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TEACH · VERIFICATION · 14 SEP 2026
How verification works
Every teacher verifies their identity with a government document before publishing a course or sending a single message. Persona runs it. Haven never sees the document.
Runs on PersonaUsually under 10 minutesRe-verified every two years
Start from your profile
Verification unlocks after you add subjects and a short bio. You cannot publish or message before it clears.
Persona takes over
You are handed to Persona, who collect your document and a selfie under their own privacy policy.
We get the result only
Pass or fail, an age band, whether you are an adult, and a reference number. Nothing else reaches Haven.
Publish
A verified badge appears on your profile and every course you publish.
What you need
- A government-issued photo ID — passport, driving licence or national ID card
- A device with a camera for the selfie step
- A guardian link if you are under 18 — until a verified guardian holds your Stripe account, Haven cannot take payment for your courses
What age does and does not change
Age does not disqualify anyone from teaching. A verified fifteen-year-old teacher and a verified thirty-year-old teacher are both verified. What changes is the protection that applies around them.
- A guardian must be linked and verified by Haven before an under-18 teacher can be paid
- Your public name is shortened. A teacher under 18 is shown by their first name and last initial; an adult teacher is shown by the name on their account.
- Uploading a profile photo is optional. If you upload one it appears on your public profile — Haven does not review it beforehand and does not hide it by default.
- Payouts go to a verified guardian, not to the teacher directly
Nothing else about your profile changes. A teacher under 18 has the same public profile as any other teacher — the same photo, headline, subjects, courses and verified badge — and their age, date of birth, age band and identity-verification details are never published. The shortened name is applied by Haven's database wherever a teacher is named publicly, not by the website, so it cannot be undone by a page that forgets to apply it.
What verification does not cover
We say this plainly because it matters: verification confirms who someone is. It does not confirm anything else about them.
- We do not run background checks beyond identity verification
- We do not verify teaching quality or qualifications
- What a teacher knows is between them and their students
If verification fails
A failed check is usually a photo problem — glare, a cropped edge, or a document that has expired. You can retry, and if it fails twice, email support@havencourses.com and a person will look at it.
Ready to verify?
You need a government photo ID and a few minutes. Under-18 teachers also need a verified guardian to hold their Stripe account before Haven can take payment for a course.