Two major tutoring accreditation bodies from the United States, the College Reading & Learning Association (CRLA) and the National Tutoring Association (NTA) have served as models for the creation of the Canadian Tutor Standards.  However, the collaboration of stakeholders from over 20 Canadian postsecondary institutions who have contributed their vision, ideas, best practices, and expertise has brought the CTS to fruition.

The Canadian Tutor Standards benefit institutions, program administrators, tutors, and students. They are a set of benchmarks for tutoring program excellence. The accreditation process provides opportunities to document and receive feedback on organization, programming, services, and tutor training curricula, and offers assessment from reviewers who are themselves practitioners and participate in the scholarship, research, and management of post-secondary academic support centers.

Meeting CTS standards provides the assurance and confidence that the tutoring program uses the best practices for Canadian academic support services and programs, to suit the needs of students, tutors and institutions effectively and ethically.

Canadian Tutor Standards

The Canadian Tutor Standards (CTS) are intended to provide guidelines for designing, developing, implementing, maintaining and improving tutoring programs in post-secondary environments across Canada.

The standards are not prescriptive. They have been developed to be flexible enough to be useful in providing a framework for high quality support services and at the same time robust enough to be practical and useful.

Standards Include:

1. Program Set-up and Administration (Infrastructure and Integrity)
2. Needs Analysis
3. Program Planning and Design
4. Tutor Training and Development
5. Assessment of Tutor Training and Learning Outcomes
6. Program Monitoring and Evaluation