Our policy re: tutoring via Skype, email or phone

So, it is a basic requirement of working with In-Home Tutors that you be willing to work at the client’s home.

As always in life, there are exceptions. Occasionally the client or tutor may be out of town, so it makes sense to provide tutoring via video call or shared whiteboard or simple email. Or perhaps the tutor is asked to check an assignment, review an essay or prepare a lesson.  These may reasonably be done from home without a face-to-face meeting with the student.

So we do not have a hard-and-fast policy against remote tutoring. But here’s what we expect of our tutors:

• we need to know when an hour you report is performed from home. Write this in the Comments section.

• if remote support is going to be the norm rather than an exception, we need to know in advance.  This is NOT an arrangement you should make with the parent without our knowledge.

There are a couple of reasons for this:

• It is harder to get a timesheet signed when your work is done remotely, and more room for the parents to be surprised when they see the bill.  We want to be involved at the outset so that we can set expectations with both tutor and client as to how much work will be done independently by the tutor and the number of hours likely to be billed.

• Typically, online tutoring is billed at a lower rate.  We are not fans of differential rates but occasionally we have agreed to bill one rate when the tutor is at the parents’ home, a lower rate for prep work, especially if it will be extensive.

For years we have resisted offering an online tutoring service and do not plan to start now.  There are many such services already in the market. Please never assume that you can rack up hours outside of the normal in-home tutoring sessions and expect the client to pay full rate.  You must keep us in the loop so that we can make sure that the parents are fully aware of how they will be billed.  We reserve the right not to reimburse you if you do not follow these guidelines.