The tutoring market puts a 19-year-old undergraduate and a head of department on the same search page, and their prices can differ by more than double. This page explains what you are buying at each price, when the cheaper option is the right one, and how to check that the person in front of your child is who they say they are. New GOV.UK guidance on DBS checks for self-employed tutors went live on 21 January 2026, so the checking section is worth reading even if you have hired before.
Is a qualified teacher a better tutor than a student?
A qualified teacher is usually the safer choice for exam-year GCSE and A-level tutoring, but not automatically the better one. The evidence leans towards trained teachers without settling the question: the Education Endowment Foundation says tuition programmes using teaching assistants or volunteers “can have a valuable impact, but may be less effective than those using experienced and specifically trained teachers”, and in NFER’s 2024 review of the National Tutoring Programme for the Department for Education “many senior leaders believed that qualified teachers had a higher impact as tutors”.
That second finding is what school leaders believed, not a measured comparison, and none of the sources on this page tests private teacher tutors against private student tutors directly. So the sensible position is this: a qualified teacher brings things a student usually cannot, those things matter most in the exam year and for a child who is stuck, and a good student tutor can still be the right buy for the right job.
What does QTS actually mean?
Qualified teacher status (QTS) is the professional status needed to teach in state-maintained schools in England. The government describes QTS as “a legal requirement to teach in many English schools” and “desirable for teachers in the majority of schools in England”; it is required in maintained schools and non-maintained special schools, while academies, free schools and private schools can employ teachers without it.
A teacher who trained in England is awarded QTS after initial teacher training or the assessment only route, and the DfE records it on their teacher record; teachers trained in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland or overseas have their own routes. The certificate is available online through the Access your teaching qualifications service, so a tutor who claims QTS should be able to show it to you.
QTS is not required to tutor privately; the legal requirement applies to teaching in certain schools. The Sutton Trust’s 2019 research notes plainly that “not all tutors have specific teaching qualifications”. Even inside the National Tutoring Programme, school-led tutors without QTS had to complete training the DfE estimated takes only “approximately 11 hours”, according to the Sutton Trust’s 2023 report. The bar for calling yourself a tutor is low, which is why the checks below matter.
What does classroom experience add to a tutor?
Classroom experience adds three things a parent cannot see on a profile: exam-board knowledge, fluency with mark schemes, and experience of teaching children who find the subject hard. Mark schemes come first. On AQA GCSE biology, for example, extended response questions ask students to “construct and develop a sustained line of reasoning which is coherent, relevant, substantiated and logically structured”, so a child who writes down everything they know can still score poorly. Teachers who have marked many of these know what examiners credit and can teach to it.
Exam-board knowledge is the second. AQA, Edexcel and OCR teach broadly the same GCSE science and maths content, but they set different papers and their wording and question styles differ. A tutor who has taught your child’s specification does not spend your first lessons learning it.
The third is experience with children who struggle. A teacher will usually have taught pupils who freeze on algebra and pupils with a dyslexia diagnosis, and adapted for both. A strong undergraduate may not yet have met a child who cannot do what they found easy.
Teachers also tutor more than parents assume. The Sutton Trust found in 2019 that “a quarter (24%) of secondary school teachers have taken on private tuition outside school in the past two years”, with two-thirds of them doing so after direct contact from parents rather than through an agency. Asking at school is a legitimate route.
When is a student tutor a good choice?
A student tutor is a good choice when the job is practice, confidence and company rather than diagnosis. A motivated Year 9 or Year 10 pupil who needs someone to work through past-paper questions alongside them, a child who has lost confidence and needs a near-peer who recently sat the same exam, or a family that cannot stretch to a teacher’s rate: these are all reasonable cases.
Price is the obvious draw. Teachers To Your Home’s 2026 guide places student or inexperienced tutors at £15 to £30 an hour, and MyTutor’s entry tier starts at £25+ for “emerging tutors who are completing training”. Against the £40 to £60 qualified-teacher band in the same guide, that is roughly half.
The decision rule: if your child knows what they are getting wrong and needs practice, a student is fine. If nobody can yet say why the marks are being lost, pay for a teacher, at least for a diagnostic block of four to six lessons.
How do I check a tutor is who they say they are?
A parent should make three checks before a tutor is left alone with their child: a qualification check, a DBS check, and a conversation. Qualifications first: ask to see the QTS certificate from the government’s Access your teaching qualifications service, and ask which school they teach at or last taught at.
DBS checks are where the guidance is new. Since 21 January 2026, government guidance has said that “it is down to the self-employed person or personal employee to apply for their own Enhanced DBS check via a DBS Umbrella Body”, and the guidance’s own worked example is a self-employed maths tutor applying for an Enhanced with Barred List check in the child workforce. The parent’s side is equally clear: “as a private individual you cannot apply for a DBS check on behalf of the person you are looking to recruit”. A tutor who tells you a self-employed person cannot get an enhanced check should be pointed to this guidance.
When a certificate is shown, the government tells parents to insist on the original: “copies or digital photographs are not acceptable and must be rejected”. Check the name matches photo ID, check the “position applied for” field includes wording like “child workforce”, and check the issue date, because a certificate is only accurate on the day it was issued. If the tutor has joined the DBS Update Service you can run a free, instant status check online with their consent. If a certificate states the person is barred from working with children, the guidance is blunt: “you must not employ them”.
The enhanced check itself costs £41, and umbrella bodies add their own administration fee on top. Agencies and professional bodies often handle this for tutors; The Tutors’ Association, which describes itself as the non-profit professional membership body for the tuition industry, lists a DBS check service to obtain an Enhanced DBS among its member services. A tutor who works through a reputable agency should have been checked by it; ask the agency to confirm in writing.
The third check is a conversation. A DBS certificate is, in the government’s words, “just one part of considering whether an individual is suitable”. Ask what they would do in the first lesson. A good answer describes finding out what your child can and cannot do. A weaker answer is “go through the topics”.
What should I ask before I pay a tutor?
Six questions sort most tutors in ten minutes. Which exam board and specification does my child sit, and have you taught it? How will you mark their work? What will you be able to tell me after two lessons? Can I see your QTS certificate and your DBS certificate? How will you link what you do to what the class is doing this half-term? When would you tell me to stop?
That last one matters most. The EEF says tuition is “more likely to make an impact if it is additional to and explicitly linked with normal lessons”, and that teachers “should monitor progress to ensure the tutoring is beneficial”. A tutor who cannot describe the point at which you no longer need them is selling hours, not progress. The price you should expect for each type of tutor is in tutoring cost per hour in the UK, and the rest of the series starts at choosing and paying for a tutor. Priority Education, this site’s tutoring partner, says its tutors are qualified and experienced teachers; see the tutoring page.
If you want to talk it through with a qualified teacher first, book a free call.