Private Tutoring and Home Educating
The past 12 months of lockdown and social distancing behaviours have impacted the education sector at all levels. With schools closed for considerable periods, exam schedules torn up and some exam results ending in political headaches, it has been a tough year for schools, colleges and universities.
These shortcomings have highlighted the suitability of private tuition as a supplement to the problems listed above, as parents are rightly worried about the choices their children will have in the future. Private tuition can offer dedicated, one-to-one focus from a qualified tutor to help beat the uncertainty and give a child the support they deserve.
The recognition of this fact has led to an increase in the number of companies who are offering tuition services, often competing on price rather than quality in order to gain as much ground in the marketplace as possible. More and more evidence has emerged that, in the process of doing so, some companies are sidestepping critically important safeguarding elements that are so important to working with children.
Safeguarding
As a well-established and trusted provider of private tuition, Think Tutors has a safeguarding process that is unrivalled in its thoroughness. At the heart of this process is the fact that we treat all our tutors as a community, who share our values and strive to offer the best quality tuition to every child we work with.
We do not operate like many agencies do – our tutors are well known to us and we work with them in a way that benefits the child the most. From the very outset, our onboarding process is designed to evaluate the quality and suitability of tutors to work with our clients.
This begins with a formal interview, during which we take the time to find out about the tutor’s motivations in order to give us an understanding of how they can support the children we work with. All our tutors undergo an Enhanced DBS check, which is reviewed yearly. They are also requested to undertake, unless they otherwise have, a Safeguarding Children Level 2 course, providing an up-to-date knowledge of policies, guidance and legislation.
We also check two references from each tutor and explore questions related to safeguarding in their previous roles to determine suitability. We perform document and identity checks in order to satisfy ourselves that the tutors are who they say they are.
Once we are confident in a tutor’s abilities and satisfied that they have met all our safeguarding checks, we then send out our comprehensive onboarding pack, with codes of conduct, policies and agreements for tutors to read and sign.
If you would like to work with Think Tutors, or have any questions about our safeguarding process, please do get in touch.