Tutor and student management in a tuition centre: records, pay and parents

A tuition centre is a few tutors and a lot of families. While it is small, the owner keeps both in their head: who teaches what, who is free on Thursday, which parent pays for which child. That gets hard once there is a second branch or a handful of part-time tutors, and the gaps show up as tutors booked twice, wrong phone numbers and pay disputes at month end.

The example here is made up, and its numbers are illustrations. Lakeside Tutors has two branches and about 190 learners. It has 11 tutors: three full-time and eight part-time, including two university students who teach only after 6 pm on weekdays. Most tutors work at one branch; two teach at both.

What to keep on each tutor

A tutor's record should answer the questions that parents, the office and the person doing payroll ask about them. At Lakeside, each tutor's file has:

• name, phone number and an emergency contact;
• the subjects and levels they can teach, which is often more than they teach now;
• the branches they work at and the batches they teach this session;
• their start date, the agreement they signed and their pay basis;
• a copy of their identity document, kept where only the owner can see it.

Availability

A part-time tutor is only useful when you know when they are free. Keep a simple weekly grid for each tutor with the hours they can teach, and ask them to update it each term, because university timetables and school jobs change. Lakeside's two student tutors also mark their own exam weeks months ahead, so the owner can arrange cover well before those weeks arrive.

Paying tutors fairly and on time

Pay disputes with tutors usually start from a basis that was never written down. Choose one for each tutor and put it in their agreement: a fixed monthly amount, an amount per batch per month, or an hourly rate. Paying per batch is the easiest for both sides to check, because the timetable shows exactly how many batches a tutor has.

At Lakeside, Nadia teaches four batches at 6,000 each a month in the centre's currency, so her monthly pay is 24,000 (for example). If she takes an extra revision session in exam season, it goes onto that month's pay with a note saying what it was for. Pay every tutor on the same date each month and give a payslip, part-timers included. A payslip answers most questions before they turn into arguments.

Leave and cover

Decide how many days of leave each kind of tutor gets and how much notice a part-timer gives before missing a batch. Name a cover tutor for each subject and agree in advance how cover sessions are paid. When a tutor is then ill, the learners keep their session and the owner makes one phone call.

What to keep on each learner

The learner record in a tuition centre is lighter than a school's, but it has to be right. At Lakeside it holds the learner's name, the school and grade they attend, their batch, both parents with phone numbers and which of them pays, an emergency contact, and any health note the tutors need, such as an allergy. Ask for what you need and leave the rest out, since a tuition centre has no reason to hold most of what a school keeps.

Siblings need care. Link brothers and sisters to the same parents, so a new phone number is changed once and the sibling discount is easy to check. Lakeside has 21 families with more than one child enrolled, and before it linked them, the office had three different phone numbers on file for one mother.

Who should see what

Tutors need their own batches: the learners in them, their attendance and their marks. They have no need for fee balances, other tutors' pay or the full parent contact list. The office needs fees and contacts and can manage without marks. The owner sees everything. Give each person their own login with access that fits their job, and never let tutors share a password, because a shared login hides who changed a mark.

Contact with parents deserves a rule of its own. When tutors message parents from their personal phones, the conversation leaves when the tutor does. Messages sent through the centre's system stay with the centre.

When a tutor leaves or a learner stops coming

People leave mid-session more often in tuition centres than in schools, so keep a short routine for each case. When a tutor leaves, move their batches to another tutor before their last day, collect any marks they have not entered, close their login on the day they go, and settle their final pay with a payslip.

When a learner stops coming, record that they left and when, settle any fee balance, and write down the reason if the parent gives one. Keep the record, because learners often come back for another subject or a later exam, and some ask for a certificate. Read the reasons once a term. If several learners have left the same batch, look closely at that batch.

Keeping tutors and learners in SkoolBro

In SkoolBro, tutors are staff. Each tutor has a record with a department, such as Sciences or Languages, and a designation, such as Senior tutor or Part-time tutor, and is assigned to the branches (campuses, in the app) where they teach. You invite each tutor to their own login and give them a role. A tutor is set as the teacher of each batch subject they teach, so they take attendance and enter marks for those batches. Staff attendance records present, absent, late, half day and on leave.

Leave types and balances are set by the centre. Tutors ask for leave in SkoolBro, see how many days they have left, and another person approves the request. Payroll runs monthly from each tutor's salary and its components, needs a second person to approve it, and gives every tutor a payslip they can open in SkoolBro. Because payroll works in monthly amounts, an hourly or per-batch rate becomes a monthly figure. Nadia's 24,000 could be a basic amount plus a fixed batch allowance, for example. SkoolBro does not keep a calendar of tutor availability, so the weekly grid stays with you, while the timetable shows which tutor teaches each batch in each period.

Learners are students in SkoolBro, and parents are guardians. A guardian is shared between siblings, so the family shows up together and a new phone number is entered once. Learner records hold documents, medical notes are restricted to the people allowed to see them, and identity numbers are encrypted. When a learner leaves, their batch placement ends with the outcome "left" and their history stays. Staff and parents can message each other about a learner, and every change to a record goes into the audit log. If your tutors and learners are in spreadsheets now, you can import both from CSV or Excel.

The AI assistant can answer read-only questions such as "Who is on leave today?" from your own records. It cannot change anything, and names and phone numbers are replaced before a question reaches Google's Gemini. For the scheduling side, read our guide to timetabling multiple batches. Our articles on keeping one record per student and how SkoolBro protects records go further into learner records and access.

Questions

How should a tuition centre pay part-time tutors?

Choose one basis per tutor and write it in their agreement: a fixed monthly amount, an amount per batch or an hourly rate. Pay on the same date each month and give a payslip every time.

Should tutors keep parents' phone numbers on their own phones?

It is safer when they message parents through the centre's system. The conversation then stays with the centre when a tutor leaves, and parents are not contacted from personal numbers.

What should happen to a learner's record when they leave?

Keep it. Record that they left and when, settle the fee balance and note the reason. Learners often come back for another subject or a later exam.