DBS-checked online tutors

What an Enhanced DBS check is

A DBS certificate, from the Disclosure and Barring Service, lists what is on a person’s criminal record. An Enhanced certificate can also include information a local police force thinks is relevant to working with children. Some older and minor cautions and convictions are filtered out under rules the DBS publishes, so a clean certificate means nothing those rules require it to show was on record on the day it was issued.

A tutor applies for the check themselves and shows us the certificate. The checks we make before a tutor is listed, the DBS included, are below.

The checks before a tutor is listed

We are selective about who teaches here: we look for tutors at top universities, we interview everybody ourselves, and nobody is listed without a criminal record check on file.

1. Where they are studying, or studied. We look for tutors at top universities: Oxford, Cambridge and the Russell Group in the UK, and their equivalents elsewhere. It is what we look for rather than a rule we apply blindly, so a reviewer can say yes to somebody outstanding from a university not on our list, and can say no to somebody who is at one of them.
2. A university email address we verify ourselves. We send a code to it and they have to enter it, which is the quickest honest answer to "are you actually there", checked by software rather than taken on trust. It is a convenience rather than a requirement: somebody who has graduated, or whose university does not issue one, makes their case in writing instead and a person reads it.
3. Their degree, their school grades and a CV. Real grades in the subjects they want to teach, in writing, reviewed by a person. Not "strong A-levels": which ones, what they got, and when.
4. An interview with us, in this platform. On the same video system lessons run on, so we have met them and seen them teach something rather than talk about teaching.
5. Proof they are who they say they are. A photo of a passport or driving licence and a photo of their face, through Stripe. Stripe tells us the outcome and those photographs never reach us. A right-to-work check is separate, and a copy of the document from that check is kept on record, as the law requires.
6. An Enhanced DBS check, before the profile exists. Not before the first lesson: before anybody can see them at all. Outside the UK, their own country’s equivalent, read and decided on by a person. The software refuses to publish a profile without one.

Where somebody studied is a fact about them, not a claim of endorsement; Cookie Tutoring is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any university.

What we do with the certificate

We read it and record its number, its date, the kind of check and our decision, then delete our copy, because the DBS’s own handling rules say a copy should not be kept. The profile can go live only once that record says verified, and the software checks that rather than a person remembering to.

What a DBS check cannot tell you

A certificate is a snapshot of the day it was issued. The UK has an Update Service that can keep a check live between certificates, and we are not registered to use it, so instead we ask every tutor, in the UK and outside it, for a fresh check every 12 months. A tutor whose check has lapsed comes off the marketplace until a new one has been seen.

A clean record also says nothing about somebody who has never been caught. That is why lessons and messages stay on the platform, where there is a record, and why a parent who looks after a child’s lessons can read their messages with the tutor.

Tutors outside the UK

The DBS is a UK check, so a tutor based elsewhere gives us their own country’s check for working with children where one exists, or its national police clearance where it does not. A person reads each one and decides case by case, and we never call any of them a DBS, because they are not one.

From 1 October 2026 a tutor who teaches from the UK, whatever their nationality, also has to show us their right to work here.