A shorter note than the last one. The work over the past day and a half has been in two places — tutor display names, and what we will accept on a profile. Both are changes you may feel directly; the rest is small, and listed at the bottom.
Display names
How display names work on the platform has changed. From this week, your name on Tutorperch is derived from the name on your Stripe Identity check. You pick one of two short forms — your first name on its own, or your first name with a single last-initial (e.g. "Sarah W.") — with a Dr or Prof title in front if you have one. Once chosen, the name locks.
We launched quickly after First Tutors went dark in April and did not get the display-name rules right at the time. Two patterns in the feedback since then made it clear we had to act:
- Business names in the display field — "Smith Tuition", "MathsPro Tutoring", and so on. The directory should list people, not businesses. That is fairer on tutors who use their own name, and clearer for parents reading down the page.
- Full surnames letting parents Google a tutor and bypass the on-platform introduction. The finder's fee is what keeps Tutorperch running, and the full-surname route around it was a real one.
If neither default fits how you actually go by your name — an anglicised first, a middle name preferred over the given first, a shortening you have used for years, or a recent legal change — there is a 'Request a different name' form on /me/display-name. Informal preferences do not need a document. Legal name changes (deed poll, marriage, transition) route through a quick re-verification step. We normally come back within three days.
Existing verified tutors will see the picker the next time they open their dashboard — and the dashboard will keep taking you back to it until the step is complete. Your public profile is unchanged in the meantime, and you can still write to us via support without going through the picker first. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Profile moderation
The platform now has a published Code of Conduct at /legal/code-of-conduct. It covers how tutors present themselves on a profile, what belongs in messages, how reviews work, and the rules around safeguarding. It is intended to be read once and referred back to occasionally.
The visible change this week is in the profile editor. The headline and bio now give you live feedback as you type — emoji or URLs in a headline, contact details or overt rating language in a bio. The aim is that you see what we will treat as a problem before you publish, rather than have a profile come back from review with a vague "needs changes" note. Editing is never blocked, and most flags are advisory.
Active review of published profiles against the Code of Conduct will follow. To tutors who signed up before this change and find themselves asked to edit a profile they thought was finished: apologies. The reasoning is the same as with display names — clear rules now are fairer on the tutors who already follow the spirit of them, and fairer on parents reading the directory. Most of what the Code of Conduct asks for is what most tutors are doing anyway. Where something does need amending, we will point to the relevant section and give a seven-day window before anything changes on your profile.
You will see the Code of Conduct referenced in a few other places now too — a short prompt when you publish a profile, submit a review, or send the first message in a new thread. When we materially update the Code of Conduct, the prompt will name what changed.
Small things
- In-person teaching has been split. You can now indicate that you teach at your own home, at a student's home, at a neutral space, or any combination — and travel radius is asked for only when you actually travel.
- Twenty-six languages added to the picker, including Persian, Dari, Pashto, and several African, South Asian and Balkan languages.
- The postcode-to-city assignment has been rebuilt. If you had typed a council name into your location field ("City of Edinburgh", "Bristol, City of", "Richmond upon Thames"), you should now appear on the correct local page. 53 of our 78 published tutors picked up a new local-page assignment when the change rolled out.
- Messaging is faster. Sending a message no longer waits for the round-trip; it appears in your conversation immediately. Your latest sent message in a thread now shows whether it has been read, with a timestamp.
- The bio editor supports horizontal rules, useful for longer multi-section bios.
- A "block this user" option is now available from a thread or a tutor's profile, on both sides.
- A Safari bug that reset the cursor in the headline field on every keystroke has been fixed.
- The DBS Update Service page has been rewritten — subscribed tutors now renew via status check rather than by re-uploading a fresh certificate.
What's next
Mostly quality improvements and working through tutor feedback as it comes in. One thing we are actively looking at is how to make it easier for parents to send a useful first message to a tutor — the difference between "hi" and a short description of what they are looking for has a real effect on whether the introduction goes anywhere.
If you have spotted something — broken, missing, or simply awkward — please write. The feedback channel is open, and we are reading it.
— Robert & Fiona