Frequently Asked Questions

After your successful interview, you were given instructions on how to update your banking details. You will be paid by EFT directly into your bank account, by the 15th of the month following your lessons. This may take a few days to reflect.

NB! If you change your banking details, make sure you send us an email to let us know!

Payments are processed for lessons that took place between the 1st and last day of a month. These lessons must be correctly logged no later than 24 hours after the lesson takes place. You will be paid for these lessons by the 15th of the following month. 

Please note that any incorrect logs, submissions or inconsistencies in logs will result in the delay of payment and may be subject to penalties as indicated in the Tutor Contract and Tutor Policies documents. Any lessons that have taken place up to the 15th of the following month will be counted towards the next month’s lessons and paid accordingly. 

Example: From 1 March until 31 March, you completed 10 lessons with your client. You submitted all of your lessons by the 1st of April correctly. You will receive payment for the 10 lessons by the 15th of April. From 1 April to 15 April, you had 5 lessons. These 5 lessons will be added to April’s payment which you will receive by 15 May.

As per your contract, we do not provide payslips to our tutors, and it’s the responsibility of the tutor to keep track of their own payments. If you have come across a discrepancy in a particular month’s payment, please send us a detailed break down (after the 15th of the month, also as per our policies), and we will investigate this for you, as soon as possible after the 15th. Before you send your query / breakdown, please first make sure that you are only including lessons from the first to the last day of the month of the payment in question in your calculation.

You will be paid by the 15th of the following month. Please remember to correctly log this lesson within 24 hours of the completed lesson. If you don’t log your lessons in time, you may be subject to penalties, as indicated in the BrightSparkz Contractor MoA and Important Policies for BrightSparkz Contractors documents.

Example: If you do a lesson on 1 February, you will be paid by 15 March, provided you log your lesson within 24 hours of the completed lesson.

Please double check your bank statements as payments can sometimes take a few days to reflect, and SMS notifications don’t always come through!

Payments are processed for lessons that took place between the 1st and last day of a month. Each lesson must be correctly logged within 24 hours of the completed lesson. You will be paid for these lessons by the 15th of the following month.

Example: You will be paid for lessons done in February between 1-15 March. You will only be paid for lessons done on 1-15 March by 15 April as these lessons count towards the total for March. Please remember that you need to log your lessons correctly within 24 hours of the completed lesson in order to be paid on time. If you don’t log your lessons in time, you may be subject to penalties, as indicated in the BrightSparkz Contractor MoA and Important Policies for BrightSparkz Contractor documents.

Step 1: Double check that your lesson logs are correct. Quite often, we find that tutors have forgotten to log a lesson. If this is the case, these lessons would not have been included in your payment. As this is the most common case with payment queries, we ask that you double check before sending a query. If you have forgotten to log a lesson, please send an email detailing the date the lesson to place, the lesson length and a photo of the logsheet so that we can follow up on this.

Step 2: Double check in your calculation that you are not including lessons from a different month. Payments are processed from the 1st to the last day of that same month. Example: 1 – 31 March will be paid by 15 April.

Step 3: Check our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page to ensure your question is not addressed here. If your query is about when you will be paid, please refer to the FAQ page.

Step 4: If your question is not answered on our FAQ page and pertains to the amount you were paid. Please send your query through to queries@brightsparkz.co.za

Please note: Lessons that are not logged within 24 hours of the completed lesson, may be subject to penalties as indicated in the Tutor Contract and Tutor Policies documents.

Up until 28 February 2018, BrightSparkz tutors received a standard annual increase. Tutors received their final annual increase on 1 March 2018, but thereafter our system changed and increases are now awarded once milestones in terms of tutoring hours tutored have been reached.

Tutoring hours will be counted (from zero) starting 1 March 2018 and increases will be awarded once tutors have reached 50, 150 and 250 tutoring hours. This count started on 1 March 2018 and be visible on all tutor profiles. 

If you reached your milestone (50, 150 or 250 tutoring hours since 1 March 2018) in the middle of a month, you will still receive your old rate for lessons done in the remainder of that month. This increase will be effective from the month after you reached your milestone. Tutors will be notified about their milestone achievements and increase via email, as per our policies. This process can take up to 6 weeks to be finalized, so please be patient!

For example. if you reached your 50 hour milestone after tutoring a lesson on 20 May, your lessons for the whole of May (up to and including any lessons on 31 May) will be paid at your original rate. Your new rate will kick in for any lessons done from 1 June. This is due to our system requiring submission of lesson logs for a full month prior to us being able to make any rate changes, and will ensure that there is no confusion.

Only certain packages count towards your tutoring milestone hours – because your milestone increase is only applicable for hours spent tutoring, not as a concessions facilitator or childminder. 

The packages that do count towards your milestone hours are: tutoring packages (school and university), group packages, sponsored packages, online packages, adult and corporate packages, and Boot Camp packages. 

The packages that do not count towards your milestone hours are: travel packages, concessions facilitation packages, childminding/location tutoring packages, invigilation packages and Study Skills Crash Course packages. 

No, any lesson that has been logged for a particular month, will be paid to the tutor. This is for admin and statistical purposes.

So, please ensure that you log your lessons and submit them on time as penalties are applied to late loggers (see the BrightSparkz Contractor MoA and Important Policies for BrightSparkz Contractors for a breakdown of the penalties).

Please send us an email (NOT via WhatsApp) with the client(s) name and surname, lesson date(s) and lesson length to queries@brightsparkz.co.za.

It is frowned upon when lesson(s) are logged more than 24 hours after the completed lesson, and the more frequently you log late, the higher the possibility of a penalty fee. We will also request a signed log sheet from a tutor who regularly logs late, and if you cannot produce this, we will request the client to verify the lessons that have taken place. Any lesson(s) that the client cannot verify, will result in no payment for the lesson(s) in question.

If you got an email at the end of the month reminding you to log your lessons, this means that at least four of your lessons have been flagged by our automated system as not having been logged! This could mean that:

• You have forgotten to log 4 lessons
• You haven’t logged the lessons for all active packages, or
• Your lesson lengths are incorrect

Please check that you have logged all your lessons, on each active package. You should ideally log your lessons within 24 hours of your lesson, but if you have received an email about late logging you can log all your lessons at once. 

If you don’t log your lessons on time for 2 consecutive months, you will be penalized as per our policies.

To summarize:
1. Please log onto the portal, and look under “lesson logs”.
2. Click on the “+Log lesson” button at the top right of each package and complete the necessary information.
3. Click “log Lesson” at the bottom right.
4. Double check that all the information is correct and repeat if needed.

A manual on how to do so would have been attached to the “client confirmation” or “tutor confirmation” email that was sent to you. It was also in the tutor quiz that you had to complete after your successful interview, as well as on the “Tutor Responsibilities” document. If you did not receive any of these, please request the manual. If you still have questions thereafter, please let us know via email (and NOT via WhatsApp): queries@brightsparkz.co.za

A tutor is not able to log half a lesson, nor should a tutor conduct half a lesson.

It is not worth it for a tutor to travel to a client’s home for a 30 minute or 45 minute lesson and the tutor portal does not allow a tutor to log half a lesson.

If you did one and a half lessons, you can log the lesson as “one and a half lessons”. Make sure that your lesson length is correct based on the length of a single lesson! E.g. One and a half lessons on a one hour package will be 90 minutes, while one and a half lessons on a 1.5 hour package will be 135 minutes. 

If the tutor is still willing to do half a lesson (acknowledging that BrightSparkz Tutors will not be compensating the tutor for the extra travel), then the tutor would have to wait until the other half of the lesson has been conducted before a full lesson can be logged. In such cases, the tutor can make a comment of the lesson dates in the comment section when logging a lesson.

We that recommend all our tutors log all lessons ASAP after each lesson has taken place, but no later than 24 hours after the lesson has taken place. This allows accurate and efficient logging, and minimizes errors or tutors forgetting to log.

Please note that BrightSparkz Tutors will request a picture of your signed logsheet if we have encountered a discrepancy or need to confirm your lesson durations. Therefore please ensure that you always have a updated copy of your logsheet (or photo) to send at any time necessary.

If you need any assistance or encounter a situation you are unable to resolve, including missing the lesson submission cut-off, please email us the client’s name and surname, lesson date and lesson length at queries@brightsparkz.co.za. Please do not WhatsApp payment issues!

Your package may be shared with another tutor, meaning another tutor is tutoring the client subjects other than the ones you are tutoring. The client will decide how the lessons on their package get split up, so all tutors sharing a package may not have the same number of lessons on that package. If you are on a shared package, it’s important to check the number of remaining lessons on the package before each lesson you do, to ensure that you do not conduct a lesson over the package. BrightSparkz cannot guarantee payment if this happens. 

Please note that when you are sharing a package with another tutor, you should also be sharing the same logsheet. Please leave the logsheet in an accessible place that both you and the other tutor(s) can sign, like on the fridge.

Up until 28 February 2018, BrightSparkz tutors received a standard annual increase. Tutors will received their final annual increase on 1 March 2018, but thereafter our system changed and increases are now awarded once milestones in terms of hours tutored have been reached. Tutoring hours are counted (from zero) starting 1 March 2018 and increases are awarded once tutors have reached 50, 150 and 250 tutoring hours. This count starts at 1 March 2018 and will be visible on all tutor profiles.

Tutors will be able to see how many hours they have tutored on their profiles for easy tracking. If a tutor reaches their hours milestone in the middle of a month, the increase (new rate) will only be effective for lessons done from the 1st of the following month, after the lesson logs have been submitted and processed for that month. Tutors will be notified about their milestone achievements and increase via email, as per our policies. This process can take up to 6 weeks to be finalized, so please be patient!

For example, if a tutor crosses the 50 mark in May 2019, the new increased rate will be effective for all lessons that take place from 1 June 2019. 

You will receive an increase once you have tutored 50, 150 and 250 hours for BrightSparkz. Once you reach your first milestone (50 hours), we will continue to count your hours tutored from here. I.e., you will need to tutor 100 more hours to reach your next milestone of 150 hours, and a further 100 hours to reach your 250 hour milestone. At no point will we reset the number of hours you’ve tutored after 1 March 2018.

Well done for reaching 250 tutoring hours! That’s very impressive!

After you’ve reached your 250 hour milestone, you will be assessed for an increase based on your hours twice per year. Any increases awarded will be communicated via email.

Our new increases system is hours based. Once you begin tutoring again, you will receive an increase once you have tutored 50 hours, 150 hours and 250 hours. This will be effective for all tutoring lessons from 1 March 2018. 

If you’re sharing a package with another tutor, you need to be aware of 3 important things:

1. Both you and the other tutor(s) can log lessons on the package – so you need to check that there is an available lesson on the package before every lesson. A double lesson or lessons on a few days in a row with the other tutor will quickly use up any remaining lessons. Making sure you keep your shared lesson logsheet up to date will also help with this.
2. The package will not necessarily be split equally between the tutors! The client will decide how to split the lessons based on what the student needs. Please do not assume the number of lessons that you will be conducting on a certain package.
3. You will not be conducting the lessons with another tutor. You will be responsible for arranging lesson times for the subject(s) that you are tutoring, and the other tutor(s) will be responsible for arranging lessons for their subject(s).

For example, Jackie purchases a 10 x 1 hour lesson package for her son, to be split between 3 tutors – for Maths, Natural Science and English. This DOES NOT mean that each tutor will conduct 3.33 lessons! If Jackie’s son is struggling more with Maths and Natural Science, but just needs 1-2 lessons to recap his English, the lesson split might be: 4 lessons for Maths, 4 lessons for Natural Science, and 2 lessons for English. 

Our tutors and concessions facilitators are independent contractors, and therefore no PAYE is deducted from your hourly rate. The payment received by our tutors is normally below the tax threshold of South Africa, and so we do not deduct tax. Should the sum of your earnings through BrightSparkz, either independently or in conjunction with other part-time employment, put you over the tax threshold, it is your responsibility to submit your own tax returns. 

You will need to assess what kind or cancellation it was:
1. Cancelled on route
2. Cancelled on arrival
3. Cancelled any time before you left your home/university (whether it’s 30 minutes or the day before)

Then log the lesson on the portal selecting the correct option. If it’s option 1 or 2, the tutor will be compensated 50% for their hourly rate. The client forfeits the entire lesson. The tutor can also inform us of the cancellation, so that we can ask the client to compensate the tutor directly, so that the client does not need to forfeit the entire lesson.

We do ask that the tutor reschedules the lesson for that same week, or for as soon as possible, or perhaps do a double lesson at the next lesson (should the client agree), to make up for lost time.

NB! Please inform us of frequent cancellations and ALWAYS confirm the cancellation with a parent / guardian / BrightSparkz Tutors, if the cancellation came directly from the learner. If you are struggling to fit in the lessons, it is best to let us know sooner rather than later, so that we can confirm either a temporary or permanent replacement. You’ll only be doing the learner an injustice, if you keep cancelling the lessons from your end.

A tutor needs to log the cancelled lesson, by selecting either “on route” or “on arrival”, in order for them to be compensated 50% for their hourly rate. The client forfeits the entire lesson.

The tutor can also inform us of the cancellation, so that we can ask the client to compensate the tutor directly, so that the client does not need to forfeit the entire lesson.

NB! Please inform us of frequent cancellations and ALWAYS confirm the cancellation with a parent / guardian / BrightSparkz Tutors, if the cancellations comes directly from the learner.

You can accept this cancellation; the client does not forfeit the lesson and the tutor is not compensated. Any notice, before the tutor leaves their home/university for lessons, is sufficient notice, especially since you did not use any of your petrol for this lesson. You may say that you put time and effort into planning the lesson, which is true, however, that time and effort won’t go to waste as you can simply use it for the following lesson instead and in turn you don’t need to plan for the next lesson.

We do ask that the tutor reschedules the lesson for that same week, or for as soon as possible, or perhaps do a double lesson at the next lesson (should the client agree), to make up for lost time.

NB! Please inform us of frequent cancellations and ALWAYS confirm the cancellation with a parent / guardian / BrightSparkz Tutors, if the cancellation came directly from the learner.

You are welcome to do so, as long as there is a good reason for this cancellation. What you’ll need to do is contact the parent or guardian by any means necessary AND make sure that the communications were received i.e. if it’s an SMS, please ensure that you get a reply, and if no reply, please give them a call and if still nothing, then please let us know. Then let us know. You should aim to cancel a lesson no later than the morning of the lesson.

In the case of an emergency, please let us know ASAP, so that we can inform the client that you won’t make the lesson. You are welcome to ask someone to call us on your behalf as well. A doctors or dentist appointment are not seen as emergencies, as they are normally scheduled a few days before or if you’re feeling ill, the appointment is normally in made in the morning. If you do need to make an appointment within 2 hours of a lesson, then please request a doctor’s note and send it to us.
We do ask that the tutor reschedules the lesson for that same week, or for as soon as possible, or perhaps do a double lesson at the next lesson (should the client agree), to make up for lost time.

NB! Please inform us of frequent cancellations and ALWAYS confirm the cancellation with a parent / guardian / BrightSparkz Tutors, if the cancellation came directly from the learner. If you are struggling to fit in the lessons because of your own schedule or a clash in your and the learner’s schedules, it is best to let us know sooner rather than later, so that we can confirm either a temporary or permanent replacement. You’ll only be doing the learner an injustice and scare BrightSparkz’ reputation, if you keep cancelling the lessons from your end.

A tutor may NOT go to a lesson, before the package has been loaded to the portal. If nothing has been loaded the morning of your lesson, please contact us as soon as possible, so that we can follow up for you.

There are exceptions to the rule though – if you have been tutoring for a family for a while now and they’ve had a few packages with you, you can inform us of a lesson that is going to take place (date and time), but there is no package loaded, after which we will tell you if they have booked a new package and that we are waiting for payment, etc. Sometimes, because the client has been with us for a while, we will allow the tutor to proceed with the first lesson on the package, but NO MORE than that. The tutor then needs to tell us when the next lesson is planned for, so that we can ensure payment for the package is received before then. You may only follow this process with our permission.

Please make sure that you communicate with your client on a professional level – they are also partly your employers.

Address the parent / guardian as Mr/Mrs (surname). If the client asks you to call them by their name, you’re welcome to do so.

If the client takes a more relaxed approach, please respond in kind, but still keep it professional.
Please always remember your manners – “hi” / “bye” / “please” / “thank you”!

Please make sure that you communicate with us on a professional level – we are your employers. Please always remember your manners – “hi” / “bye” / “please” / “thank you”!

Urgent things related to your lesson on the day/during that week: Please WhatsApp us and then call if you have not had a response within 30 minutes or even sooner if extremely urgent! Don’t be afraid to call us!

Payment related: Please send us an email to queries@brightsparkz.co.za. If you do not email us, your query will not be attended to.

For first time tutors, please update your banking details on your tutor profile, on the portal. There is a tab for this.

If you have changed banks (e.g. ABSA to FNB) or bank accounts (e.g. cheque to savings), please update this on the tutor portal AND then send us an email (not via whatsapp), that your banking details have changed, and that the portal has been updated accordingly. If you do not do this, we will continue to make payments into your old account and it will be your responsibility to sort it out with the banks.

When you are first assigned a client, you’ll be sent a First Lesson Pack, containing all the admin resources that you’ll need for your lessons going forward. In addition, you’ll be sent a link to the BrightSparkz Resources site, which has the CAPS curricula, tests and worksheets on it, as well as additional links to other sites containing good resources. If you’re STILL struggling to find resources, you can get in touch with your BrightSparkz Client Consultant, and we’ll be happy to point you in the right direction :) You’re welcome to use any age-appropriate resources in your lessons, including books, videos and even games – get creative!

As soon as we have a client matching your area, subjects and availability, we will get in touch via email or Whatsapp. We try to place all new tutors within 6 weeks, BUT the wait might be longer if you don’t have a lot of time available, can only tutor very specialized or low-demand subjects, or live in an area that we don’t have many clients in and don’t have access to a car or public transport to get to more popular areas. Your BrightSparkz Tutor Recruitment Officer would have discussed these factors with you at your interview, and you’re welcome to ask your Client Consultant if you are unclear on any of the above.