Terms and conditions for a tutoring agency

A tutoring agency needs terms that answer one question before any other: who is the parent actually contracting with, you or the tutor? Everything else follows from that, including who pays when a tutor drops out mid course, whether you can charge a family who decides to carry on privately, and what happens to an unused block of lessons. I draft those terms for a fixed fee of £995, delivered in five working days.

Who this is for

Tutoring agencies and tuition businesses in England and Wales, online or in person, from a founder with a panel of tutors to an established agency with schools on the books. Your paying customers are usually parents, who are consumers, and sometimes schools, colleges or local authorities, who are not. The two groups need different treatment inside one set of terms.

What matters in a tutoring agency's terms

Are you the provider or the introducer?

Some agencies contract with the parent to deliver the tuition and engage tutors as their suppliers. Others introduce a tutor and charge a fee, leaving the teaching contract between tutor and family. Your terms must commit to one of these, because it decides who owes the duty to perform with reasonable care and skill under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and who carries the complaint when a tutor is late, unprepared or simply stops replying. Declaring yourself an introducer while setting the rates, taking the money and allocating replacement tutors will not survive scrutiny.

Parents and tutors going direct

Every agency loses families who decide, after a term of good lessons, that they can pay the tutor in cash and cut out the middle. The parent terms need a clearly worded restriction with a defined duration, and a buy-out figure the family can pay if they want to continue privately. Against a consumer that charge has to be defensible: the Consumer Rights Act 2015 treats disproportionate default charges as unfair, and an unfair term does not bind the parent at all. The mirror obligation belongs in your tutor agreement, which is a separate set of terms.

Prepaid blocks, credits and cancellation rights

Most agencies sell lessons in blocks, which turns you into a holder of other people's money. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 treats keeping prepayments on cancellation, without a matching obligation on you, as a term that may be unfair, so credit expiry and refund rules need care. Because parents almost always sign up online or by phone, the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give fourteen days to cancel, and lessons delivered inside that window are only chargeable if the parent expressly asked for them. Advertised hourly rates must include any mandatory agency fee under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024.

Missed lessons, rescheduling and exam season

Tuition runs on a diary, and a cancelled Sunday morning slot is rarely resold. The terms should set a notice period for rescheduling, say what is charged for a late cancellation or a no-show, and deal with the tutor who cancels as well as the family who does. Keep the charge proportionate to the slot you have lost rather than punitive. Term dates, half-term breaks, illness, exam timetables and the point at which a weekly commitment ends for the year all belong here, in writing, before results day arrives.

Safeguarding, results and what you promise

Say exactly what vetting you carry out on tutors and do not overstate it, because information the parent relies on becomes binding under the Consumer Rights Act 2015. That cuts both ways: a marketing line about guaranteed grade improvement is a contractual promise, so the terms should make clear that outcomes depend on the pupil's work and that no grade is guaranteed. Online tuition needs its own wording on adult presence in the home, recording of sessions, platform failures and who supplies the equipment. Children's personal data deserves a proper policy rather than a sentence.

Schools, funded tuition and teaching materials

Where a school, college or local authority buys tuition you are in a business contract: purchase orders, invoicing cycles, cover arrangements when a tutor is ill, and the right to claim interest and fixed compensation on late payment under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998. Limits of liability work here in a way they never will against a parent. Worksheets, schemes of work and assessment materials written by a self-employed tutor belong to that tutor under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 unless they are assigned to you in writing, which most agencies discover only when the tutor leaves.

What it costs

Customer or supplier terms and conditions, £995. One set of terms, customer-facing or supplier-facing, drafted around your business. Five working days.

Review of your existing terms, £495. You already have terms and want to know how much of a problem they are. Returned marked up with my amendments and an explanation of the changes. Three working days.

Buying online forms the engagement on payment. The scope is what the terms and conditions drafting page describes, you accept the Terms of Service at checkout, and I email you within four working hours to get started. If you would rather ask something first, email me.

What you get

• A full set of terms drafted around your business, not a template with your name inserted
• A covering note in plain English explaining every commercial choice I made and why, so you can defend the terms in a negotiation without ringing me
• Liability, payment, termination and IP provisions set at a level that will survive a procurement review
• Consumer-facing wording drafted to be enforceable where you sell to consumers
• Guidance on how to incorporate the terms properly, which is where most businesses actually fail
• One round of amendments after you have read them

What is not included

• Negotiating your terms with individual customers
• Sector-specific regulatory compliance beyond the contract terms themselves
• Website privacy notice and cookie compliance, which I quote separately
• Terms governed by the law of another country

Questions I am often asked

Can I stop a parent hiring my tutor privately?

Preventing it outright is unrealistic. What works is a restriction for a defined period after the introduction, with a stated fee if the family wants to continue privately, set at a level that reflects the commission you genuinely lose. The same clause needs a counterpart in your tutor agreement, or you are relying on the family to police it.

Are my tutors self-employed?

Status turns on the facts rather than on the label in the contract: personal service, control over how and when lessons are taught, whether you must offer work and they must accept it, and whether a substitute tutor is permitted. HMRC's Check Employment Status for Tax tool is the reference point. Getting this wrong is expensive, so the tutor agreement should reflect how you really operate.

Do I need one set of terms or two?

Two, in almost every case. The parent-facing set covers booking, payment, cancellation and consumer rights. The tutor-facing set covers fees, conduct, safeguarding, ownership of materials and non-solicitation. Each is a separate engagement at £995. Where you already have something in place, I will review it for £495 and mark it up.

Related guidance and services

• Terms and conditions drafting, £995, the service this page describes
• Consultancy and contractor agreements, £595
• Data protection agreements and privacy terms, £795
• Terms and conditions for a personal trainer

This page is general guidance for businesses in England and Wales, not advice on your own circumstances. Last reviewed: September 2026. Email geoffrey@caesar.co.uk.