. You want to hear a diagnosis before a plan: which topics are weak, how that was established, and what a realistic change looks like by a stated date.

The evidence on one-to-one tuition supports that specificity. The Education Endowment Foundation's Teaching and Learning Toolkit reports that one-to-one tuition delivers approximately five additional months' progress on average, with short, regular sessions — around 30 minutes, three to five times a week, over a period of up to ten weeks — producing optimum impact. The same evidence finds a larger effect in primary schools (+6 months) than in secondary (+4 months).

Note what that implies. Focused intensity over a defined period beats an open-ended weekly hour continuing indefinitely. A tutor proposing a fixed block with a stated goal is closer to the evidence than one proposing a standing appointment with no end date.

Check the safeguarding position honestly

Criminal-record checking is not internationally uniform, and anyone implying otherwise is overselling. In England and Wales, the Disclosure and Barring Service issues basic checks (unspent convictions and conditional cautions), standard checks (spent and unspent convictions and cautions), enhanced checks (adding relevant local police information) and enhanced checks with barred lists.

Crucially, these are normally requested by employers or organisations. GOV.UK notes that people applying for a role "can sometimes request an enhanced check or enhanced check with barred list for themselves" — sometimes, not routinely. That matters for private tutoring, where there is often no employer to request one, so the absence of a high-level check is not automatically a red flag. A claim to hold one, however, should be evidenced with a certificate you actually read.

Outside the UK the picture fragments further. Cross-border criminal, education and employment checks run country by country under different legal bases, and a check performed in one jurisdiction does not transfer to another. Treat any blanket claim of international clearance with suspicion.