What Parents Should Ask a Tutor About AI Tools

More private tutors now use AI tools: to write practice questions, to explain a step again between sessions, or to give a learner something to do at home. That can be useful. It also means your child's work, and sometimes their words, may pass through a service you have never heard of.

You do not need to be a technology expert to ask good questions. Here are the ones worth asking any tutor, whichever tools they use, and what a good answer sounds like.

1. Which AI tools will my child use, and who runs them?

A good answer names the tool and the company behind it. "Some AI app" is not an answer. Once you know the name, you can read its privacy policy yourself, including the list of other companies (sub-processors) it sends information to.

2. Does my child need their own account, and who sets it up?

Ask whether your child signs up themselves, whether the tutor creates the account, and what details it needs. For a child, you should be the one agreeing to any account that uses AI, not the tutor.

3. What will the AI be sent?

Ask what goes to the AI provider: typed questions, uploaded work, voice recordings, your child's name. Then ask what the tool does to reduce that. Be wary of an answer that says nothing personal ever reaches the AI; masking tools are usually pattern-based and can miss details a child types in their own words.

4. Can I see what the AI was used for?

Ask whether you can see a record of your child's AI use, and whether you can switch features off. If the answer is "you can ask me", that relies on the tutor's memory rather than a record.

5. What does the tutor see?

Ask whether the tutor can read your child's chats with the AI, or only their results. Either can be reasonable, but you should know which.

6. What happens if my child says something worrying to the AI?

Ask who is told, and how quickly. A tool used by children should have a plan for a message that suggests a child may be at risk.

7. Is the AI doing the teaching?

Ask how the tutor uses AI in their own teaching. A good answer keeps the tutor responsible for diagnosing, planning and teaching, and uses AI for practice and extra explanation in between.

8. And the questions that are not about AI

A tool cannot answer these for you. Ask about the tutor's Working With Children Check, any registration your state requires, and how sessions are run. Those are the tutor's responsibility, and no app checks them on your behalf.

How Qwizflow answers these questions

We would rather show you than ask you to trust us, so here are our own answers, with their limits.

• Who runs it: Qwizflow. Every sub-processor, including the AI providers, is listed in our Privacy Policy.
• Accounts: a tutor never creates an account for a learner or approves AI features for them. A child under 16 can join a tutor's class only once you have linked your account to theirs and approved that class, their AI features wait for your approval, you can see their classes and remove them from a tutor's class on your parent dashboard, and a tutor account can't link to a child as their parent. A child enrolled through a school can't join a tutor's class.
• What the AI is sent: email addresses and phone numbers, and names written behind a label, are masked before any AI call. The limit: the masking is pattern-based, so it cannot reliably catch personal details a learner types in their own words.
• What you can see: a parent whose account is linked to their child's has the Parent Transparency Ledger. It shows short summaries of the child's AI interactions on Qwizflow, which provider handled each feature, and the AI-visible learning context, with one-click erasure of that context. It shows summaries, not full transcripts, and it covers Qwizflow only, not any other tool a tutor uses.
• What the tutor sees: class progress and mastery for their own class. Not AI chat transcripts.
• A worrying message: the learner is shown how to reach a helpline straight away, and the alert goes to Qwizflow's own safety queue, not to the tutor.
• Who teaches: the tutor. The Owl chat is between-session practice, not a substitute for them.

For more on what a parent can control, see Qwizflow for parents and our AI ethics statement.

FAQ

Should I let my child's tutor use AI tools?

That is your call, and it depends on the answers. A tutor who can name the tool, explain what it is sent, and show you a record of its use is giving you what you need to decide.

Can a tutor approve AI features for my child on Qwizflow?

No. For a child, AI decisions belong to a parent or guardian. A tutor never approves anything on a learner's behalf.

Does the Parent Transparency Ledger show my child's full chats?

No. It shows short summaries of each AI interaction, which provider handled it, and the AI-visible learning context. It does not show full transcripts.

Does Qwizflow check tutors?

No. Qwizflow does not vet, match, find or supply tutors or students, and it does not check, hold or display a tutor's Working With Children Check.