Safe Tutoring

Child safety is a serious matter. The news frequently reports about teachers and others in authority who violate trust and act inappropriately with the children they are supposed to shepherd. Parents rely on coaches, teachers, tutors, and others to help guide and develop their kids.

But in today’s computer and internet world, how safe is your child if he or she works with an online tutor? We all know that on-line tutoring is very convenient. Mom and dad don’t have to drive the student to a tutor’s home or a business location. Students can go home after school and log in for their on-line tutoring session and no tutor physically comes to the house. But despite its convenience, is it safe? How do we ensure students are safe and secure while doing on-line tutoring?

There are ways to ensure child safety in an on-line tutoring environment:

1. On-line tutoring means your child is not physically with the tutor. Student and tutor are separated by distances as much as half-a-world away. For a tutor in India, it could cost a year’s salary for the tutor to fly where the student is or for the student to make the trip to India. And tourist visa’s and passports are required. This physical separation is a benefit for child safety.
2. Use steadily employed tutors rather than a tutor exchange or independent contractors. Avoid situations where predators can be connected with kids online under the guise of tutoring the way some predators hang out in chat rooms. Don’t use a tutoring exchange that lets anyone off the street post an ad and connect with kids.
3. Ensure your online tutor has passed a certification course that includes child protection.
4. Verify your online tutor’s qualifications and ensure he or she has had a professional, educational and personal background check.
5. Monitor student-tutor exchanges. Forbid your child from engaging in any student-tutor communications outside a tutoring session and monitor that communication in real time or through recordings. At TutorVista, students and tutors are required to interact with one another only during tutoring sessions and using our service delivery platform. Tutors understand this policy (it’s part of our certification process) and know too that violation of this policy will result in immediate dismissal.
6. Be involved in your child’s education – in school and online

Students using online tutoring can get safe, secure and protected educational help in a way face-to-face tutoring may not even support.

John Stuppy, john@tutorvista.com