The Professional Membership Association for Private Tutors and Agencies in the UK

The government currently subjects the tutoring industry to no regulation at all. Anyone can be a tutor - tutors do not even need an Enhanced Disclosure or CRB check. We believe this is scandalous.

Tutors' Alliance provides Enhanced Disclosures for all members on an annual basis.

The government says that this is because they do not want parents to face the burden of having to subject their tutors to stringent checks. We agree but we think that the burden must fall on tutors instead. There have been so many horror stories over the past few years in the education sector (Ian Huntley, Vanessa George to name but a few), we all must think very carefully about who is tutoring our children.

Tutors' Alliance is committed to lobbying this government (and successive ones) to make it mandatory for all tutors to be subject to checks regarding their suitability for working with children. Tutors' Alliance is an organisation which exists to improve safety in the industry. The services we provide prove it is possible for tutors to get their qualifcations and experience verified by a third party.

The new Vetting and Barring Scheme which has now been delayed subject to review by the government would have gone some way to improving the current situation, although, Tutors' Alliance believes it did not go far enough. Tutors' Alliance is of the opinion that the decision to review the Scheme represents a big step backwards in terms of child protection. However, it does give Tutors' Alliance the opportunity to lobby the new coalition government to raise our concerns about child protection within the sphere of private tuition. We are committed to improvising the situation both for tutors and pupils by working towards mandatory regulation of the industry.

Our views are shared by our tutors. One Aberdeen-based tutor, Catriona McLeod of Creative Tutoring, feels so strongly about the issue that she has kindly shared her thoughts here:

"In my view, it's absolutely essential that tutors are vetted because as an industry, tutoring seems to have bypassed any form of regulation. I went to Tutors' Alliance, one of the only independent bodies offering a vetting service for tutors because as a teacher, I knew how important it was to have gone through the disclosure process. I would not have been employed in schools without it and therefore I didn't expect tutoring to be any different. In four years of tutoring, only two parents have asked me for a reference. That is a scary fact."