Meta-relationships (Relationships between relationships) versus tuples
I like option 1 better. My first thought is always maintaining data integrity so my question is, "Could it be possible to relate a student to a tutor for a course the tutor is not approved for?" With table student_course_tutor, the field student_id would, as you say the student needn't be attending the course, be a FK to the Students table and the fields (course_id, tutor_id) would be a FK to the course_tutor table. If the requirement that the student must be enrolled in the course as well as the tutor must be approved for the course, that would require only that the fields (student_id, course_id) be a FK to the student_course table.

So you cover the existing specifications and you have an easy solution for a not unreasonable future requirement.