Safeguarding

Call 999. Do not wait for us. If you are worried about a child but it is not an emergency, the NSPCC helpline is 0808 800 5000 (24 hours, nspcc.org.uk), and Childline is 0800 1111 for children themselves. Then tell us at support@cookie.education so we can act on our side too.

Nobody teaches on this platform because they signed up and said they were a tutor. We are selective about who we take on, and before a tutor appears in our directory they must complete all of the following:

• 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.
• A verified university email address, or their case in writing: where they have one, we send a code to it and they have to enter it; somebody who has graduated, or whose university does not issue one, explains instead and a person reads it.
• A CV, their degree, and their school-level grades, reviewed by us.
• An interview, held inside this platform on the same video system lessons run on, so we have met them.
• A criminal record check, which they obtain themselves and we check. For a tutor in the UK that is an Enhanced DBS certificate and nothing else will do. A tutor based outside the UK provides their own country's equivalent, the check issued for working with children where one exists and its national police clearance where one does not, which a person reads and decides on case by case. We do not call any of those a DBS, because they are not one.

That last one is not a box we tick by hand and hope. The software refuses to publish a tutor whose check has not been marked verified, through either route by which a profile can be listed. If a profile is visible on our tutor list, a certificate has been seen.

One thing worth knowing about, because we would rather say it than be asked. A criminal record check is a snapshot of the day it was issued, wherever it was issued. The UK has a subscription service that can keep a DBS live between checks; we are not registered to use it, and we would rather tell you that than let the word “verified” do more work than it has earned. So we ask every tutor, in the UK and outside it, for a fresh check every 12 months, rather than treating one as permanent.

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.

We read the certificate and record its number, its date, the kind of check and our decision. We do not keep a copy of it; the DBS handling rules say a copy should not be kept, so ours is deleted the moment a decision is made. We may ask a tutor for references before they are listed, and from 1 October 2026 a tutor who teaches from the UK (whatever their nationality) must also show us their right to work in the UK.

A criminal record check tells you about someone's past. It cannot tell you about their future, which is why the rest of this page exists.

When a conversation happens here, it is recorded, it cannot be edited afterwards, and we can read it if there is ever a concern. When it moves to WhatsApp or a personal email address, none of that is true, and neither is the refund policy, the payment protection, or any record that the lesson happened at all.

That is why exchanging personal contact details and arranging lessons off-platform is against our rules for both tutors and students: everything on this page depends on it, and the rule is not there to protect our commission.

If a tutor asks you to message or pay them privately, please report it. It is one of the clearest warning signs there is.

You are not the only line of defence, and you should not have to be. Software checks every message for phone numbers, email addresses and the names of other messaging apps, and puts a match in front of a person. Nothing is blocked and nobody is accused by it; it is a pattern match, and a person decides what it means. Tell us anyway if something feels wrong: you will see things the software cannot.

• Messages between a student and tutor are kept and cannot be deleted or edited.
• We do not read them routinely. We read them when there is a report, a dispute about a lesson, or a concern about a child.
• Both people are told this before they send anything; it is stated in the conversation itself and agreed to during onboarding.

A parent or guardian who looks after a student's lessons can read the student's conversations with their tutor from their own account, at any time, without asking us, and the conversation tells both the student and the tutor that they can.

Every tutor and every student acknowledges these before using the platform properly, and we keep a record of who agreed and when:

• Keep lessons and payment on the platform. Arrange, hold and pay for lessons here. Moving off the platform removes the refund policy, the record of the conversation, and every safeguarding protection that depends on us being able to see what happened.
• Do not exchange personal contact details. No phone numbers, personal email addresses, social media handles or home addresses, in messages, on a profile, or out loud in a lesson. Everything you need to teach or learn is here.
• Messages are kept and may be reviewed. Messages between a student and a tutor are retained and cannot be edited or deleted after sending. We read them where there is a report, a dispute, or a safeguarding concern, not routinely. Software checks every message for phone numbers, email addresses and the names of other messaging apps, and flags those for a person to look at; nothing is blocked, and no message is read by anybody because of it unless there is a reason to.
• Report anything that worries you. Every profile, review, message and lesson has a report control, there is one inside the lesson room, and "Report a problem" in the footer of every page works for anything else, including when you are not sure what to attach it to. Use whichever is nearest. Reporting something that turns out to be nothing is always better than not reporting something that was.
• Treat each other professionally. No harassment, discriminatory or sexual content, or pressure of any kind. Many students here are children, and a tutor is in a position of trust.

There is a Report control on every tutor profile, every review, and every message. It takes a few seconds, you choose a category, and you can add as much or as little detail as you like.

• Anything reported as a safeguarding concern is escalated to us immediately rather than sitting in a queue.
• The person you report is not told who reported them.
• We may suspend a tutor's listing while we look into something. We would rather be wrong and apologise than leave a profile up.
• An allegation that a tutor has harmed a child, or may pose a risk to one, goes to the local authority designated officer for the area, and to the police where a crime may have been committed. We do not wait to establish whether it is founded before doing that.
• Reporting something that turns out to be nothing is always the right call. Nobody gets in trouble for it.

When you will hear back. We aim to respond to anything about a child's safety the same day, and to anything else within 5 working days. What can happen next is published in full, including how to disagree with it, and so is how we protect you from illegal and harmful content.

Tell us about a problem

That page works whether or not you are signed in, and you do not need to know what to attach your concern to.

If you would rather write to a person than fill in a form, email safeguarding@cookie.education. That address goes straight to our Designated Safeguarding Lead and is read by a person, not a queue. For anything that is not about a child's safety, support@cookie.education is the right address.

You can also mute a tutor from inside your conversation with them. That stops their messages reaching you and stops the emails; they are not told. Muting is not the same as reporting, and if something worried you, please do both: muting stops it reaching you, and reporting is what gets it looked at.

Our Designated Safeguarding Lead is Tristan Pagden. Concerns about a child's safety go to safeguarding@cookie.education, and that is a named person's responsibility rather than a shared inbox.

This policy is version 2026-10-01. It was last reviewed on 1 October 2026 by Tristan Pagden, and is due for review again by 3 September 2027. Those dates are rendered from the same values our own tests check, so this page cannot claim a review cycle we are not keeping.

This page is the summary. The full policy, covering who is responsible for what, how a concern is handled, allegations against a tutor, referrals and record keeping, is published as it was approved: read our safeguarding and child protection policy.

If your concern is about us. We are a small team, and it would be dishonest to publish an internal escalation that ends at the same person you are worried about. If you cannot raise something with us (for any reason, including that we are the problem), the NSPCC whistleblowing advice line is independent of us and free to call: 0800 028 0285 (Monday to Friday, 8am to 8pm, and 10am to 6pm at weekends), or help@nspcc.org.uk. You do not have to be sure, and you do not have to tell us first.

A concern about us is handled the same way as any other: it is logged, it gets the same response times, and it is answered in writing. If it concerns the Designated Safeguarding Lead personally, say so and it will not be handled by them.

If we remove a tutor because they harmed a child, or posed a risk of harm to one, we refer them to the Disclosure and Barring Service. That is a legal duty rather than a discretion, it applies even if the person leaves before we can remove them, and it exists so that somebody removed here cannot simply appear somewhere else. We would rather say so plainly than have it be a surprise.

Knowing the rules is not the same as knowing what to do at the moment one of them is tested. Most tutors who get this wrong do not disagree with the rules; nobody ever told them what the right move looks like in the second it matters. So:

Two things run through every one of these. Tell us rather than handling it alone, and nobody is ever in trouble for reporting something that turned out to be nothing. If you are not sure whether something counts, it counts. That is the whole design, and it only works if you use it.

A student tells you something is happening to them at home, or that they are being hurt

Listen. Do not promise to keep it secret; say instead that you have to tell someone whose job it is to help. Do not question them or try to establish what happened, because that is somebody else's job and doing it badly can make a later investigation harder. Write down what they said in their own words as soon as the lesson ends, and tell us the same day, either through "Report a problem" in the footer of every page or by email. If you believe a child is in immediate danger, call 999 first and tell us afterwards.

A student asks to carry on over WhatsApp, Discord, Snapchat or Instagram

Say no, and say why: lessons stay here so there is a record and so both of you are protected. Do not soften it into "maybe later". Then report it. The student has not necessarily done anything wrong, but a pattern of these requests is exactly the thing a report log is for, and you are not the one who has to judge whether it is one.

A parent offers to pay you directly and skip the platform

Decline. It is usually meant as a kindness about fees rather than anything sinister, so you can say so warmly, but off-platform lessons have no refund policy, no record of the conversation, and none of the safeguarding protections that depend on us being able to see what happened. It is also a breach of the rules you agreed to, and we do remove tutors for it. Tell us it was asked.

A student is visibly upset, or will not turn their camera on when they usually do

Do not push, and do not insist on the camera. Ask once whether they are alright and whether they would rather stop; if they want to keep working, let the lesson be easy rather than demanding. Tell us afterwards. One bad day is a bad day; the same thing three weeks running is something we want to know about, and we can only see the pattern if you report each one.

A student is in their bedroom late at night, or somewhere that feels wrong for a lesson

It is not your job to police where a child sits, and saying so bluntly to them will only embarrass them. Raise it with us instead and we will take it up with the account holder, because that is the parent's decision to make with the full picture. If the setting makes the lesson itself inappropriate, end it early and say you will pick it up next time.

A student asks personal questions, or seems to be forming an attachment

Answer briefly and blandly, or not at all, and return to the subject. Do not share your phone number, your personal email, your social media, where you live or where you go out. Do not accept a follow request. None of this means the student has done anything wrong, and most of the time it is ordinary friendliness, but the boundary is yours to hold rather than theirs. If it keeps happening, tell us before it becomes awkward rather than after.

You think another tutor is doing something they should not

Report it. You do not need proof and you will not be asked to justify it. We would far rather look at ten things that turn out to be nothing than miss the one that was not, and nothing about reporting reaches the person you reported.

The lesson goes somewhere you are not qualified for, such as self-harm, an eating disorder or real distress about exams

Do not counsel. You are their tutor, and trying to be their therapist is how well-meaning people cause harm. Be kind, do not act shocked, and do not tell them what to do. Say that you want them to talk to someone who can actually help, mention Childline on 0800 1111 if it fits, and tell us the same day so we can involve the parent properly.

Anyone suggests meeting in person

No, not for a lesson, not for a coffee and not to drop off a past paper. Cookie Tutoring is an online platform and every lesson happens in the room here. There is no version of an in-person meeting we can protect either of you in, so there is no version of it we allow.

This is the tutor version of this page. There is one for parents and one written for students themselves; there is nothing in either we would not want you to read.

Read the parent and guardian versionRead the version for students

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