How to Vet an Individual Tutor
Hiring an individual, not a centre. Different risks, different questions.
Choosing a centre is covered in a separate guide. Hiring an individual tutor is a different problem: better value, more upside, and no institution behind them when something goes wrong.
Qualifications tell you less than you think
A first from a good university means the person understood the subject at nineteen. It says nothing about whether they can explain it a second way when the first way fails, which is the entire job.
What matters more, in order: have they taught this exact specification, for how long, and what happens in their lesson when a student gets something wrong. The third is the one that separates people who know a subject from people who can teach it.
Questions that produce checkable answers
- "Which board and syllabus code does my child sit, and have you taught it?" A tutor who does not already know to ask this is teaching generic content. In the sciences the boards differ enough to decide the top grades.
- "What will you do in the first lesson?" You want a diagnostic: timed work marked to a real mark scheme. You do not want "go through what they are doing in school", which means the tutoring will follow the school and never address why the student is behind it.
- "Show me a piece of student work you marked." Redacted is fine. This is the single most revealing request, and the one most tutors have never been asked.
- "What would make you tell me this is not working?" A tutor with a real answer has thought about it. One who reassures you has not.
- "What do you expect between lessons?" A tutor setting nothing is planning to do the work for your child.
Red flags
- A guaranteed grade. Nobody can guarantee an examination result. This is the clearest signal available.
- Offering to write or heavily edit an IA, Extended Essay or personal statement. Walk away. The consequence of an academic honesty finding lands on the student, never on the tutor.
- A large package demanded before any teaching. Pay for a small block first.
- Vagueness about which exam board they teach.
- Being unwilling to be observed or recorded early on.
What a trial lesson should tell you
Ask your child two questions afterwards, and listen to the second more than the first.
"Did you understand it?" Most students say yes, because understanding while someone explains is easy.
"Can you do the next one on your own?" This is the real test. A good tutor spends most of the lesson watching your child work, not talking. If your child describes a lesson where the tutor did the questions on a screen, that was a performance.
Then ask the tutor what they found. A written or spoken diagnosis naming a specific weakness is what you are paying for. "She's bright, just needs confidence" is not a diagnosis.