Hiring a Programming Tutor in Singapore: Seven Questions to Ask First

You've decided to hire a programming tutor. The question now is which one. Carousell listings, agency tutors, friend-of-a-friend referrals: they all look reasonable on the surface and you can't really tell them apart from a profile page. The seven questions below are the ones I would ask if I were the student. They don't take long, they're polite to ask, and the answers tell you almost everything you need to know.

A good tutor will answer all seven without flinching. A chancer will dodge at least three.

1. Have you helped with my specific module in the last 6 months?

The right answer is specific. "Yes, I had two CS2030S students last semester, both finished the iP project successfully." The wrong answers: vague claims of generality ("I do all CS modules"), a list of modules they took as a student five years ago, or a pivot to "the concepts are similar".

The reason it has to be the last 6 months is that Singapore tertiary modules change fast. The CS1010 problem sets in 2026 are not the CS1010 problem sets in 2022. A tutor who hasn't seen the recent rubric is guessing.

If a tutor genuinely hasn't taught your specific module recently, an honest answer sounds like "No, but I've taught its prerequisite, here's how I'd approach yours, want to do a one-hour trial first?". That's also fine.

2. What's your real availability this week?

You're paying for help, not for a name on a contract. There are two legitimate patterns:

• A tutor offers specific hours: "I have Tuesday 9pm onwards, Thursday afternoon, and Sunday morning open this week." Easy to plan against.
• A tutor asks for your availability first: "Send me your free slots this week and I'll match what I can." Also fine, and often more efficient when the tutor juggles a varying caseload across many students.

What's NOT fine is vague non-engagement: "we'll find a time that works" with no actual back-and-forth, or postponement ("let me get back to you") that turns into 24+ hours of silence. If they can't tell you anything useful about their week within a day, that's a flag for a panicking student before a deadline.

3. What's the price for the scope I'm describing?

Send a one-paragraph brief. Real tutors quote real numbers, usually within 24 hours. Look for:

• A specific dollar amount (S$X) or a clear hourly rate with an estimated total.
• Mention of what's included (testing? explanation? revisions if the brief wasn't met?).
• Mention of what's not included (new requirements, scope changes).

Watch out for:

• "It depends, message me to discuss" with no actual number after follow-up.
• A surprisingly low number relative to the scope. If the standard market rate for an FYP build is S$1,000-3,000 and someone quotes S$300, they've either not understood the scope or they're planning to ghost halfway.
• Hourly rates with no estimated total ("S$X/hr, we'll see how long it takes"). For project work this is a recipe for surprise bills.

4. What's your policy on academic integrity?

Singapore's tertiary institutions all have explicit academic-integrity policies. A tutor who isn't clear on theirs is a tutor whose carelessness will eventually become your problem.

Reasonable answers:

• "I tutor and explain, you submit your own work. I won't write your final submission for you."
• "I help you understand and debug, but the final code in your submission has to be yours."
• "I'll help on practice problems and past papers freely; on the actual graded assignment we work through it together at a pace where you can defend it."

Unreasonable answers:

• "Whatever you want, I won't tell anyone."
• "I do the assignment for you and you submit it."
• Silence on the question.

The unreasonable answers aren't moral judgments. They're practical risk: institutions in Singapore have been catching AI-generated and ghost-written submissions more often, the penalties have hardened, and you are the one whose academic record carries the consequence.

5. What happens if you can't deliver?

Real things go wrong: tutor falls sick, scope was misunderstood, the assignment turns out to need a stack the tutor doesn't actually know. The right tutor has thought about this. Listen for:

• A clear distinction between tutor-fault and student-fault cancellations. If the tutor can't deliver, expect a refund of unstarted-work deposits or a pro-rata refund for partial work. If you cancel after work has started, expect no refund: that's standard for service work, not unfair.
• Honest hand-off ("I'll refer you to X who does cover this") rather than charging for sub-par work when the tutor realises mid-engagement they can't deliver.
• A communication plan if they become suddenly unreachable.

Wrong answers: "I'll always deliver" (suspect), "That won't happen" (delusional), no clear policy at all (chancer), or refunds promised even for student-side cancellation (also suspect, because that risk has to be priced in somewhere, usually into a higher base rate).

6. Who am I actually working with?

This is the question that surfaces the freelancer-vs-agency reality. Some platforms list a profile but actually farm the work to a roster of tutors behind the scenes. You may end up with someone different from who you thought you were paying.

Right answers:

• "Me, directly. Same person from start to finish."
• "I'm the lead but my colleague Y handles X part of the work, here's their profile."
• "It depends on availability, but you'll be told before any session who's teaching."

Wrong answers:

• Evasive about who's actually doing the work.
• "We have a team" with no specifics about who from the team you'll deal with.
• A different name on the invoice than the profile you contacted.

If continuity matters for your case (long-term tutoring, ongoing project), the answer to this question is the most important of the seven.

7. Can I see one piece of past work or a reference?

You don't need a portfolio. Most legitimate Singapore tutors don't keep one because past students' code is confidential. But you can ask for something that lets you triangulate quality:

• A short blog post or README they wrote (shows they can explain in writing).
• A public anonymised review from a past student.
• A live Carousell or Telegram channel with reviews you can read.
• A link to their LinkedIn or GitHub if applicable.
• A 15-minute free intro call where you can ask them to explain a concept on the spot.

If they have nothing, no reviews, no public writing, no anything, and they're charging market rates, that's a flag. A tutor who has been working in Singapore for a year or more should have left some kind of trail.

How to use this list

You don't need to read these as a script. Send a relaxed message that covers the same ground. "Quick check before we book in: have you done CS2030S recently? What's your availability this week and what would you quote for X scope?" covers questions 1, 2, 3, and 6 in one go. Add the academic-integrity question if you're nervous about it. Add the others as conversation goes.

The whole point is to give yourself a single 10-minute filter that catches the bad-fit hires before money changes hands. Ten minutes of your time saves you the much-worse experience of paying a tutor who turns out to not know your module, miss your deadline, or hand you something you can't defend in a viva.

Where I sit

I tutor Singapore students across NUS, NTU, SMU, SIT, SUTD, SUSS, and the polytechnics. If you want to test this list against a real tutor, send me the same questions on Telegram. I'll answer all seven straight, even if it ends with me telling you I'm not the right fit for your specific work. That's the answer you want from any tutor you're considering.