Switching Your Tutoring Provider: A Practical Checklist

Switching your child's tutoring provider is straightforward if you handle three things before you cancel anything: the billing overlap, a fresh credentials check, and the handover of your child's progress notes. Get those right and your child keeps their momentum, you avoid paying two providers at once, and you move to someone whose track record you can actually verify. Rush it, and you risk a gap in the middle of a term, a double charge, or handing your child's Tuesday evenings to someone you never properly vetted.

Parents switch for ordinary reasons. The tutor moved on. The sessions stopped fitting around school. The price crept up. Or the match just was not right for your child. None of that has to be difficult. What makes switching feel risky is that you are starting the trust question over from zero, usually mid-year, when there is not much time to waste. This checklist walks through the money, the safety and the continuity, and then shows how Tutorwise makes the hardest part — knowing whether the new tutor is any good — something you can see rather than guess.

Before you cancel: sort the billing

The most common switching mistake is cancelling in the wrong order and either paying twice or losing a paid-for credit. Money is where a clean switch quietly goes wrong, so start here.

• Check your notice period. Many agencies and independent tutors ask for a week or two of notice, or bill by the month. Read what you agreed before you give notice, so a final session or a final charge does not surprise you.
• Settle the final invoice, and get it in writing. Ask for a clear final bill showing exactly what you owe and up to which date. That prevents a "one more month" charge landing after you have moved on.
• Cancel the payment method, not just the sessions. Telling a tutor you are stopping is not the same as stopping the money. If you set up a standing order, direct debit or a subscription, cancel it yourself at your bank or in the app. This is the single step parents forget most often, and it is the one that leads to a surprise charge weeks later.
• Recover any prepaid credit. If you bought a block of sessions up front, ask what happens to the unused ones. Get the refund or the remaining sessions confirmed in writing before you leave.
• Plan a short overlap, not a gap. If you can, let the last session with the old tutor and the first with the new one sit about a week apart rather than a month. A clean handover beats a hole in the middle of a topic.

On Tutorwise, the rate you agree is the rate you see, and payments run through the platform rather than a private cash arrangement, so there is a record of what was charged and when. That paper trail is exactly what makes a clean exit clean, and it means a disputed final charge is a question of fact, not of memory.

Re-check credentials from scratch — do not assume they carry over

This is the step most people underestimate. A safeguarding check does not follow a tutor from one provider to the next, and "they were fine at the last agency" is not something you can rely on.

• A DBS check is not portable in the way people assume. An enhanced DBS certificate is issued to a person for a role, and it is only as current as its issue date. A tutor being "DBS-checked" with a previous agency tells you little about today. Ask to see the certificate, note the date, and check whether they are registered with the DBS Update Service, which lets you confirm online that the certificate is still current.
• Confirm identity, not just a name. You want to know that the person turning up, in your home or on the video call, is who they say they are. A previous provider's assurance does not transfer to you, and a name on a profile is not proof.
• Re-verify subject qualifications. Ask for the specific qualification that matches your child's exam and board, not a general "experienced tutor" claim. A tutor strong at GCSE foundation-tier maths is not automatically the right fit for A-level further maths, and the exam board matters more than parents expect.
• Ask about references and real outcomes. What have they actually delivered for students at your child's level? A credible answer is specific, not a slogan.

The problem is obvious once you name it. When you switch, all of this vetting lands back on you, at the worst possible moment, and most listings just ask you to trust a self-written bio. Anyone can type "DBS-checked, ten years' experience" into a profile box. Nothing on an ordinary directory stops them. That is the exact gap Tutorwise was built to close.

The trust question, made visible

Here is how it works on Tutorwise, and why it matters most when you are switching.

A tutor's credibility on Tutorwise is not a self-written paragraph, and it is not a star rating that a handful of friendly reviews can inflate. It is a computed credibility score. We call the model CaaS, short for Credibility as a Service, and it is built from real, checkable signals across six areas: Delivery (the sessions they have actually run, and how those went), Credentials (verified qualifications), Network (their standing with other verified users), Trust (identity and safeguarding checks, including DBS), Digital (a real, consistent online presence) and Impact (the outcomes they have contributed to).

Two things about that model matter for a switching parent.

First, it is earned, not claimed. The Trust part of the score rewards a tutor for completing a verified DBS check, confirming their identity and finishing proper onboarding. A tutor cannot simply assert they are safe. The check either happened or it did not, and the score reflects that. There is a hard rule underneath it, too: a tutor gets no credibility score at all until they are identity-verified or have completed onboarding, so a brand-new, unverified account cannot present itself as a trusted tutor before any real check has taken place.

Second, it is something you read, not something you have to assemble. Instead of chasing certificates, requesting references and trying to judge a bio, you are looking at a score that already reflects the vetting. You still make the decision. You meet the tutor, you check the fit for your child, you read the reviews. But you start from verified credibility rather than a blank page. When you are switching mid-year and short on time, that is the difference between guessing and knowing.

None of this replaces your own judgement about fit, and it is not meant to. It replaces the part you were never well placed to do quickly under time pressure: the background vetting. We wrote about how the model works in more depth in How CaaS Works: Making Tutor Credibility Visible, and about why it beats the usual approach in Why Verified Credibility Beats a Five-Star Average.

Move your child's progress with you

Your child has history with the old tutor. Topics covered, mock results, the things they find hard, the way they learn best. Do not leave that behind when you move.

• Ask for a short handover note. What has been covered, what is going well, what still needs work. Even a few lines saves the new tutor weeks of re-diagnosing from scratch.
• Keep the assessments. Past mini-tests, marked work and mock papers help the new tutor pitch the level correctly from session one.
• Brief the new tutor honestly. Tell them why you switched and what you want to be different this time. A good tutor will want to know, and will adjust for it.

A smooth handover is what turns a switch into continuity rather than a restart. If you are still weighing whether a change is even the right call this term, When Should You Get a Tutor for Your Child? walks through the timing.

A one-page switching checklist

Print this, or keep it open while you make the move.

• Read your current notice period and billing terms.
• Give notice in writing and request a final invoice up to a set date.
• Cancel the standing order, direct debit or subscription at source.
• Confirm any prepaid credit is refunded or honoured, in writing.
• Line up the new tutor before the old one finishes — overlap, do not gap.
• See the new tutor's DBS certificate and note the issue date.
• Confirm identity and the exact subject-and-board qualification.
• Get a progress handover note and past assessments.
• On Tutorwise, read the credibility score before you book.

Finding your next tutor

When you are ready, you can search verified tutors on Tutorwise by subject, level and exam board, and see each one's credibility before you commit. No cold trust required. Switching well is really just moving without losing momentum: keep the money clean, re-check the safety yourself, carry the progress across, and choose someone whose track record you can actually see rather than someone whose bio you have to take on faith.

That last point is the whole reason to be careful about how you switch. The moment you change providers is the moment the trust question resets, and it is the moment a visible, earned credibility score is worth the most.

Frequently asked questions