The long version, for anyone who wants it

Every mentor sat the paper they teach

Three filters, and every mentor we have has passed all three. We would rather tell a student we have no one for their subject this term than hand them a mentor who is only following the herd and guessing.

1

Teaching approach, not just the syllabus

We look for mentors who find their subjects easy and take a genuinely student-centric, practical approach to scoring well. The ones who had to reform their own approach when the IB hit them hardest often make the best teachers for someone finding it hard — a transcript cannot tell us who those people are, so this is checked directly rather than assumed.

2

A high score is the entry bar, not the decider

The first mark of a good teacher is someone genuinely proficient in their subject, so the minimum we accept is 40/45 and we only work with the very best. But a score is checked once and then set aside — it decides whether someone is considered, never whether they are chosen.

3

Matched to exactly what you sat

You are matched only to the subjects and levels you actually sat. This is not a promise we make and hope to keep — it is enforced by how pairings are created in the first place, so a mismatch is not a policy that could be broken, it is a pairing that could not have been made.

4

Reliability, vetted by trial classes

Every one of our mentors is a confident public speaker, and is vetted by students themselves rather than by us. We run real trial classes, and how a mentor actually performs in one — not how they say they would — is what earns them their place.