Questions to ask a tutor before you book

Questions about diagnosis

Competent teaching begins with finding out what is actually wrong, and weak tutors skip straight to a plan. These questions test whether diagnosis happens at all.

The answers you want are specific and slightly uncomfortable. A tutor who says they will need two sessions to work out where the gaps are is being honest. One who describes their programme before knowing anything about the student is selling a product.

• How will you work out where the actual gaps are?
• What will you want to see before the first lesson — recent work, a report, a past paper?
• When you have taught this topic before, where do students usually go wrong?
• What would make you say this is not the right fit?

Questions about method and structure

The evidence on one-to-one tuition favours short, regular sessions — around 30 minutes, three to five times a week — over a defined period of up to ten weeks, with an average effect of roughly five additional months of progress. Few private arrangements can match that pattern exactly, but the shape of a tutor's answer tells you whether they are thinking about structure at all.

• How long would you expect this to take, and what happens at the end?
• What will you ask the student to do between sessions?
• How will we know at week six whether this is working?
• Do you mark work between lessons, and is that included?

Questions about evidence

These are the questions people find awkward and should not. Every one of them has a short answer if the claim is true.

• Which qualification do you hold, from which institution, in which year?
• If you examine: which board, which paper, which years?
• Can you show photo ID on this call?
• Can I speak to one family you have worked with?

Questions about safeguarding and logistics

Ordinary professional practice makes these dull to answer. Discomfort is the signal.

Ask where lessons happen, whether a parent may be present or nearby, how communication with the student will work, and whether the tutor is content for a parent to be copied on substantive messages. A tutor who wants a private channel to a child that the parent cannot see is departing from normal practice.

Questions about money

Get these answered before the first lesson and get them in writing. Most disputes in private tutoring are not about teaching; they are about cancellation terms nobody agreed in advance.

Note that where a tutor or platform is a trader selling to a consumer at a distance, EU consumer law attaches. Directive 2011/83/EU establishes pre-contractual information duties and a 14-day right of withdrawal for distance contracts, with an important exception: a service already performed with the consumer's express prior consent. In practice, that means asking about cancellation before lessons begin is the moment when your position is strongest.

• What is your cancellation window, and what is charged inside it?
• Is there a minimum commitment, and is it refundable?
• Are materials and past papers included or extra?
• How and when do you invoice, and what payment methods do you accept?