Are Online Classes Safe for Children?

The principle underneath every real safeguard

Safeguarding is not a judgement about whether a particular tutor is a good person. It is the practice of making sure that nobody ever has to make that judgement. Every check worth having is a version of one idea: no unobserved contact between an adult and a child.

This matters because it is the only test a parent can actually apply. You cannot verify a stranger's character across an internet connection and a national border. You can verify whether a system exists in which their character would need to be taken on trust.

Four things to require, and how to check each one

Recording of every session. Ask for one. Not a promise that classes are recorded — an actual recording of a class you did not watch, requested at the demo stage. A provider who records but cannot produce a recording within a day is describing an intention rather than a practice.

No private channel. Check which number the tutor uses to contact you, and check whether the tutor has your child's number at all. Messaging, homework and scheduling should all arrive on the parent's phone. A tutor who has a direct line to a fourteen-year-old that a parent never sees has been given exactly the thing every safeguarding rule exists to prevent.

A named person above the tutor. Ask who you complain to, by name, and how you reach them. If the answer is a shared inbox, there is no escalation route, and a family with a concern will find that out at the worst possible moment.

Background checks, described honestly. A DBS check is a UK scheme run by a Home Office body and covers records held in the UK; a tutor who has never lived or worked in the UK cannot hold a meaningful one. An overseas institute's honest answer is a local police character certificate plus reference checks. A Pakistan-based or India-based agency advertising that all its tutors are DBS-checked is worth a second question, not a tick.

• Ask for a recording of a class you did not attend, before you pay.
• Confirm the tutor does not hold your child's phone number.
• Get the name of the person above the tutor.
• Ask what background check was done, by whom, and when.

The risks parents ask about, and the ones that actually occur

The question we are asked most is about strangers entering the class. It is the easiest problem on this list to solve and it is largely solved already: a unique link per class, a waiting room the tutor admits people from, and a link that is never posted anywhere public. If a provider sends the same permanent meeting link to everyone for a year, ask them to stop.

The realistic risks are duller. A tutor and a student drifting into a private conversation outside class hours. A child typing their home address or school name into a class chat because someone asked conversationally. A recording link forwarded to somebody outside the family. None of these are dramatic and all of them are prevented by the same rule.

The room is the other half, and it belongs to the parent. The device faces into the room. Nobody needs to hover; someone needs to be able to walk past.

What is stored about your child, and for how long

An online tutoring provider ends up holding a video of your child at a desk, their name, their year group, their work, and often a parent's payment details. That is a real collection of information about a minor and it deserves two direct questions: how long are recordings kept, and who can watch them.

Our recordings go to the enrolled family and the teaching team. They are not on public links, and they are not shared as marketing without a parent asking us to. If any provider cannot state their answer to those two questions in a sentence, they have not thought about it, which is itself the answer.