Guides

How to check a home tutor before you let them into your house

By BengalTutors Team · 31 Aug 2026

You are about to let a stranger into your house, alone with your child, for several hours a week. Almost nobody in Bangladesh checks properly, and the reason is not carelessness — it is that nobody has told them what "checking" means beyond a vague feeling about whether the person seems nice.

It takes about ten minutes. Here it is.

Before they come: three things over the phone

Which institution, which department, which year? Specific answers, not "I study at a university in Dhaka". Write it down.

What did you score in the subject you will be teaching? Not their overall result. The subject. A tutor who did well overall and mediocrely in Chemistry is not your Chemistry tutor.

Give me one family you have taught, and their number. Anyone who has taught anyone has one name. A tutor who cannot produce a single one has either never taught or did not leave on good terms, and you want to know which.

If any of those three produces a vague answer, stop there. It costs you nothing and you have just avoided the most common bad outcome, which is not danger — it is three wasted months.

When they arrive: the ID, and the ten seconds nobody uses

Ask to see the student ID or the national ID. Look at it. Check the name matches what they told you on the phone.

That is it — but do it in front of them, unhurriedly. The act of asking is most of the protection. Somebody who intended to misrepresent themselves has already decided, by this point, that your household is more trouble than the next one.

Then take a photo of the ID, or write down the number. Not as a threat: as a fact. A person who knows you have their identity behaves differently from one who believes they are anonymous.

What "verified" means on a platform, and what it does not

Every platform in this market uses the word. Ask what it actually covers.

On this site, a tutor's profile can carry an NID verified and an Edu verified mark, and those mean a person on our team looked at a document — not that a box was ticked at signup. A profile without them is not necessarily a bad tutor; it is an unchecked one, and you should do the ten minutes above yourself.

No platform anywhere can verify character. What verification does is make it materially harder to be somebody other than who you claim, which removes the category of problem that begins with a false name.

The rules for the first month

The first two or three sessions happen with somebody else in the house. Not supervising the lesson — just present. This is normal and no reasonable tutor is offended by it.

Classes in a common room, with the door open. Again: normal, and worth saying once at the start rather than adjusting awkwardly later.

Your child knows they can tell you anything about the tutor without getting anybody in trouble. Say it out loud, once, plainly. Most children will not raise a small discomfort unless they have been told it is allowed.

Watch for withdrawal, not for drama. A child who becomes reluctant about a specific hour of the week is telling you something, and it may be as ordinary as boredom or as serious as anything else. Ask.

The financial checks, which matter more than people expect

Never pay a tutor a large advance. A month's fee at the end of the month, or half up front at most in the first month. Nothing else.

Never pay a fee to be given a tutor's number — and if you are a tutor reading this, never pay to be given a family's. That is the oldest fraud in this market and it is still running.

Agree one figure, one date, in writing. A message is writing. Fee drift — an exam-month supplement, a travel allowance appearing in month three — sours more arrangements than bad teaching does.

Our own charge is published rather than negotiated: a placement fee once, in the first month, shared between family and tutor, and nothing at all from month two, when you pay the tutor directly. The figures.

The signals worth acting on

Most tuitions that fail do not fail dangerously. They fail slowly, and these are the early signs:

Any one of those is a conversation. Two of them together is usually a change of tutor, and it is cheaper to make that change in month two than in month six.

Start here

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