What is disintermediation?
Disintermediation is any action taken by a tutor, student or parent which displays an intent to move communication, tutoring, payment, or other activities performed on MyTutor off the MyTutor platform and onto an alternative platform.
This includes but is not limited to:
Sharing personal contact details (e.g., email, phone numbers, or social media profiles).
Arranging lessons or payments outside MyTutor. Such as offering to move to Zoom, or sharing bank details.
Using external software for lessons (e.g., Zoom, Microsoft Teams) instead of MyTutor’s platform.
Why don’t we allow it?
There are two primary reasons why disintermediation is strictly prohibited:
It goes against our Terms and Conditions and Code of Conduct, which you agreed to when you joined MyTutor. By committing disintermediation, you are in breach of your agreement with MyTutor.
It costs a lot to bring in new leads, run our platform, and support our tutors. Disintermediation makes those costs unsustainable - At MyTutor, we invest hundreds of thousands of pounds annually in marketing, sales, customer support, and product development to bring you highly qualified leads and reduce the administrative burden of tutoring. Tutors working independently often spend up to 50% of their time finding new clients and managing admin tasks. MyTutor eliminates this burden by acting as a marketing and sales engine, consistently delivering high-quality leads to tutors. This support is expensive, and disintermediation significantly impacts our business by preventing any return on upfront marketing costs. For instance, if MyTutor spends £100 to bring a new parent to the platform, and each parent generates £200 in revenue, disintermediation causes MyTutor to lose both the initial £100 and the £200 in potential revenue. That’s a £300 loss per case. This has a major impact on the company’s ability to sustain itself and grow. Beyond connecting tutors with leads, MyTutor invests heavily in tools and systems to support tutors with their work on-site. Our platform ensures tutors are paid for every delivered lesson, whereas independent tutors face risks with non-payment. We provide a secure, feature-rich lesson space free of charge, offering higher lesson quality compared to basic tools like Zoom. Our scheduling and booking systems also streamline customer management, saving tutors time and effort. And finally, MyTutor provides on-demand support to all tutors.
In summary, MyTutor not only helps tutors focus on teaching but also solves common challenges and risks solo tutors face. Disintermediation undermines MyTutor’s ability to sustain this value. Widespread disintermediation would make it impossible for MyTutor to maintain its services, affecting opportunities for all tutors on the platform.
When communication and/or lessons happen off MyTutor, we can’t keep you or the children who have lessons on MyTutor safe - Communication outside MyTutor’s platform is unmonitored, which means our systems or lesson observation teams aren’t able to find and prevent safeguarding issues. Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) guidelines, which MyTutor must comply with as an organisation that is responsible for vulnerable minors, explicitly require robust safeguarding measures. When disintermediation happens, those measures are bypassed and we're not able to meet our obligations so we can’t allow it. Sharing personal information with students or parents undermines these protections.
What is our policy in practice?
Tutors, parents, and students must:
Follow the guidance outlined in the "Standards of Behaviour" section of our Code of Conduct.
Communicate exclusively through MyTutor and use our platform for all lessons and payments.
Report any safeguarding concerns via our secure CPOMs platform.
Here’s a step-by-step guide of how you can log into CPOMS and report a concern.
Tutors, parents, and students must not:
Use non-MyTutor platforms for delivering lessons or exchanging payments.
Share or request personal contact details (e.g., phone numbers, email, social media).
Respond to a message by agreeing to use personal contact details for communication or lessons outside the MyTutor platform. Instead, politely decline and redirect them to MyTutor’s platform, then report the incident to our customer support team through Live Chat.
How do we monitor this?
We use a multi-layered monitoring system that combines technology, oversight, and data analysis to ensure compliance with our policies. This includes tracking platform activity, reviewing interactions, and conducting regular audits to identify potential breaches.
These comprehensive measures are designed to maintain a secure, fair, and professional environment for everyone using MyTutor.
What happens if you disintermediate?
Disintermediation is a serious breach of our policy and your contract. As you’ve learned, it’s not something we can tolerate at any level to ensure we can keep our children safe, and that we have a sustainable business that can achieve our mission of making tuition accessible to all. As a result, if we reasonably determine that you have attempted or engaged in disintermediation, your account will be permanently closed. We remain committed to upholding this policy to protect our community’s integrity and safety.