Product · Education and learning
Trellis connects learners with educators whose credentials have actually been checked.
Private tutoring is a market built almost entirely on trust, and most of it operates without verification, structure or a record of progress. Trellis gives families verified educators, structured learning paths, and evidence of what a learner has actually covered — with safeguarding designed in rather than declared in a policy document.
Educator discovery
Verification status
Availability
Curriculum objectives
The positioning below is drafted from the product brief and is awaiting confirmation from the Trellis product owner.
The problem
Choosing a tutor usually means trusting an unverified profile, agreeing a price by message, paying by bank transfer and having no record of what was taught. Educators carry the mirror image of the same problem: they re-prove their credentials on every platform, chase payments, and have no structured way to show a learner’s progress. Neither side has evidence, and safeguarding is left to individual judgement.
The product insight
Verification and structure are the product, not a compliance overhead. Once an educator’s identity and credentials are checked once and held as a portable, re-verifiable record, and once every session attaches to a curriculum with recorded outcomes, the market stops being a matter of individual trust and starts being a matter of evidence.
Who it is for
- Families and learners
- Parents and guardians choosing support for a child, and adult learners studying independently, who need to know an educator is who they say they are.
- Educators
- Qualified teachers and tutors who want to be found, verified once, and paid reliably without rebuilding their credentials for every platform.
- Schools and learning organisations
- Institutions extending support beyond the classroom who need oversight, safeguarding assurance and progress reporting.
Value
What it gives you
- Educator identity and credentials verified before a profile is visible to families.
- Structured learning paths mapped to curricula, so sessions accumulate into progress rather than into hours.
- Scheduling, payment and records handled in one place, with a clear cancellation and refund position.
- Progress reporting families can read, based on recorded outcomes rather than a tutor’s summary.
- Safeguarding designed into the product: session records, reporting routes and controls on adult–child contact.
Capabilities
What exists today, and what does not
Split by status deliberately. A roadmap item presented as a shipped feature is the most common way software companies lose trust.
In beta · 6
Educator onboarding and verification
Identity checks, qualification and document verification, and background-check status where the jurisdiction provides for it. Verification state is re-checked on a schedule rather than captured once at sign-up.
Curriculum and lesson discovery
Search and filtering by subject, level, curriculum, availability, language and price, with results that surface verification status prominently rather than burying it.
Scheduling and calendar management
Availability management across time zones, booking with confirmation, rescheduling and a defined cancellation policy applied consistently by the system.
Payments and payouts
Card and local payment methods, held funds released on session completion, and educator payouts on a defined schedule. Multi-currency handling by market.
Structured learning pathways
Sessions attach to curriculum objectives so a series of lessons forms a path with recorded coverage, rather than an undifferentiated list of appointments.
Safeguarding controls
Session records, in-platform communication, reporting and escalation routes, and controls on unsupervised adult–child contact. Designed with reference to UK and Ghanaian safeguarding expectations.
Planned · 3
Progress reporting
Objective-level progress visible to learners, families and, where permitted, the school — derived from recorded session outcomes rather than free-text notes.
AI-supported course creation
Assistance for educators building lesson sequences against a curriculum. Every generated element is editable and attributed, and nothing is published without the educator approving it.
Multi-country localisation
Curriculum models, languages, currencies and payment methods per market, beginning with the United Kingdom and Ghana.
Journeys
How people actually move through it
From application to a visible, bookable profile
- 01Apply with subjects, levels, qualifications and availability.
- 02Complete identity verification and upload qualification evidence.
- 03Verification is assessed; the profile stays hidden from families until it passes.
- 04Set rates, availability and cancellation preferences within platform policy.
- 05The profile becomes discoverable with its verification status shown alongside it.
- 06Bookings arrive with the calendar, payment terms and safeguarding context attached.
From a worry about a subject to a recorded learning path
- 01Describe the subject, level, curriculum and the specific difficulty.
- 02Compare educators with verification status, experience and availability visible.
- 03Book an introductory session; funds are held rather than transferred immediately.
- 04Agree objectives that map to curriculum points.
- 05Follow session-by-session coverage and outcomes.
- 06Receive progress reporting tied to those objectives.
From a session to visible progress
- 01See upcoming sessions and what each one will cover.
- 02Join the session and access its materials.
- 03Complete the practice attached to the objective.
- 04See which objectives are covered, in progress or not yet started.
- 05Review the record before an assessment.
Trust, privacy and security
The model underneath
These are architectural commitments rather than policy statements — each corresponds to something enforced in the system.
- Verification before visibility
- An educator profile is not discoverable by families until identity and credential checks have passed. Verification state is stored with its evidence, its assessor and its expiry, and is re-checked on a schedule.
- Safeguarding by design
- Communication happens in-platform and is retained. Reporting and escalation routes are available from every session. Product decisions that would enable unsupervised adult–child contact are treated as safeguarding changes requiring explicit review.
- Children’s data minimisation
- Learner records hold what teaching requires and no more. Access is scoped to the educator delivering the session, the guardian, and the learner. Retention is defined per data category rather than indefinite by default.
- Payment protection
- Funds are held until a session is delivered, and the cancellation and refund position is applied by the system rather than negotiated per case.
Architecture and scale
How it is built
- Client
- Responsive web application designed mobile-first, with native mobile applications planned. Built for intermittent connectivity, which matters materially for learners in Ghana and Nigeria.
- Application
- Server-rendered application with a domain layer separating scheduling, verification, payments and learning records, so a change in one does not propagate through the others.
- Data
- Postgres with row-level security. Learner, guardian and educator data is isolated by explicit membership, enforced in the database rather than only in application code.
- Verification
- Identity and credential checks run through a provider interface, which lets each market use appropriate local data sources without changing the domain model.
- Payments
- Provider abstraction covering international card processing and local African payment methods, with held funds, scheduled payouts and reconciliation.
- Scale
- Traffic concentrates sharply around after-school hours and examination periods. The platform is designed for those peaks specifically rather than for a flat average.
Availability
Where you can use it
- Stage
- private beta
- Markets
- United Kingdom, Ghana
- Web
- Not published
- Mobile
- No store listing published
Availability stage, public URL and app-store listings are awaiting confirmation from the product owner. Nothing is published as available until it has been confirmed.
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Applied AI
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Industry
Education and workforce development
Learning platforms where safeguarding and evidence are the product.
Next step
Talk to us about Trellis
Demonstrations, partnership conversations and pilot enquiries all go to a person, not an automated sequence.