Announced 8 May 2026
5d 1h 3m 2s since the announcement
Published 8 May 2026 · Updated 12 May 2026 · Last reviewed 12 May 2026 · Authored by Robert S., checked by Fiona H. (former First Tutors user)
First Tutors has closed.
Here's how to get your reviews back.
First Tutors announced its closure on 8 May 2026 after twenty years of trading. A lot of tutors have years of reviews and message history on the platform, and a reasonable concern about losing it all when the lights go out.
You don't have to. UK GDPR gives you a statutory right to ask First Tutors for your data, reviews and all, free of charge and in machine-readable form. The law gives them one calendar month to respond. The rest of this page is the step-by-step.
Recover your reviews
Bring your First Tutors reviews to Tutorperch
Before First Tutors went dark we archived every profile Common Crawl and the Wayback Machine captured — bio, qualifications, badges, every review. If yours is in our archive, you can claim it, prove ownership, and have the reviews appear in a separate "Reviews from First Tutors" section on your Tutorperch profile.
Ownership is proved with either your First Tutors avatar matching your identity-verified Tutorperch photo, or by uploading an original First Tutors email (the DKIM signature plus the embedded tutor ID prove the account is yours).
What happened
What happened to First Tutors?
First Tutors is operated by EduNation Limited, registered at Companies House under number 06071367 and incorporated in January 2007. The company traded as firsttutors.co.uk for more than twenty years before publishing the closure notice on 8 May 2026. The directory and tutor profiles are no longer accessible.
No reason for the closure has been published. The notice thanks customers and tutors but does not explain the decision. Several theories have circulated on Reddit and tutor forums; none of them is sourced, and we won't repeat them here. If First Tutors publishes a reason, we'll update the page.
The practical question is what happens to the data. EduNation remains the controller while the company exists, and the DPO address is live. UK GDPR rights are intact for now. The following guide explains how to exercise them before that window closes.
The announcement
What First Tutors said.
"After more than 20 years of trading, First Tutors has made the difficult decision to close. We'd like to thank all of the customers and tutors who have used the platform to facilitate private tuition services for their support over the years.
If you have an existing query, please contact info@firsttutors.co.uk, and we will do our best to respond as quickly as possible under the circumstances; however, responses will likely be delayed.
If you have a data privacy enquiry, please contact dpo@firsttutors.co.uk."
Source: firsttutors.co.uk , retrieved 8 May 2026. The DPO contact (dpo@firsttutors.co.uk) is the address you'll use to recover your data.
Your rights
What UK GDPR entitles you to.
Two articles do the work. Article 15 covers data others created about you (reviews, received messages, internal notes); Article 20 covers data you supplied (your profile and the messages you sent). Both are free of charge, enforceable through the ICO, with a one-month statutory deadline.
UK GDPR · Article 15
Right of access
You can ask First Tutors for a copy of all the personal data they hold about you, not only what you uploaded. That covers the reviews and ratings written about you by students and parents, messages you received, account and login logs, and any internal notes. Free of charge, in a commonly used electronic form, on a statutory one-month deadline.
Reviewer names may be redacted to protect third-party privacy. The review text, rating, and date are yours by right.
UK GDPR · Article 20
Data portability
For data you provided, like your profile, contact details and the messages you sent, you can ask for it in a structured, machine-readable format like CSV or JSON. Same one-month deadline, same free of charge.
Article 20 doesn't cover reviews written about you. Those come back via Article 15. The template below asks for both.
The request
Send this email.
Copy the email below, fill in the three bracketed placeholders, and send it from the address you registered with First Tutors. The template cites the right articles and addresses the predictable objection that reviews are someone else's data rather than yours. (They are both, per Nowak v Data Protection Commissioner, Case C-434/16, CJEU Second Chamber, 20 December 2017.)
Dear Data Protection Officer, I am exercising my rights under Article 15 (Right of Access) and Article 20 (Right to Data Portability) of the UK GDPR. Please provide, within one calendar month of receipt (Article 12(3)) and free of charge (Article 12(5)): 1. Under Article 20, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format (CSV or JSON preferred): all personal data I provided to First Tutors, including but not limited to my profile content (name, photo, bio, subjects, levels, hourly rate, qualifications, availability, location), my account and contact information, and the messages I sent through the platform. 2. Under Article 15(3), in a commonly used electronic form: a copy of all other personal data First Tutors processes about me, including all reviews, ratings, and comments written about me by students or parents (these are my personal data per Nowak v Data Protection Commissioner C-434/16), all messages I received, account and login logs, payment records, and any internal notes, flags, or moderation records. 3. The information required by Article 15(1)(a)-(h): the purposes of processing, the categories of personal data, the recipients or categories of recipients to whom data has been disclosed, the retention period, the source of any data not collected directly from me, and any automated decision-making. I confirm my identity by writing from the email address registered to my First Tutors account ([INSERT YOUR REGISTERED EMAIL HERE]). My account username is [INSERT YOUR USERNAME / DISPLAY NAME HERE]. Please do not request additional ID unless you have specific, reasoned doubts about my identity (Article 12(6); ICO guidance on reasonable and proportionate verification). Where the disclosure of reviewer-identifying information would engage Article 15(4) UK GDPR or paragraph 16 of Schedule 2 Part 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018, please redact only the information that would identify the reviewer. The review text, rating, date, and subject must still be disclosed — these are my personal data, not the reviewer's identifying information. If First Tutors enters administration, liquidation, or any other insolvency process before this request is fulfilled, please forward this request to the appointed office-holder — the obligation to comply with a Data Subject Access Request survives the appointment of an office-holder, and the ICO has enforced compliance in similar cases (Re SCL Elections / Cambridge Analytica, 2018–19). If the company is dissolved before responding, please confirm in writing that the request has been recorded so that it may be reactivated on any subsequent restoration to the register. Beyond my own data: if it is feasible during the wind-down, please also consider publishing a static, public archive of tutor profiles and reviews at a stable URL — even a simple flat-file mirror. This would give former tutors durable, third-party-verifiable evidence of their reviews, which is the cleanest provenance signal for other platforms. I appreciate this is a courtesy rather than a legal obligation, but it would meaningfully reduce the cost of the closure for the people who built reputations on First Tutors over many years. Please confirm receipt of this request and the date by which you will respond. Yours faithfully, [YOUR FULL NAME] [YOUR REGISTERED EMAIL] [TODAY'S DATE]
Four things worth knowing
- Send it from the email address you registered with First Tutors. Write from anywhere else and the DPO has grounds to ask for ID first, which costs you weeks.
- Save a copy of the email and any reply. If they miss the deadline, those timestamps are what an ICO complaint runs on.
- The legal references do the work. You don't need to soften the email or apologise for sending it.
- First Tutors' own published Privacy Policy (archived 7 March 2026) explicitly confirms the right of access and the right to data portability "in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format". They've already promised the rights you're exercising.
Don't wait
Don't wait for dissolution.
Your DSAR rights are intact while First Tutors winds down. They survive administration and liquidation: the company remains the controller, and an appointed office-holder is the right person to address the request to. The ICO enforced exactly this in SCL Elections / Cambridge Analytica (2018-19): an enforcement notice during administration, then prosecution and a £15,000 fine when the company didn't comply.
What they don't survive is dissolution. Once the company is struck off Companies House it ceases to exist as a legal person. There is no controller left to honour your DSAR, and recovering your data after that point requires a court application to restore the company to the register under sections 1024-1030 of the Companies Act 2006. The recent move of the operating company's registered office to an accountancy address is the kind of housekeeping that often precedes strike-off; we don't know when it will happen, but we wouldn't bet on long gaps.
Send the request this week. The one-month clock starts when they receive it, not when they get round to opening it.
After the DSAR
Bring your reviews with you.
A lot of tutors have already been in touch, frustrated about losing years of reviews. We've told all of them the same thing. We're building a way to import old reviews onto Tutorperch, and the design has to be fair to tutors, parents, and the students who wrote the reviews in the first place. We're still working out exactly what that system looks like, and the data First Tutors returns to you will make it considerably more reliable to build.
Where we're heading: imported reviews would live in their own block on your profile, labelled as imported, separate from your native Tutorperch reviews. They wouldn't feed your rating and they wouldn't influence search ranking. The rating only means something if it's our reviews driving it. How much of that we can deliver depends on what First Tutors actually returns. The verification approach below is what we're aiming for.
How we'd know imports are real.
Either one of these is enough. You don't need both.
- A valid digital signature on the email First Tutors sent you. Every email First Tutors sends carries a DKIM signature, a cryptographic stamp applied by their mail servers. We verify it against the public key they publish in DNS. A valid signature proves two things: the email genuinely came from First Tutors, and the body hasn't been altered since they sent it. The signature can't be faked without their private key, and tampering with the message breaks it. (Forwarding the email also breaks the signature, so we need the raw source. Here's how to extract it from your email provider.)
- A Wayback Machine link to the original review. Public First Tutors profile pages were archived for years. If you can find the review on a snapshot of your profile, paste the snapshot URL with your import. The Wayback Machine is independent of both you and First Tutors, which is what makes it useful as evidence.
Reviews backed by neither, we wouldn't accept.
While we build it: list as a tutor at any point. Your profile is yours regardless of where the import system lands. If you've got questions about the import side or anything else, drop us a note via /contact. That's the channel for help and questions, not for sending us your DSAR data; keep that with you for now.
Our commitment
Why this won't happen with us.
The reason this page exists is that First Tutors closed without publishing a structured export tool for tutor reviews. We didn't want to be in a position to leave our own users in that spot.
If Tutorperch ever closes, we give 30 days' written notice and trigger an automatic data export for every user. Section 13 of the terms of service: in the contract, not on a forum post. If a marketplace that doesn't bin its own users when it closes matters to you, list as a tutor.
Questions
Common questions.
- Has First Tutors actually closed?
- Yes. The closure notice was published on 8 May 2026 after more than twenty years of trading. The directory is no longer accessible; the homepage now shows the announcement quoted above.
- Why did First Tutors close?
- No reason has been published. The closure notice thanks customers and tutors but does not explain the decision. Several theories have circulated on Reddit and tutor forums; none of them is sourced, and we won't repeat them as fact. If First Tutors says more, the page will be updated.
- Who owns or operates First Tutors?
- First Tutors is operated by EduNation Limited, registered at Companies House under number 06071367 and incorporated on 29 January 2007. EduNation's ICO registration number is Z1938712. That's the reference an ICO case officer will look up if you escalate a DSAR complaint.
- How can I contact First Tutors?
- Two addresses are named in the closure notice and both remain live as of 11 May 2026: info@firsttutors.co.uk for general enquiries (the notice warns of delayed responses during the wind-down) and dpo@firsttutors.co.uk for data privacy enquiries. The DPO address is the one used in the data-recovery template above.
- I'm in Scotland or Northern Ireland. Does this still apply?
- Yes. UK GDPR applies across the United Kingdom, so the right of access (Article 15) and the right to data portability (Article 20) operate identically wherever you tutor from. The ICO's remit covers all four nations, and the template above is suitable as-is.
- Will First Tutors actually respond?
- They have a statutory obligation to. UK GDPR Article 12(3) gives them one calendar month from receipt, free of charge. They can extend by up to two further months for genuinely complex requests, but only if they tell you in writing within the first month. The ICO takes non-response seriously even during a wind-down, and the fact that First Tutors named a DPO contact in their closing notice signals they expect requests.
- What if they refuse or ignore me?
- Complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint. The process is free, and they take DSAR non-compliance seriously. EduNation Limited (the company that operates First Tutors) is registered with the ICO under registration number Z1938712, which is the reference an ICO case officer will look up. The leading enforcement example is the Cambridge Analytica / SCL Elections case (ICO enforcement notice in 2018, prosecution and £15,000 fine in 2019), where the ICO pursued a DSAR all the way through the company's administration. The lever is real even when the company is winding down. The complication is timing: if the company is dissolved before they respond, your practical route narrows sharply. The company has ceased to exist as a legal person, and recovering your data then requires a court application to restore it to the register under sections 1024-1030 of the Companies Act 2006. That is why we recommend acting now rather than waiting.
- Do I need to send proof of ID?
- Probably not. ICO guidance says identity checks should be reasonable and proportionate, so sending the request from the email address you registered with is usually enough. If the DPO asks for ID without giving a specific reason for doubting your identity, you can push back politely and cite Article 12(6).
- My students or their parents wrote the reviews. Are they really my personal data?
- Yes. The Court of Justice settled this in Nowak v Data Protection Commissioner (Case C-434/16, CJEU Second Chamber, 20 December 2017): opinions and assessments written about an identifiable person are that person's personal data because of their content, purpose, or effect, and any one of those three limbs is enough. A named tutor's reviews fit squarely within that, and Nowak remains binding retained EU case law in the UK. The reviewer's name can ordinarily be redacted to protect their identifying information, but the review text, rating and date should be disclosed.
- Can I include messages from my students in the request?
- Yes. Your message history is your personal data. The DSAR template above asks for both the messages you sent (covered by Article 20 portability) and the messages you received (covered by Article 15 access).
- I was a student on First Tutors. Can I do this too?
- Yes. Every user has the same UK GDPR rights regardless of role. Students can request their messages, the reviews they wrote, payment records and account history. The same template works; change "tutor" to "student" where appropriate.
- Once I have my data, can I bring my reviews to Tutorperch?
- That's what we're building. The import system is still being designed, and what comes back from your DSAR will help shape what we can verify and accept. Where we're heading: imported reviews on your profile in their own block, labelled as imported, separate from your native rating, and not feeding search ranking. Two verification signals are in the design: a DKIM signature on the email from First Tutors, plus Wayback Machine cross-checks on archived profile snapshots. List as a tutor at /list while you wait, and contact us via /contact if you have questions about the import side.
Send the email.
Copy the template, paste into a new message, fill in the three placeholders, send. By law they have one calendar month from receipt to respond, though earlier is better.
This page is informational, not legal advice. The legal framework discussed is the UK GDPR (assimilated Regulation (EU) 2016/679, retained under section 3 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 and reclassified as assimilated law by the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023) and the Data Protection Act 2018. For more on UK data subject rights, see the ICO's right of access guidance.
Written by Robert S. Reviewed by Fiona H. Last reviewed