Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Tutor

Knowing the right questions to ask before hiring a tutor can save you a term of wasted sessions and money. It’s easy to focus on price and availability during that first conversation and forget to ask the things that actually matter — safeguarding, teaching approach, and how you’ll know whether it’s working.

This article is a practical, ready-to-use checklist. Bring it to your first call or message with any prospective tutor, whether you found them through a tutoring company or independently. If you’re also weighing up the bigger picture of how to evaluate tutors overall, our companion guide on how to choose the right tutor covers that broader decision framework.

Questions About Qualifications and Experience

Start with the fundamentals of subject expertise:

• What subjects and exam boards do you currently teach or have recent experience with?
• Do you have experience teaching at my child’s specific level — Foundation or Higher, KS3 or GCSE?
• What is your educational or professional background in this subject?
• Roughly how long have you been tutoring this subject specifically?

Vague or overly general answers here are worth noting — a tutor confident in their expertise should be able to answer these clearly and specifically.

Questions About DBS and Safeguarding

Never skip this step, regardless of how the tutor came recommended:

• Do you hold a current, up-to-date DBS check, and can you confirm when it was last renewed?
• What safeguarding measures are in place for online sessions, such as session recording or a code of conduct?
• If sessions are in person, where exactly will they take place, and is a parent or guardian able to be nearby or present?

The gov.uk website has clear official guidance on DBS checks if you want to understand exactly what they cover before asking these questions.

Questions About What a Session Looks Like

It helps to understand the practical shape of a session before committing:

• What does a typical session look like — is there a lesson plan, or is it more responsive to whatever the student needs that week?
• What resources or materials will be used, and will my child need anything specific such as a particular textbook or calculator?
• How long is each session, and is that length appropriate for my child’s age and attention span?
• For online sessions, what platform is used, and is it easy for my child to use independently?

Questions About How Progress Is Measured

This is one of the most commonly overlooked areas, yet it’s essential for knowing whether tuition is actually working:

• How will I be updated on my child’s progress, and how often?
• Do you track progress against specific topics or exam board specification points?
• Will mock papers or practice tests be used to measure improvement over time?
• What would tell you, as the tutor, that a change of approach is needed?

A tutor who has a clear, thought-through answer to these questions is far more likely to run a structured, effective programme than one who simply says “we’ll see how it goes.”

Questions About Cancellation and Logistics

Practical questions upfront avoid awkward conversations later:

• What is your cancellation and rescheduling policy, including notice periods?
• Are missed sessions charged, and under what circumstances might a fee be waived?
• How is payment structured — per session, in blocks, or on a rolling basis?
• What happens during school holidays — do sessions pause, continue, or become more flexible?

Questions to Ask After a Trial Session

Once a trial session has taken place, a short follow-up conversation is valuable:

• What did you notice about my child’s current strengths and gaps?
• What would the first few sessions focus on if we continued?
• How did my child seem to respond — engaged, confident, hesitant?

Comparing the tutor’s observations with your child’s own feedback about the session is one of the most reliable ways to judge fit before committing to an ongoing arrangement. If you’d like a structured, no-obligation starting point for this whole process, our Free Assessment is designed to answer many of these questions upfront, and you’re always welcome to get in touch with any specific questions beforehand.

Questions About Teaching Approach and Communication Style

Beyond the practical logistics, it’s worth understanding how a tutor actually communicates, both with your child and with you:

• How do you explain a concept if a student doesn’t understand it the first time — do you have a few different approaches you switch between?
• How do you handle a student who seems frustrated, disengaged, or reluctant to admit they’re struggling?
• What is your preferred way for parents to reach you between sessions with a quick question — email, message, or something else?
• Do you set homework or practice tasks between sessions, and how do you follow up on it?

These questions reveal a lot about a tutor’s actual teaching philosophy, beyond what’s written on a profile. A tutor who has clearly thought about how they adapt to different students, rather than teaching everyone the same way, is generally a stronger sign than qualifications alone.

Answers That Should Give You Pause

Just as important as the questions themselves is paying attention to how they’re answered. A few responses are worth treating as a caution sign rather than dismissing:

• Hesitation, vagueness, or deflection when asked directly about DBS or safeguarding checks.
• An unwillingness to offer any kind of trial session before requiring a longer-term commitment.
• No clear answer about how or when you’ll hear about your child’s progress.
• Pressure to pay for a large block of sessions upfront before your child has even met the tutor.

None of these on their own necessarily rules a tutor out, but a pattern of evasive or defensive answers across several of your questions is a reasonable reason to keep looking elsewhere.

Final Thoughts

The questions above take perhaps fifteen minutes to work through, but they can save months of mismatched tuition. A confident, transparent tutor will welcome every one of these questions — treat any reluctance to answer clearly as useful information in itself.