Is online tutoring safe? The eight checks a parent should make before the first class, the rules a good service follows (recording, parents in the room, no contact outside class), the warning signs, and how to keep a child safe in any online lesson

"Is online tutoring safe" is the question parents ask quietly, after they have asked about price and subjects, and it deserves a straight answer. Online tutoring can be safer than in-person tutoring, because every minute of it can be recorded and watched, and it can be less safe, when an anonymous adult has a direct line to a child. Which one you get depends on the rules the service follows, and you can check those rules in ten minutes before the first class. This page is written by a tutoring service and says what we do, so that you can hold us and anyone else to it.

The real risks, in the order they actually happen

1. Wasted money. By far the commonest harm. A tutor who is a student rather than a teacher, who does not know your child's curriculum, who changes every few weeks, or who does not turn up. The review sites for online tutoring companies are full of this, and it is a safety issue in the plain sense: you paid for help the child did not get.
2. Data and payment. Card details stored by a platform, recordings of your child kept without your consent, a child's name and school in a database you cannot see. Rarely dramatic, worth checking.
3. Contact outside the lesson. A tutor who messages the child directly, on WhatsApp or a game, or who offers extra help off the platform. This is the risk that matters most, and it is entirely preventable by one rule, below.
4. An adult who should not be alone with children. Rare, and the reason the rules exist. Recording, parents in the room, and no outside contact make it nearly impossible for this risk to become harm.

The eight checks before the first class

1. Is every class recorded, and does the recording go to you? This is the single most important check. A recording means there is a record of every minute, the parent can watch any class, and nobody can say anything in a lesson they would not say in front of a parent. A service that does not record, or keeps the recordings itself and will not share them, fails this check.
2. Can you sit in on any class, without notice? The answer should be yes, and the tutor should behave the same whether you are there or not. For a child under 10, sit in on the first few classes anyway.
3. Does the tutor ever contact the child outside the lesson? The right answer is never: all contact goes through the parent, on the parent's phone, and the tutor has no direct line to the child. Ask this question in those words and listen for hesitation.
4. Who is the tutor, by name, with what qualification? A real name, a degree you can see, and the same tutor every week. A service that assigns "a tutor from our pool" cannot answer this, and the child cannot build the working relationship that makes tutoring work.
5. How do you pay, and how do you stop? Monthly, after the free class, with no package and no contract. The commonest complaints on review sites about online tutoring companies are about refunds on quarterly and yearly plans. If you have to pay for three months to find out whether it works, the risk is on you.
6. What does the service do with recordings and data? Recordings shared with the parent and deleted on request; the child's details used for the class and nothing else. A one-line answer is fine; no answer is not.
7. Is there a free first class, with you in the room? Not a sales call: a real lesson on your child's current topic, which you watch. It tells you more than any check on this list.
8. What happens if something feels wrong? Who do you contact, and what happens next. A named person with a phone number is the right answer.

The rules a safe service follows

These are the rules we follow, written down so that you can hold us to them. Every class is recorded and the recording is yours. Parents are welcome in every class, without notice. The tutor never contacts the child outside the class; everything goes through the parent. Tutors are a named team of women educators with master's degrees, the same tutor every week. Nothing is paid up front: the first class is free and you pay monthly afterwards and stop when you want. Any good service can say the same; if one cannot, that is the answer to the question at the top of this page.

Warning signs that mean stop

• The tutor asks for the child's phone number, social media or game username.
• The tutor suggests extra help off the platform, or a different app for "convenience".
• You are discouraged from sitting in, or recordings are "not available".
• The tutor changes without warning, more than once.
• The service wants a large payment before you have seen a class.
• Your child becomes reluctant to go to the class and cannot say why. This is also, more often, a sign of a bad fit rather than anything worse; either way, watch the recordings and act.

None of these is proof of harm. All of them are reasons to end the arrangement and find a service that follows the rules above.

Setting up the room, the device and the account

• The room: a shared space, door open, for a child under about 12. A bedroom with the door closed is the wrong place for a lesson with an adult, however safe the service.
• The device: a laptop or tablet with the camera on, on a table, not in bed. The family's account, not the child's own.
• The account: the parent's email and phone number on everything. The child should not have a login the parent cannot open.
• The schedule: a fixed time each week that the parent knows, so a class outside it would be noticed.
• After the class: a two-minute look at the recap and, now and then, ten minutes of the recording. Not to check up on the tutor, though it does that; to see what your child is learning.

Is it safer than in-person tutoring?

With the rules above, yes. An in-person tutor at your kitchen table is not recorded and is often alone with the child in a room; an online class that is recorded, with the parent able to join at any moment and no channel to the child outside it, has a record of every minute. The question is not online or in person; it is whether the service has rules and keeps them.

What a good online class looks like

Sixty minutes on a shared whiteboard: a recap, the new idea taught with diagrams, guided practice where the tutor watches every line the child writes, the homework set, and then the recording, the notes and a short message to the parent. The child does most of the work and most of the writing; the tutor explains, watches and corrects. If the free class looks like that, with the tutor's name and qualification known and the recording in your inbox afterwards, the arrangement is safe, and the only remaining question is whether the teaching is good, which how to choose an online tutor is about.

Where to get help

A free 30-minute 1-on-1 class with one of our tutors, with you in the room, on your child's current topic. The tutor's name and master's degree before the class, the recording after it, and a short plan with the price. Monthly billing afterwards, no package, and the rules on this page kept in every class. How we teach each subject is on the team page.

Questions parents ask

See how we teach this, 1-on-1 online →