‘Find a tutor’ Wizard revamp and new filters
The wizard opens by asking whether you want academic or music tutoring. Pick academic and you're four questions away from results: how old the student is/what level they are working at, which subjects, online or in person, and what extra support they need at school. Music skips straight to instrument and location, because grades already tell us the level.
A running count sits beside the questions the whole way through, so you can watch the pool narrow as you answer and filter down. The answers stay listed down the side of the results, and you can change any one of them without going back to the start. Change a filter and the button tells you how many tutors you'd have before you commit to it.
Once into the results or the ‘all tutors’ list, you can shortlist up to five tutors as you go, then write to all of them at once. One message, one form. Each tutor gets it addressed to them by name, in their own private conversation, and can't see who else you wrote to. The shortlist lives on your device, so it's there when you come back.
A subject combination nobody taught used to fall back on tutors who teach just one of them, so the list you got wasn't really the list you asked for. Now parents can see that they’ve made their search too niche and the website lays out other options: tutors who teach at least one of your subjects, drop one subject, widen to 25 miles and see the count, or try online. Ask for two subjects nobody teaches together and it says exactly that, and offers to drop one.
The old browse page at /tutors has retired and now sends you to Find. Subject and city pages have kept their own addresses, and they've picked up the same tools: search box, filter sheet, sorting, shortlist. Filters cover budget, exam board, tutors languages, offers, reviews, experience, and Qualified Teacher and Safeguarding checks. The budget slider shows the actual spread of rates for whatever you're looking at, so you can see the real range before you set one.
SEND badges, filters, and a support question in the ‘Find a Tutor’ Wizard
There are two new badges: SEND Trained and SEND Specialist.
Upload a SEND qualification from the Credentials section and we'll check it, the same way we check a teaching qualification. Which badge it earns depends on the qualification: broadly, Level 4 and above earns SEND Specialist, shorter or less specific training earns SEND Trained. Qualified Teacher badge holders can opt in to SEND Trained in their profile editor without a separate certificate if they want to declare they can support learners with SEND and which SEND areas they support. What the SEND badges mean, along with what each badge does and doesn't claim, and a few free courses we found for tutors who want to start somewhere which are referenced towards the end of the article.
Once a badge is confirmed by one of us and live, you tick which of seven areas you support (information on the categories here), and those show on your profile: dyslexia and other learning differences, autism, ADHD and organisation, processing speed, physical and sensory needs, speech and language, and emotional wellbeing. We ask Tutors to be honest about the SEND provision they can provide. This will be a phased launch of the feature so that tutors have time to apply the badges to their profiles, we will keep an eye on uptake so that the parent side is switched on when the search is populated. We will be working around the clock to approve any new submissions before then.
On the parent side,The ‘Find a Tutor’ Wizard now asks what level of support the learner receives or needs at school. The answers run from no additional support, through teaching adjustments, a SEN Support plan, an EHCP, to specialist provision. Say anything other than the first option and you can select the areas that apply. Tutors whose SEND qualification we've checked, and whose areas overlap with what you ticked, move up the list. How far depends on what you told us: more complex provision requirements such as an EHCP or specialist provision puts SEND Specialists at the top, while teaching adjustments only uses it to break a tie.
How a tutor teaches
Adding to the new filters and improved Wizard tool, we've focused on things a parent can reasonably request, observe or ask their child about: how you plan a session, where your materials come from, how much you guide a student through a problem before letting them attempt it, and whether you set work between sessions. That's deliberately narrow. We haven't asked whether you're patient, encouraging, or a good fit for an anxious learner, because those qualities are much harder for a parent to assess consistently from outside the lesson.
Parents get the same four questions, as optional extras on the results page. Answering them changes the order of the list. It never removes anyone from it.
Style answers deliberately carry less weight than reviews. We group tutors into review-score bands, each a quarter of a star wide, and style answers only decide the order inside a band. A style answer can move a tutor up past someone whose reviews sit close to theirs, but it can never lift them over someone in a higher band. A tutor who hasn't answered sits in the middle of the scale rather than at the bottom, so answering isn't itself an advantage: a matching answer moves you up, a non-matching one moves you down by the same amount. Where tutors come out equal on everything, the order rotates daily, so the same names don't sit at the top every day. More info on /how we rank
On a profile, it shows up as four lines under "How Jane teaches." Parents get asked the same four questions when they leave a review, and once five have answered, a second mark appears beside the tutor's own, with a bar that narrows as more people weigh in. Parent answers never overwrite what a tutor said about themselves. The profile only ever shows the pooled position, though tutors can see each parent's individual answers on their reviews page. More info on: /teaching-style
Tutors: you'll find it under Teaching in the profile editor. It's suggested, not required. Showing it on your public profile is a separate switch, off by default, but matching in Find uses your answers either way. This will be a phased launch of the feature so that tutors have over a week to pop in on their profiles if they wish, with the parent side switched on once tutor uptake has reached a level that gives parents a useful search experience.
The review form, rebuilt
We've rebuilt the review form. Pick a star rating and it tells you what that star means (e.g 1* Star = ‘Major Concerns, I would not recommend this tutor’ and 5* Stars = 'Exceed expectations'. Would highly recommend’) and we record which wording was shown, so an old review keeps its context. There's now a question about whether a safeguarding or serious safety concern is involved. If the reviewer says yes then the review is held from public view until we have read and responded to it. We aim to decide within seven days and never take more than thirty, and you're told that's what's happening. There's a separate confidential box for anything you shouldn't have to put in a public review. If the reviewer has concerns they haven't raised with the tutor, the form offers to open that conversation and holds the draft while they do.
If you searched for SEND experience, there's one more question at the end, asking whether the tutor understood and supported your child's needs.
As before, a review can be edited or deleted for 30 days after posting, and that still holds while a safety report is being looked at. The reviews policy now says so plainly, rather than leaving you to find out the hard way.
Schools Tool
A new helpful free tool for parents: A report card for each of England's state secondary schools, plus a page per council and per academy trust and a comparison tool. Pick two or more schools and their results appear side by side, the headline numbers, and then every subject they both enter, which is the comparison the league tables leave out. You can explore the new tool here.
Small things
Place search now picks the bigger place. "Islington" gives you the London borough first rather than a suburb of Leeds, and each result carries its county so you can tell two Suttons apart.
The subject step now tells you that you can filter by exam board later.
Your search now survives a trip through a tutor's profile and back, including backing out of the payment page.
New sign-ups get one optional question about how they found us. Answer it or skip it once, and we never ask again.
Your unlocked tutors page is now "Your tutors," with a section for the ones you can review.
A round of mobile fixes across the wizard, the menu drawer and the footer.
Tutor cards in search no longer put a button inside a link, which was awkward on a keyboard and with a screen reader.
Imported First Tutors reviews no longer show twice when the reviewer had changed their display name.
The tutor profile page now makes fewer database calls, so it loads faster.
Whats next?
Since launch, we've had one goal: make it exceptionally easy for parents to find the right tutor. Today, we think we've achieved it. Next, we'll start making everything around tutoring easier too, with new optional utilities for tutors - without changing the simple, commission-free marketplace at the heart of Tutorperch.
If something's broken, missing or just awkward, tell us in the feedback section of the forum. We read every message.
Robert & Fiona