What “DBS-checked” actually means — and what it doesn’t
DBS stands for the Disclosure and Barring Service — the UK government body that runs criminal-record checks in England and Wales. When a tutor is “DBS-checked”, it means they’ve had one of these checks; the rest of this guide explains the three levels (Basic, Standard and Enhanced) and what each one actually shows.
“All our tutors are DBS-checked” appears on almost every tutoring website in the UK. Few explain what that means, which level of check they mean, or what a DBS certificate can and cannot tell you.
Here is the plain-English version, so the phrase becomes information rather than decoration.
What does DBS stand for?
DBS stands for the Disclosure and Barring Service, the UK government body that carries out criminal record checks in England and Wales. It was created in 2012, merging the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) and the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA). Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own equivalents, Disclosure Scotland and AccessNI.
What is a DBS check?
A DBS check is a search of official criminal records, carried out by the Disclosure and Barring Service on behalf of an employer or organisation. It produces a certificate listing anything found, or confirming nothing was. There are three levels — Basic, Standard and Enhanced — and only Enhanced is designed for work with children.
What is a DBS certificate?
A DBS certificate is the document produced by a completed check. It is issued to the applicant, not the employer, and lists what the search found on the date it was issued. It has no expiry date, which is why when a certificate was issued matters as much as whether one exists.
What is the difference between Basic, Standard and Enhanced DBS checks?
Basic checks show unspent convictions only. Standard adds spent convictions and cautions, subject to filtering. Enhanced adds any information a police force considers relevant, and can include the children’s barred list. Enhanced is the level required for teaching roles, and the only one designed for work with children.
Basic. Shows unspent convictions and conditional cautions only. Anyone can request one for themselves. Fine for many jobs; not designed for work with children.
Standard. Adds spent convictions, cautions, reprimands and warnings (subject to filtering rules). Used for certain professions — still not the child-workforce standard.
Enhanced. Everything in a Standard check, plus any information a police force reasonably believes is relevant to the role. This is the level required of teachers and school staff, and the level that matters for tutoring. An Enhanced check can also include a search of the children’s barred list — the register of people legally prohibited from working with children.
So when a website says “DBS-checked”, the question worth asking is: which level? If the answer is not “Enhanced”, the check was not designed for the job of teaching your child. (This is what we check, and what we refuse to claim.)
Here is the part most parents find surprising
Private tutors are not legally required to have any DBS check at all. It is worth knowing that before you start looking for one.
Self-employed individuals cannot even apply for an Enhanced check on their own behalf — an organisation has to request it for a role that qualifies. A tutor working entirely independently may have no route to one, and no obligation to get one.
In practice this means the checking burden falls on whoever introduces the tutor: the agency, the platform — or, if you found the tutor through a listings site or a card in a newsagent’s window, nobody.
This is worth sitting with for a moment. In a classroom, checks are a legal requirement. In your kitchen or your child’s bedroom over a video call, they are optional — unless you make them a condition.
What a certificate cannot tell you
Honesty matters here, so two limitations worth knowing:
A certificate is a snapshot, not a subscription. It reflects what records showed on its issue date. Something arising afterwards does not appear on the paper. This is what the DBS Update Service exists to fix — tutors registered on it allow their certificate status to be re-checked at any time, which is meaningfully stronger than a one-off certificate from years ago.
A clear check is necessary, not sufficient. Our safeguarding policy sets out the rest of what sits around it. It shows an absence of recorded concerns — it does not vet teaching ability, reliability or judgement. Safeguarding is a system: checks, plus identity verification, plus visible sessions, plus communication with parents. No single document does the whole job — it is also how we work, which is why we set out our full approach to safeguarding at Sessioned.
When a tutor cannot get a UK DBS
The DBS is a UK service. A tutor who lives outside the UK generally cannot obtain a UK Enhanced DBS at all — it is not available to them to apply for. That is a fact about UK eligibility rules, not a judgement about the person, and it is the reason “no DBS” and “nothing checked” are not the same statement.
Where a tutor in that position gives us a criminal record check issued in their country of residence, we record three things — the country whose authority issued it, the date printed on the document, and the type of document it is — and we show it on their profile as exactly that, once someone here has actually looked at it. A profile reads along these lines: “Overseas criminal record check on file — Sweden, June 2026. This tutor has not lived in the UK long enough for an Enhanced DBS.”
And here is what we do not say about it. We do not treat an overseas check as equivalent to an Enhanced DBS, because it is not one: the levels, the records searched and the barred-list element described above are specific to the UK system. We also do not claim to have verified the document with the authority that issued it — we have not contacted them. We have seen a document, and that is the whole of the claim.
The snapshot problem applies here too, and more sharply. A UK certificate can at least be re-checked through the Update Service. There is no overseas equivalent for us to re-check against, so an overseas check speaks to its issue date and to nothing after it. That is why the date sits on the profile next to the country, rather than being left out.
Questions to ask any tutor or platform
- Is the check Enhanced, or Basic/Standard?
- When was it issued?
- Is the tutor on the Update Service, so status can be re-checked?
- Who verified the certificate — did anyone actually see it, or is it self-declared?
- Was identity verified separately, so the certificate belongs to the person teaching?
Any professional platform can answer all five without hesitation. If you would rather see the answers than ask for them, every tutor listing on Sessioned carries that tutor’s DBS status on the card, before you make contact.
How Sessioned handles this
We ask every tutor for an Enhanced DBS check where one is available to them, and we show each tutor’s status honestly on their profile rather than making a blanket claim. A “✓ DBS Verified” badge means we have seen and checked that certificate ourselves; “🛡️ DBS on file” means the tutor has given us their number but we have not completed the check yet. A tutor living outside the UK may instead carry the overseas line described above, naming the issuing country and the date on the document. And where a profile shows no DBS status, read that at face value: we hold nothing for that tutor, and we would rather the profile said so. We take the same approach to identity and qualifications: where we have checked something ourselves, that tutor’s profile says so — and where we have not, it does not pretend otherwise. We would rather tell you exactly where each tutor stands than claim something across the board that we could not stand behind for every single person.
Choosing help for your child? Our guide to choosing a tutor you can trust covers the rest of the picture.