How to hire a Qur'an teacher for your madrasah or family, and the checks to make first

Most madrasahs find their next teacher the same way: someone on the committee mentions a name, a parent vouches for them, and a start date is agreed in a WhatsApp chat. Sometimes that works well. Often the teacher turns out to be a fine reciter who has never taught eight-year-olds, or a lovely person who can’t start until after Ramadan, or someone nobody thought to check against the barred list.

This guide is for masjid committees, weekend schools and parents hiring privately in the UK. It covers what to decide before you advertise, how to test someone properly in under an hour, and the safeguarding steps that are not optional when the students are children.

Decide what you are actually hiring for

“Qur’an teacher” covers several quite different jobs, and the person who is excellent at one can be poor at another. Write down which of these you need before you talk to anyone:

• Teaching beginners to read: Qaida, letters, joining and the first short surahs. This is patient, repetitive work and it rewards someone who is good with young children far more than someone with a beautiful voice.
• Tajweed for students who can already read. Here you need someone who can hear a mistake in a madd or a ghunnah and explain the rule, not only correct it.
• Hifz. Memorisation programmes need a teacher who keeps careful records of each student’s sabaq, sabqi and manzil, and who will be there consistently for years.
• Adult classes, including reverts. Adults learn differently, and many prefer a teacher of the same sex.

Then pin down the practical details: which days and times, how many students per class, their ages, whether you need a brother or a sister (or one of each), and whether there is cover when the teacher is away. A Saturday and Sunday 10am to 1pm slot for twelve children aged 6 to 10 is a job someone can say yes or no to. “Looking for a Qur’an teacher, DM me” is not.

Where to look

Word of mouth is still the best source, as long as you then run the same checks you would on a stranger. Beyond that, people tend to use a mix of:

• Other masjids and Islamic schools nearby, who may know a teacher with spare days.
• Local institutes and hifz schools, whose graduates sometimes want part-time teaching while they study.
• Online tutoring platforms, which suit one-to-one lessons for a family but rarely suit a madrasah that needs someone in the room.
• Posting the job publicly, so people you don’t already know can apply. On DeenTask you can post a teaching job for free, and teachers apply with a message, a price and a link to their portfolio. DeenTask takes no commission from either side. It is new, so for some areas there will be few or no teachers listed yet, and asking around locally may well be quicker.

Whatever the route, ask every candidate for the same three things in writing: their teaching experience with the age group you have, the days they can commit to, and the names of two people who have seen them teach.

Test the recitation, then the teaching

An interview over tea tells you very little. Split the assessment into two parts and do both.

Recitation

Ask the candidate to recite a passage you choose on the day, not one they have prepared. A page from the middle of Surah al-Baqarah works well, because it has a good mix of rules and is not one of the surahs everyone has polished. Have someone on the panel who can judge it, ideally a person with an ijazah or a senior teacher from a nearby masjid. If you have no one like that, record it (with permission) and ask someone you trust to listen.

Then ask them to explain two or three rules they applied, in the language the children will be taught in. A teacher who recites correctly but cannot explain idgham in plain English to a ten-year-old will struggle in a weekend school.

A trial lesson

Pay for a trial lesson with real students, with a parent or a committee member in the room. Thirty to forty-five minutes is enough. Watch for:

• Whether they start by checking what the children already know.
• How they correct mistakes - firmly but kindly, or by embarrassing the child.
• Whether every child recites, or only the confident ones.
• Whether the children leave with a clear task for next week.

Afterwards, ask two of the children what they learned. Their answer will tell you more than the teacher’s.

Safeguarding and DBS checks

This is the part committees most often get wrong, usually by assuming that someone known to the community does not need checking. Being well known is not a safeguarding check.

Which DBS check

Teaching children regularly and without another adult supervising generally counts as “regulated activity”. In broad terms, regularly means once a week or more, or on four or more days in a 30-day period. For regulated activity with children, you are entitled to an enhanced DBS check that includes the children’s barred list, and it is a criminal offence for a barred person to do that work. If your situation is unusual, for example an adult-only class, use the DBS eligibility guidance on GOV.UK rather than guessing.

A few points that catch people out:

• An individual cannot apply for an enhanced check on themselves. The masjid or school requests it, either as a registered body or through an umbrella body that processes checks for smaller organisations.
• Enhanced checks for genuine volunteers carry no DBS fee, though an umbrella body may charge an admin fee. Paid roles pay the DBS fee, which changes from time to time, so check the current figure on GOV.UK.
• If the teacher already subscribes to the DBS Update Service and their certificate is an enhanced child-workforce check with the barred list, you can check its status online with their consent instead of starting again.
• A basic DBS certificate, which anyone can get, is not a substitute.

Everything around the check

A DBS certificate only shows what has been recorded. Safer recruitment means doing the other parts too: take up two references and actually ring them, check photo ID matches the name on the certificate, and ask about any gaps in their history. The Department for Education’s guidance for out-of-school settings, “Keeping children safe during community activities, after-school clubs and tuition”, is written for exactly this kind of organisation and is worth reading as a committee.

Make sure the teacher knows who your designated safeguarding lead is, has read your safeguarding policy, and understands your rules: no one-to-one sessions behind a closed door, no private messaging with students, and a clear route for a parent to raise a concern.

Agreeing terms and pay

Put the arrangement in writing before the first lesson, even if it is a single page. It should cover the hours, the hourly or sessional rate, how and when they are paid, notice on both sides, what happens in school holidays, and who provides cover when the teacher is ill.

Rates vary a lot by city, experience and whether it is a class or one-to-one, so the most reliable way to set a fair one is to ask three candidates what they charge and compare like with like. Check whether a quoted rate includes preparation and progress reports, or only time in the room.

Be careful with the word “self-employed”. Whether someone is employed or self-employed for tax purposes depends on how the work actually runs - who sets the hours, who decides how the teaching is done, whether they can send a substitute - and not on what you call them. HMRC’s Check Employment Status for Tax tool (CEST) is free and gives you a written result. If the teacher is self-employed, ask them for an invoice each month so your treasurer has a record; our guide on how a sole trader writes an invoice covers what it should contain, and getting paid properly covers the payment side.

Online or in person

For a family hiring for one child, online lessons widen the field enormously and often cost less, because nobody is travelling. They work best for children over about seven who can sit still at a screen, and for adults.

Online lessons still need ground rules:

• A parent is at home and can see or hear the lesson.
• Lessons happen on a shared family account rather than the child’s own.
• Recording policy is agreed in advance, both ways.
• Payment goes to a named person or business, with an invoice.

Online teaching can still be regulated activity if it is frequent and unsupervised, so do not assume the DBS question goes away because the teacher is on a screen. If the teacher is abroad, a UK DBS check will not cover their history there, which makes references and a trial lesson matter more.

For a madrasah, in-person is usually the right answer for younger children. Online can be a good stopgap for an older hifz class while you recruit, or a way to give a sisters’ class a female teacher you could not otherwise find locally.

If you are a teacher reading this from the other side, the same list is a good guide to what a careful masjid will ask you for. Having your experience, availability and references ready in one place makes you easy to say yes to; a free portfolio page is one way to do that, and open teaching jobs are listed here as they are posted. If you are also hiring a designer for your enrolment poster, read how to brief a graphic designer before you message anyone.