A popular provider of summer programmes to secondary school pupils employed Cambridge students to work as youth mentors without DBS checks, Varsity has learned.

A spokesperson for the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) told Varsity: “for individuals in regulated activity, it is best practice to apply for an enhanced DBS check”.

Supervising, teaching, or taking care of children for three or more days in a thirty day period constitutes regulated activity.

Immerse Education, whose summer programmes in Oxford and Cambridge cost up to £5500, employs current Oxbridge students as ‘mentors’ to support and guide attendees, aged 13-18.

While the company states that “all members of staff undergo extensive security and safety checks, including UK Government Enhanced DBS checks”, Varsity can reveal that at least three Cambridge students working on a programme hosted in Sidney Sussex College began before their DBS checks had been approved. One mentor did not receive the results of their check until nearly three weeks after they started working on the programme.

Although the programme took place at Sidney, it was not run by the College, which is not affiliated with Immerse Education.

This comes amidst wider dissatisfaction among Immerse’s mentors, who raised a number of concerns with management. Employees complained that their hours exceeded company policy, telling management that in some cases mentors were working consecutive 15-hour days.

In an email to mentors seen by Varsity, Peter Grieve, managing director of Immerse Education, rejected these claims. He told the employees, that looking at their rota, the claim that they had worked 55 hours in their second week on the programme — their main complaint — could not be true.

He also told mentors: “I’m satisfied that, over the two weeks, the average hours per week for everyone was under the 55 threshold we set as an internal measure”.

A similar row broke out at Oxford Summer Courses, another provider of summer programmes. Oxford Summer Courses also rents the facilities of Cambridge Colleges and hires Cambridge students to work as mentors on its programmes, which can cost nearly £6000 for a two-week residential.

In a letter seen by Varsity, three student mentors made a “declaration of complaint” about their time at Oxford Summer Courses, which they said was passed on to trade union representatives.

The mentors said: “We ask for advice from the trade union about the level of compensation we should be seeking, but demand acknowledgment in the form of admittance of wrongdoing and an apology. ”

Two of the employees said that they had left their roles “earlier than anticipated” as a result of the treatment they received.

They alleged a “consistent and degrading form of verbal abuse” and said that the “demeaning and uncaring nature of management” led to their premature departure.

Oxford Summer Courses said they had no record of a request for compensation, and that they could not verify the incident in question.

Immerse Education did not respond to a request for comment.