Tutor guidelines

The classroom opens 10 minutes before the start. Join at that point rather than at the start time, so a browser permission or a device problem does not eat the first five minutes of a lesson somebody paid for.

If a student has not joined, stay in the room for the first ten minutes and send them a message. If you have to miss a lesson entirely, tell the student before it starts. Silence is the one thing that has no excuse: a student sitting alone in a classroom will not book again, and they should not.

Your profile sets an expectation: the languages you teach, the level you teach them to, and your specialities. Students book on the strength of it. Keep it accurate, and update it when what you actually teach changes.

Trial lessons are real lessons at a lower price, not sales calls. Use them to find the student's level, agree what you will work on, and teach something. A trial that is thirty minutes of introductions is a trial the student paid for and did not get.

Preparation is part of the hour. If you agreed to look at somebody's essay or prepare exam questions, come with them ready.

Publish only the hours you genuinely intend to teach. The single most common complaint on any tutoring marketplace is a tutor who lists wide availability and then cancels, and it is easy to avoid: keep your calendar honest and add time off before you travel.

When you do have to cancel, do it as early as you can and message the student to explain. A student cancelling more than 12 hours ahead is refunded in full, and a student cancelling later is refunded in part. When you cancel, the student is always refunded in full, whatever the notice.

Repeated cancellations and no-shows are the fastest route off this marketplace. We look at the pattern, not at one bad week.

Do not ask students to book or pay outside the platform, and do not offer a discount for doing so. It is the clearest rule here, and the reason is not only the commission: off-platform lessons have no booking record, no refund protection for either side, no dispute route, and no way for you to prove you taught the hour if somebody says you did not.

Sharing a document, a workbook or a study tool with a student is fine and encouraged. Moving the payment relationship off the site is not.

Treat students the way you would want a stranger to treat you in your own second language. Learners are exposed when they speak badly, and a tutor who makes that feel humiliating has failed at the job regardless of how good their grammar explanations are.

Do not make sexual or romantic advances to a student. Do not press for personal contact details, financial help, or a relationship outside the lessons. Discrimination on the basis of nationality, race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability or age is not acceptable, and neither is refusing a student for those reasons.

If you teach children, treat a parent or guardian as part of the arrangement: they should know when lessons happen and should be able to be present. Follow the law that applies where you live regarding working with minors.

Everything on your profile must be true. Use a recent photograph of yourself, write your own description, and list only qualifications you actually hold and experience you actually have. If a credential can be checked, expect that at some point it will be.

Never ask a student for a review in exchange for anything, and never write or arrange a review of yourself. Reviews can only be left by students who finished a lesson with you, and a review cannot be removed because you did not like it. You can reply in public, and a calm reply to an unfair review reads better than you think.

What a student tells you in a lesson stays between you. Do not record a lesson without asking first and getting a clear yes, and do not share a recording, a screenshot, or a student's written work anywhere without their permission.

Most problems are a first offence and get a message from us explaining what needs to change. Repeated cancellations, teaching materially differently from your profile, or pushing students off the platform will get your profile paused, which hides you from search while we sort it out.

Conduct that harms a student ends the account, and where money is involved it is held while the lessons behind it are reviewed. We will always tell you what the complaint was and give you the chance to answer it.