Tutoring & One-to-One Coaching Safety
How to ensure one-to-one tutoring, coaching, and mentoring arrangements are safe for children.
What is this?
One-to-one settings like tutoring, music lessons, and coaching create situations where children are alone with adults. While most are perfectly safe, these arrangements require clear boundaries and oversight.
How it works
Most one-to-one tutoring is safe, but risk concentrates where boundaries blur. Common patterns include: tutors who message the child directly rather than the parent, sessions that move to private rooms with closed doors, 'extra' free sessions, gifts, or trips that build secrecy, and online tutoring where the camera is off, recording is disabled, or the platform is one the parent cannot see. Risks also rise when no organisation sits behind the tutor — no DBS check, no safeguarding lead, no complaints route, no insurance. Keeping a parent on every channel, an open door, and a regular check-in conversation with the child catches most concerns early.
Warning signs
In your child's behaviour
- • Reluctance to attend sessions
- • Behaviour changes after sessions
- • The tutor/coach wants to communicate privately with the child
Prevention steps
Verify background checks
Ensure all tutors and coaches have appropriate DBS checks (UK) or equivalent background screening.
Establish clear boundaries
Define where sessions happen, whether doors stay open, and how communication occurs (always via parents, not direct to child).
Regular check-ins
Ask your child about their sessions regularly and observe for any behavioural changes.
What to do if it happens
- 1Listen to your child and take their concerns seriously
- 2Document any specific concerns with dates and details
- 3Contact the organisation or tutoring service to report concerns
- 4Contact local authorities if you believe abuse has occurred
Related topics
If you need to report this
In immediate danger: call 999. For non-emergency police matters, call 101.
Concerned about a child but it's not an emergency? NSPCC helpline 0808 800 5000. Childline for young people 0800 1111.
This is practical educational content to support families. For case-specific concerns about a child's safety, contact the NSPCC helpline on 0808 800 5000 or your local safeguarding team.
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Last reviewed: 2026-03-29