Online tutoring removes geography from the supply problem. The norms below mirror what professional bodies and safeguarding charities recommend. They aren't Tutorperch policies imposed on you.
What good supervision looks like
The principle is open-door: online lessons happen in a family space, on a shared family device, with a parent close enough to overhear or drop in. The age of the child shapes the detail.
Primary-age and under-13s. Lessons within earshot of a parent, at the kitchen table or in the living room. You don't need to listen to every minute, but you should be in the home and able to look in without it becoming a production.
Secondary-age 13 to 16. Door open or ajar, with a parent at home. A teenager working in their own room is fine as long as the door stays open and a parent can pass through.
Sixth-form 16 to 18. Looser, but the same principle holds. Use a shared device or a clearly named account, not a backchannel on the child's personal phone.
A few practical specifics:
Use a mainstream video platform such as Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams. The account and meeting invites can sit with a parent, and there's a real company with proper reporting processes on the other end if a lesson goes wrong.
Avoid lessons over WhatsApp video, FaceTime to a personal Apple ID, Snapchat, Instagram DMs or Discord. These weren't built for one-to-one tutoring with a child. They tie contact to the child's personal accounts and put it out of a parent's sight.
Use a parent-named account where you can. The Zoom or Google account belongs to a parent, even if the child is the one using it, and the joining link goes to a parent's email.
Keep the substantive stuff in writing through the platform you booked on: homework, scheduling, and how lessons are structured. Tutorperch keeps a thread between parent and tutor for exactly this reason.
Recording lessons: the legal bit
Many tutors record lessons or share screen recordings of worked examples. Recording the audio and video of an identifiable person counts as processing their personal data, so UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 apply. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is the regulator. Two practical points follow.
The tutor needs a lawful basis to record. Consent is common, though not the only option. Whether a child can consent for themselves depends on whether they understand what they're agreeing to, not on a fixed age; in Scotland, children are presumed able to from 12. For under-18s, best practice is written consent from both parent and child before the first recording.
Consent has to be specific and informed. "Consent to recording" on its own isn't enough. You should be told why the lesson is being recorded, and a consent clause buried in the terms and conditions isn't valid. Good practice goes further: the tutor or platform should also tell you where the recording will be stored, who else can see it, how long it will be kept, and how to withdraw consent.
There are reasonable reasons a tutor might record, such as a revision aid for the student or evidence if a safeguarding question comes up later. There are also unreasonable ones, such as "for marketing" or "to share with other students", and you can decline those. Withdrawing consent must be at least as easy as giving it. See the ICO's guidance on consent for the underlying rules.
If your child wants to record lessons for their own revision, UK GDPR doesn't apply to purely personal use. It's still courteous to ask the tutor first, and their terms may require it. Sharing the recording beyond your household is a different matter.
Choosing a tutor with online lessons in mind
The vetting questions for an online tutor are mostly the same as for an in-person one. See how to vet a tutor and questions to ask a tutor for the full lists. A few are specific to online lessons:
Which platform do you use, and why that one?
Do you record lessons? If so, where are recordings stored, who has access, and how long do you keep them?
What's your policy on contact between lessons? Do you reply to students directly, or only via the parent?
What happens if my child can't make a lesson, and what's the cancellation window?
For under-16s, would you be comfortable if I sat in on the first lesson or two?
A tutor who answers these straightforwardly is the kind you want. One who gets evasive, especially about contact between lessons, is one to think twice about.
What "feels off" actually means
Trust your instincts and your child's. The patterns to watch for, drawn from the NSPCC's guidance on grooming, include:
Contact drifting off the lesson platform onto the tutor's personal phone or a chat app.
Conversations moving from schoolwork to private subjects: relationships, family difficulties, the child's body, "secrets between us".
Gifts, money or favours from the tutor.
Pressure on the child to keep things from a parent.
Lessons running long without a clear reason, or scheduled at odd hours.
A child becoming withdrawn, anxious before lessons, or unusually attached to the tutor.
None of these on its own proves anything. A pattern of several is the point to stop the lessons and ask for help. See what to do if a tutor acts inappropriately for the routes: the police on 101, or 999 if a child is in immediate danger; the NSPCC helpline; CEOP at the National Crime Agency for online concerns; and the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) for any allegation against an adult working with children.
The Online Safety Act 2023, in passing
The Online Safety Act 2023 places safety duties on platforms where users can interact or share content, with Ofcom as the regulator. It's most visible in age checks on adult content and social media, but the duties to protect children apply to any UK-facing platform that children are likely to use, including tutoring marketplaces with messaging. In practice, platforms have to assess whether children are likely to use them. If so, they must risk-assess features such as messaging, put protections in place, give users a clear way to report harm, and act quickly when illegal content appears. Tutorperch's contact redaction in messaging, and the Report button on every tutor profile with a "Safeguarding concern" option, are part of how we meet those duties. The Act doesn't change what good parents already do; it tightens what platforms have to do.