Privacy Policy

Tutor Island is a UK-based online marketplace that connects students and parents with DBS-verified private tutors. In this policy, “we”, “us”, and “Tutor Island” refer to the operator of the Tutor Island platform. For the purposes of UK data protection law, including the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018, we are the data controller for the personal data described below.

If you have any questions about this policy or how we handle your data, contact us at support@tutorisland.co.uk.

Depending on how you use Tutor Island, we may collect:

• Account details. Your name, email address, role (tutor, student, or parent), and password (stored securely by our authentication provider).
• Tutor profile data. Subjects, levels, pricing, biography, a profile photo, and the outcome of an enhanced DBS check used to verify eligibility to tutor.
• Student and parent data. The subjects and levels you are interested in, and, where a parent manages a request for a child, the child’s first name and school year only.
• Messages. The content of messages you exchange with other users through the platform.
• Payment data. Records of the one-off connection fee. Card details are handled entirely by our payment processor and are never stored on our systems.
• Recommendation data. If you submit a recommendation for a tutor through an invite link, we collect your first name, how you found the tutor, the subject, roughly how long you were tutored, your rating, and your testimonial, even if you do not hold a Tutor Island account. This is reviewed by our team and, if approved, displayed publicly on the tutor’s profile. To have a recommendation corrected or removed, email us.
• Technical data. Basic log and device information needed to operate and secure the service.

Safeguarding is the top design priority of Tutor Island. Children under 16 never hold accounts. Where a parent uses the platform on behalf of a child, we collect only the child’s first name and school year, and a tutor sees these details only within an active conversation the parent has chosen to start.

Students aged 16 and 17 who hold accounts do so with a parent or guardian informed at key steps. Every message sent through the platform is automatically screened for harmful content before it is delivered, and contact details stay hidden until a connection is paid for and confirmed.

We use your personal data to:

• create and manage your account and profile,
• match students and parents with suitable tutors,
• enable and moderate messaging, including screening for harmful content,
• process the one-off connection payment,
• send service and safeguarding-related emails,
• verify tutor eligibility through DBS checks, and
• keep the platform safe, secure, and working as intended.

We rely on the following legal bases under the UK GDPR: performance of a contract with you, our legitimate interests in operating a safe marketplace, compliance with legal and safeguarding obligations, and, where required, your consent (for example, certain non-essential cookies). You can withdraw consent at any time where consent is the basis we rely on.

We do not sell your personal data. We share it only with the service providers who help us run the platform, under contracts that require them to protect it. These include our hosting and database provider (data hosted in the United Kingdom), our payment processor, our email delivery provider, and an automated content-moderation provider used to screen messages. We may also disclose data where required by law or to protect the safety of a user, particularly a child.

We keep personal data for as long as your account is active and for a reasonable period afterwards to meet legal, safeguarding, accounting, and dispute-resolution obligations. Records relating to safeguarding may be retained longer where we are required or advised to do so.

Subject to UK data protection law, you have the right to access, correct, delete, or restrict the use of your personal data, to object to certain processing, and to data portability. To exercise any of these rights, email support@tutorisland.co.uk. You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at ico.org.uk.

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the date at the top of this page and, where appropriate, notify you directly.