The roster changes every term. The program shouldn't.
The university student who was brilliant on Saturdays graduates. The Thursday tutor takes a full-time job. A friend of a friend starts in week 3 because you were short. Every term, some of the people teaching your program are new to it, and every one of them teaches it slightly differently.
Parents notice before you do. "She was doing better with the other tutor" is the sentence, and it's not really about the tutor. It's about the program having become whatever the person in the room remembers of it.
This guide is about fixing that at the material rather than the person, because you can't hire your way out of it. It covers why the variation happens, the first fortnight for a new tutor, the four non-negotiables, and what changes when the material is on a platform a casual tutor can use in week one.
- Quality varies by who's rostered because each tutor teaches from memory and their own sheets.
- The fix is one bank of your material, the same sets, the same marking, the same report, whoever's in the room.
- A new tutor's first fortnight is planned: before day one, day one, week one, week two.
- Four non-negotiables, written down and signed. Child safety, phones, parent contact, your material.
- On a platform a casual tutor is useful in week one: assign in three clicks, read the heatmap.
Why quality varies by who's rostered
Hand a new tutor the Year 6 folder and a room, and here's what actually happens.
They read the folder once, maybe. They teach the first class from it. By the third class they're teaching from memory of the folder, plus the way they were taught the topic at school, plus a sheet they made at their last job that "explains it better". By week 6 the Thursday version of Year 6 is a different program from the Saturday version, and both are different from yours.
None of this is bad faith. It's what any capable person does when given a folder and told to teach. The gaps in the folder get filled from instinct. The bits that don't suit their style get quietly replaced. The marking drifts, because they're marking against their own sense of the answer rather than your key.
And the parent report, if there is one, reflects whichever tutor wrote it, in whichever words came to mind that week.
Two tutors, same year level, same folder, different results. The parents compare, because parents talk, and the comparison lands on you as inconsistency. It's a hard complaint to answer, because the honest answer is "it depends who's rostered".
The fix is at the material, not the person
You can raise your hiring bar, and you should. It won't fix this. A better tutor teaching from memory is still teaching from memory.
What fixes it is making the material the constant. One bank of your material, in one place, that every tutor teaches from. The same sets, in the same order, assigned the same week. Marking against your key, so a right answer is right whoever's marking. One parent report format, with the same five things in it, whoever signs it.
When that's true, the tutor's variation shrinks to delivery: how they explain it, how they run the room, how they handle the kid who's behind. That's the variation you hired them for. It's the variation in what's taught, what's marked and what's reported that damages you, and none of that needs to depend on the person.
This is the whole argument on the coaching colleges page: the program is the asset and the roster changes every term, so put the program somewhere the roster can't rewrite it.
The same logic is what breaks when a second site opens. One roster's worth of drift is a nuisance; two sites' worth is two programs with your name on both. The second campus guide is the ninety-day version of this one.
The first fortnight for a new tutor
Most centres onboard a new tutor with a chat and a folder. Two weeks with a plan is not much more work, and it's the difference between a tutor who's useful in week 2 and one who's still improvising in week 8.
| When | What happens | What you're checking |
|---|---|---|
| Before day one | Working with Children Check sighted and recorded. Material access set up for their classes only. The homework policy and the program outline sent, with one set to mark against the key before they arrive. | They've read something before they walk in, and their marking is close to yours |
| Day one | Shadow one class. Read the folder for their year level end to end. Mark one set against the key and compare it with how you marked it. | Whether they've absorbed the sequence, and where their marking diverges |
| Week one | Teach one class with the owner present for the first twenty minutes. Set the week's homework. Field the first parent question, through the centre. | The opening, the pace, whether the homework was set the way the policy says |
| Week two | A fifteen-minute review. "What confused you about our material?" Write the answer into the folder. | Whether the folder has a gap, and whether the tutor is on the program or beside it |
The tutor onboarding checklist has this as four pages with a box beside each line. Use it every time you hire, including the friend of a friend.
Day one is reading, not teaching
Day one is the day most centres skip. The new tutor arrives, there's a class in ten minutes, and they're in the room.
Don't. Day one is shadowing one class and reading the folder end to end, in that order. Watching you or a senior tutor teach from the folder shows them what the material looks like in a room. Reading the folder afterwards, all of it, shows them where this week sits in the sequence and why week 3 comes before week 4.
Then the marking check. Give them one completed set and the key, ask them to mark it, and compare it with your marking of the same set. The differences tell you where their sense of the answer diverges from yours before it's reached a student. It takes twenty minutes and it's the highest-value twenty minutes in the fortnight.
Week two: write the confusion into the folder
The week two review is fifteen minutes and one question: what confused you about our material?
Every new tutor finds something. A set where the instructions assume a method from two weeks earlier. A key with an answer in a form you'd never accept from a student. A worksheet with the page order wrong. They'll have worked around it quietly, which is the problem: the workaround is the first fork in the program.
Write the answer into the folder. Fix the set, or add the note, so the next tutor doesn't find the same thing. After a few hires the folder stops having those gaps, which is the point. On a platform, this is an edit in the approval queue, and every tutor sees the corrected version that evening.
The review is also where you decide. A tutor who's on the program by week two, with questions about the material rather than around it, is one you roster more. One who's already teaching from their own sheets is a conversation, now, not in week 8 when a parent raises it.
The non-negotiables
Four rules, written down, signed before the first shift, the same for the senior tutor and the friend of a friend.
| Rule | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Working with Children Check sighted and recorded | The check itself, its number and its expiry, in your register before day one. Not "they said they've got one". This isn't legal advice: confirm what your state or New Zealand requires and follow it exactly. |
| Phones | Away during class. The student's phone is for the practice set, not for messaging, and the tutor's is in a bag. |
| Parent contact only through the centre | No personal numbers exchanged, no direct messages, no private lessons for your families. Every parent conversation goes through the centre's address or the centre's phone. |
| Material stays in the centre | No copies on a personal drive, no folder in a bag, no sheet taken to the next job. Your material is the business, and it's the thing most likely to walk out with a departing casual. |
The last one is the hardest to police on paper, because paper can be copied. On the platform a tutor sees only the classes they're assigned to, and what a student sees is watermarked to that student. The material can be taught from by anyone rostered and taken by nobody.
The homework policy is the fifth thing to hand over before day one. It's one page, and it tells a new tutor what the centre has already promised the family about the six days, so they don't invent a different promise.
Useful in week one: the tutor dashboard
The reason a casual tutor takes a term to become useful is that they don't know the material well enough to set the right work, and they don't know the students well enough to teach to them. A platform built from your material shortens both.
Setting the week's work is three clicks: the class, the set, the due date. The set already exists, named the way you say it, in the sequence you wrote. A tutor in week one doesn't need to know the folder to assign Year 6, Week 3, Ratios. They need to know it's week 3. The classes and assignments page shows the three clicks.
Marking is against your key, the moment a student submits. The new tutor's marking is your marking, because they're not doing it. Extended responses come to them with a suggested mark against your criteria, and they make the call.
| Student | Fractions | Ratios | Percentages | Area | Word problems | Set 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Priya S. | done | |||||
| Liam T. | done | |||||
| Mei W. | done | |||||
| Aarav K. | done | |||||
| Chloe N. | done | |||||
| Daniel P. | done | |||||
| Zoe R. | done | |||||
| Ethan L. | not started | |||||
| Hannah M. | done | |||||
| Noah B. | done | |||||
| Isla C. | done | |||||
| Arjun D. | done |
Reading the heatmap on Monday
The class heatmap is a grid of students against topics, coloured strong, ok, weak or not attempted. Ten seconds to read. It tells a tutor who's never met the class that eight of twelve missed the same topic and two didn't open the set. That's Tuesday's lesson and two phone calls, and it's more than most tutors know about a class after a term. They can click a cell to see a student's actual answers and how many hints they needed at 9pm.
The tutor dashboard shows a tutor their own classes and nothing else. The owner sees every class and every tutor, which means you know on Monday whether the Thursday tutor set the work, without asking.
Delegating approval rights to a senior tutor
Everything made from your material goes through an approval queue before a student sees it, with the source page beside each item. By default the owner holds that. For most centres that's right for the program itself.
Day to day, though, a senior tutor can hold approval rights for their own year level. They approve the batch for Year 9, edit a question's wording, bin the one that doesn't fit, and publish. What they approve is still traced to the page it came from. The approve before publish page covers delegation by class.
That's the line to draw. Casual tutors assign and teach. Senior tutors approve for their year level. The owner approves the program. The material never depends on any of them.
On seats: five tutor seats on Studio, fifteen on Growth, unlimited on Established. A small centre with more casuals than seats can add 25 seats to Studio for $120 a month.
This week
Write the four non-negotiables on one page and have every current tutor sign it, not just the next hire. Print the onboarding checklist and put it with the enrolment paperwork. Then pick the one folder every tutor is meant to teach from and check it's actually the one in the drawer, not three versions of it.