What questions should I ask before hiring a tutor in Ontario?

Ask about four things: subject depth (have you taught this exact Ontario course code recently, and which units cost students the most marks), who actually teaches (is it the same tutor every week), method (what happens in the first session, and do you work from my child's own course materials), and accountability (what do you report back, and what happens if marks do not move). Twelve specific questions covering those four areas are enough to sort a subject specialist from a generalist in about ten minutes.

How do I know if a tutor really knows the Ontario curriculum?

Name the course code rather than the subject. A tutor who genuinely teaches MHF4U will immediately talk about rational functions and trigonometric identities; one who teaches SCH4U will name energy changes and equilibrium. If the conversation drifts toward Algebra II, AP courses or Common Core standards, the tutor may be strong but is not teaching to the curriculum your teen is graded against. Every Go2Grad tutor holds a graduate degree in the subject they teach and works from your child's actual Ontario course materials.

What are the red flags when choosing a tutor for high school?

Six signals are worth pausing on: no diagnostic first session, a different tutor each week, one person claiming to cover every subject and grade, a large package pushed before anyone has met your child, no clear answer on what happens if marks do not improve, and vagueness about the Ontario curriculum. None of these means a provider is dishonest. Each means their model is built around volume rather than your teen's specific course.

How much should a high school tutor cost in Ontario?

Ontario families are commonly quoted between $40 and $90 per hour, and the useful comparison is the true cost after registration and assessment fees, not the advertised rate. Go2Grad charges $57.50 per hour pay-per-lesson, $52.50 per hour on ten hours or more, and $47.50 per hour at twenty hours or more in Canadian dollars, with no registration or assessment fee, and the Go2Grad Guarantee refunds 50% if a student's grade drops below their starting baseline.

Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Tutor in Ontario (And the Red Flags to Walk Away From)

Go2Grad Tutors

Sep 12

5 min read

It is the third week of August and you have four tabs open. A national franchise with a bright booking page. A marketplace listing forty tutors within ten kilometres. A neighbour's recommendation sitting in a text message. A local company you have never heard of. All four say the same three things: qualified tutors, personalized learning, proven results. None of them answers the question you actually have, which is whether this particular person can teach Grade 12 math to your particular teenager.

Choosing a tutor for high school in Ontario is less a research problem than a questioning problem. You do not need to become an expert in pedagogy. You need about fifteen minutes on the phone and a short list of things every honest provider will answer plainly, because none of the answers are secrets. They simply do not appear on a website. Below are twelve questions that separate a subject specialist from a generalist, and the handful of answers that mean you should politely keep looking. (If you have not yet decided whether your teen needs a tutor at all, that is a different and earlier question.)

Start With the Course Code, Not the Subject

The most useful filter is also the simplest. Do not ask whether someone tutors math. Ask whether they have taught MCR3U, or MHF4U, or SCH4U, under the current Ontario curriculum, and how recently.

This matters more than it sounds. Grade 11 Functions and Grade 12 Advanced Functions share a name and very little else in practice. A tutor who is genuinely strong with Grade 10 algebra may be several years away from the rational function and trigonometric identity work where MHF4U marks actually collapse. A first-year university student who did well in SCH4U three years ago is not the same as someone who has walked twenty students through the equilibrium unit. Neither is a bad person. One of them is simply a better fit for the course sitting on your teen's timetable in September.

Course codes are also the fastest way to confirm a provider actually works in this province. If the person you are speaking to talks about Algebra II, AP courses or Common Core standards, they may be excellent, but they are not teaching to the curriculum your teen is graded against.

Twelve Questions to Ask Before You Book

Work through these in four short groups. You will usually know inside ten minutes.

On subject depth:

• Have you taught this exact course code under the current Ontario curriculum, and how recently?

• Which two units in this course cost students the most marks, and how do you teach them differently?

• What is your own academic background in this subject?

On who actually teaches:

• Who will be in the session each week, and will it be the same person every time?

• What happens if that tutor is away, unwell, or leaves partway through the semester?

• Is this one to one, or are there other students in the room?

On method:

• What happens in the first session, before any teaching starts?

• Do you work from my child's actual course materials and returned tests, or from your own workbook?

• How do you decide what to cover in a given week?

On accountability and cost:

• What do you report back to me, and how often?

• What happens if marks have not moved after a full reporting period?

• What is the total cost including any assessment or registration fee, and what is the cancellation policy?

The answers you want are specific and unhesitating. A tutor who knows Grade 12 chemistry will tell you, without being prompted, that energy changes and equilibrium are where the class average drops. A provider with a real process will describe the first session as a diagnostic rather than a lesson. A company that stands behind its work will have an answer to the marks question that is already written down somewhere, not improvised on the call.

Working twelve questions through four providers is a real evening of phone calls, and most of it is spent filtering out the ones that were never a fit. If you would rather start from the shortlist, you can meet our graduate-level tutors and read their credentials and course coverage before you speak to anyone, or book a free consultation and we will answer all twelve for you in one call, including the ones about what happens if the marks do not move.

The Red Flags That Should End the Call

None of the following means a provider is dishonest. Each one means their model is built around something other than your teen's specific course, and that is worth knowing before you commit to a term.

• No diagnostic first session. If the plan for week one is to start teaching, nobody has established what is actually broken.

• Rotating tutors. A different person each week means the diagnostic restarts each week, and your teen spends the session re-explaining themselves instead of learning.

• One tutor, every subject, every grade. Breadth at that scale rarely comes with depth at the SCH4U or MCV4U level.

• A large package pushed on the first call, before anyone has met your child or seen a single test.

• No answer, or a vague one, on what happens if marks do not improve.

• Curriculum vagueness. A proprietary in-house program is a warning sign when the mark your teen needs is set by an Ontario teacher marking an Ontario course.

What a Good First Session Actually Looks Like

Ask your teen to have their most recent returned test on the desk. A strong tutor will spend most of the first session on it, working backwards through the lost marks and sorting them by cause: misread the question, set it up wrong, did not know the concept, or made an arithmetic slip. Those four causes each need a completely different fix, and treating all of them as a need for more practice is how a full semester of tutoring produces no change at all.

By the end of that session you should get something specific back. Not that he needs to work on his fundamentals, but something closer to: he factors accurately and quickly, he loses most of his marks in the first two lines of a word problem, and that is where we are starting. If nobody can tell you that after ninety minutes, the diagnostic did not really happen.

How to Compare Two Providers Fairly

Once you have two or three real candidates, compare them on five things and ignore the rest: the true hourly cost after all fees, the tutor's qualification in that specific subject, whether it is the same tutor every week, whether they work from Ontario course materials, and what accountability exists if nothing changes. Whether sessions run online or in person matters far less than most families expect, at least according to the research on online tutoring.

For a reference point, Go2Grad charges $57.50 per hour pay-per-lesson, $52.50 per hour on packages of ten hours or more, and $47.50 per hour at twenty hours or more, in Canadian dollars, with no registration or assessment fee. Every tutor holds a graduate degree in the subject they teach, most families are matched within two to three days, and the Go2Grad Guarantee refunds 50% if a student's grade drops below their starting baseline. Those are the numbers we would want a parent to hold every other provider to, including us.

One Good Conversation Is Usually Enough

You are not choosing a tutor for the next four years. You are choosing who works with your teen through one semester of one course, and that decision stays reversible if the first month tells you something different. Ask the twelve questions, listen for specifics rather than reassurance, and trust the provider who talks about the course rather than about their brand. If you would like to hear what those answers sound like from us, you can meet the graduate-level tutors who would be working with your teen, or book a free consultation and we will tell you plainly whether we are the right fit for the course on their timetable this semester.

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