Becoming a private tutor- all questions here

countrygirl27

another thing - as a working teacher at the moment I would also offer this word of warning.
1:1 tuition is being taught by pupils own teachers out of hours in most of the schools I know. Many of the people I know who have applied to do it thru TDA have not heard back even if they are qualified teachers. It may not be like this everywhere but it certainly is where I am.
Also OFSTED are extremely interested in safeguarding children at the moment (quite reasonably) so many schools would be extremely unwilling to allow staff or tutors in who they did not know or who did not have an extremely recent CRB check.

Aputsiaq

barnaby-bear wrote: »

I charge £30 per hour and I'm not charging more than anyone else in the area - a prestigious university and higher degree helps, London it can be up to £40 - I don't do too much though too little time but once you get one you'll get half a dozen from the same school knocking at your door... stick to one school if you can - one syllabus to keep changing... after the first month I did this I've consistently had to turn far more down than I accept or Mrs. BB would tolerate :rolleyes: I'm only prepared to do it in a family area in the parental home with parents there - some people will suggest you go upstairs with their 15 yr old daughter so they can watch the telly :eek: - don't. Agencies take around 30% in my experience - good way to start.

All well and good although some families would like their children to have some extra tuition if they are struggling and they are priced out of it with an hourly rate like that.
At that price a child may as well go to a public school.

Aputsiaq

countrygirl27 wrote: »

as a teacher myself I would say that you need to be extremely careful if you take on tutoring. There have been cases where people have sued when their child has failed to pass the test they have been tutored for.

It is EXTREMELY unwise to work with children without a CRB check. We tutor at school, on the premises, teachers only tutor, not teaching assistants and we all tutor sat in the same room. Being alone with a child leaves you open to all sorts of allegations.

Also it might be worth checking if you need to be registered with an organisation like the GTC which regulates teaching or some sort of other professional body if you are not a teacher.

They might have TRIED to sue but they wont get far with it after all, a tutor is doing what a school does, teaching, and you cant sue a school if you fail your exams.
The other thing to consider is that some kid might go to a chemistry tutor for some lessons even though they are a bit dim. When they fail the exam, are you seriously suggesting they can sue?
There wouldnt be a tutor around to be had as they would all be scared silly.
Plus, there would be millions of people suing left, right and centre causing a real scandle.
Also "Being alone with a child leaves you open to all allegations". How do these allegations stop just because a CRB has been done?

A CRB does NOT mean that a child will be safe or that the person with the CRB is not a !!!!!phile. It only proves that they have not been caught and/or prosecuted yet.

jensmile_2

countrygirl27 wrote: »

another thing - as a working teacher at the moment I would also offer this word of warning.
1:1 tuition is being taught by pupils own teachers out of hours in most of the schools I know. Many of the people I know who have applied to do it thru TDA have not heard back even if they are qualified teachers. It may not be like this everywhere but it certainly is where I am.
Also OFSTED are extremely interested in safeguarding children at the moment (quite reasonably) so many schools would be extremely unwilling to allow staff or tutors in who they did not know or who did not have an extremely recent CRB check.

Well it depends on the school. For example my school is crying out for someone as they want it done during school hours, hence our teachers will be teaching and are therefore out of the equation. If my own school did it after school, I'd bite their arm of to do it as it offers good pay and excellent professional development opportunities. It means the only teachers who could do it would be retired or on supply (or part time of course).

therivierakid

jensmile wrote: »

Hi Simon
thanks for your reply. It would be fab to have some advice from you as your posts show you're v experienced. I registered with one to one in the summer. A colleague told me it was done in the daytime and was only suitable for retired teachers so I left it.My council emailed me some schools to write to and I have seen the job I mentioned in my previous post. Only problem is I can not apply for it whilst still in my current job as it takes place after school but I can't quit my current job on the basis of one tutoring job! Can I ask how you went about starting your tutoring? I have joined some agencies and emailed some local tution centres but don't see how I can make this a full time thing?

As I understand it, one-to-one tuition can be done in schools if you are an NQT though obviously there may be workload issues. I'm just hoping that the government will see sense and open the scheme up to well qualified maths/english graduates... though I suspect pigs may fly first.

It's not easy making it full time as a tutor. I think you need to be in a fairly affluent area and have either a bit of exclusivity or a very good ability to market yourself. I've been doing it two years and I'm still part-time. I do know someone who is full time however. He charges £30 an hour for maths tuition and has on average 4 students a day.

I'm guessing you've got a CRB check through your job. Hence, I would just start advertising in the classifieds in the local paper and get an advert on Vivastreet and Gumtree. A local agency will certainly help you get started though you will have to pay a bit of commission (don't pay an up front fee!). There's plenty of tutoring sites out there that you can advertise on for free - PM me for a list of the ones that I'm on if you want. You probably just need to test the water and build up slowly. Whatever you do don't charge less than £20 an hour and be prepared to read up on all the main syllabi and core texts. Be flexible about who you take on... I never thought I would teach any primary age kids but I've been helping a Yr 6 girl prepare for 11+ and an independent school exam and that's been great. It'll certainly help me when I'm teaching Yr 7s in school!

Write a brief profile about yourself, your background, education and your ability to teach. Include a Terms and Conditions section and a Disclaimer. There's a brilliant guide on one of the tutoring websites. Just google tutoring e-book.

Tutoring is brilliant. Very rewarding when you see the kids progress and you really get a buzz when they tell you their results!

countrygirl27

Aputsiaq wrote: »

They might have TRIED to sue but they wont get far with it after all, a tutor is doing what a school does, teaching, and you cant sue a school if you fail your exams.
The other thing to consider is that some kid might go to a chemistry tutor for some lessons even though they are a bit dim. When they fail the exam, are you seriously suggesting they can sue?
There wouldnt be a tutor around to be had as they would all be scared silly.
Plus, there would be millions of people suing left, right and centre causing a real scandle.
Also "Being alone with a child leaves you open to all allegations". How do these allegations stop just because a CRB has been done?

A CRB does NOT mean that a child will be safe or that the person with the CRB is not a !!!!!phile. It only proves that they have not been caught and/or prosecuted yet.

I did not say having a CRB check would stop allegations being made. Allegations are made against experienced teachers who have been teaching in schools for a number of years and are well known and respected within the community they work in.
Yes a CRB check does only find people who have been convicted which is why the system is fundamentally flawed.
But my point is that you need to take as many steps as you possibly can to ensure you cover yourself and that you are placing yourself at greater risk of some of these situations if you have no experience or professional bodies to help and support you.
Yes people are suing - it is because money is changing hands that they feel they have the right to sue - they have employed you for the purpose of tutoring their child to pass the exam. So even if they have an IQ of 2 they expect them to pass - (not all parents are unreasonable though!!!)
Schools are now being sued for this reason - and yes its ridiculous.

If you have no teaching qualifications and tutor it probably wouldnt do your case any good if you were sued by a pushy parent.

not all parents are like this...many just want to help their kids!!!

mumto2monkeys_2

Hello all

I'm a full time teacher who happens to be in a lot of debt. I would like to take on some additional work, possibly tutoring, but I don't know whether I would be better placing private advertisements or using an agency? I would hope to earn around £25 an hour - is this a reasonable rate now?

Also, do agencies deal with tax or would I need to register as self employed?

Thanks

therivierakid

mumto2monkeys wrote: »

Hello all

I'm a full time teacher who happens to be in a lot of debt. I would like to take on some additional work, possibly tutoring, but I don't know whether I would be better placing private advertisements or using an agency? I would hope to earn around £25 an hour - is this a reasonable rate now?

Also, do agencies deal with tax or would I need to register as self employed?

Thanks

You would be classed as self employed so you'd have to do a tax return.

Place private ads and join a local agency. The more you get your name out there the more work you will get.

dizziblonde

I'm a qualified primary teacher - and because I only do supply, which is a dying job (bah/grr/insert political rant here), I started doing bits and bobs of different things to up my income. The first thing I started doing 3 years ago now was marking the KS2 English tests - that's a welcome boost of income in the months when supply teaching is generally deader than my team's hopes of winning the Premiership title.

Then I started tutoring - initially via an agency - I'm registered with https://www.personal-tutors.co.uk, you show up with a little profile and your rough location on their database - parents click on you and their details with the age of the child, what they're looking for etc get emailed to you and they get the details you've made available to them. Sometimes the parents contact you, other times you contact the parents if you choose to - and then you pay the agency commission on each lesson you've got via their contact. I believe they restrict who they'll take on to those with QTS, and I had to send them my CRB that I already had from my "proper" work (I have so many of the wretched things I could wallpaper my house with them) before I was taken onto their books.

Once you get established more and more of my work comes via word of mouth - generally I find if I get a foothold in a school, the mums talk at the school gate and if another child's struggling - my name will be passed along and I'm building up a tidy little mini-business this way as time goes by. Things that go in my favour in terms of drumming up interest are the fact I mark the SATs tests and so know the markscheme for English at least inside out, and the fact that I've experience teaching for independent school entrance exams - but I get so many enquiries I could work every evening of the week and still be fending some off... I'm picky about who I'll take on, try to restrict or group together my travelling etc because the time and costs have to balance out to make it worth my while.

I always go to the child's house to tutor, generally it's at the kitchen table so parents/siblings are in and out allthe time, and I'll happily have a parent sat in with us for the whole session if they want to do so (have had parents who wanted to do this on the trial session to make sure they were happy with how I interacted with their child). Some other tutors work from their own home - I don't because a) access and parking in our street is chronic anyway and I don't want to piddle off the neighbours b) I'd have to tidy up (the bigger factor!) c) I have a cat and it limits me with working with children with pet-allergies and d) I like the work-home separation I get... I could get through more children if I worked from home - but I've got quite a good bank of pupils, none more than about 10 minutes' drive away.

I'm careful in what I say - I don't promise instant results or guaranteed "passes" (not really appropriate with primary anyway) and I'm honest with what can be achieved - and spend a fair amount of time explaining things like the assessment data schools tend to bombard parents with to them. I DO get results - the kids like to tell me how they've scored on their latest school assessment and there's a steady improvement, but I don't tend to push that to prospective parents - covering myself in this grabbit-sue-and-run age I guess.

Tax-wise, I run things through my parents' company to minimize paperwork for myself and just make my life a bit easier. Remember things like mileage can be claimed against your earnings as well.

I didn't apply to do the one-to-one tuition via schools because, although initially it looked perfect for people like supply teachers, the fact most schools want to run the sessions immediately at the end of the school day means that basically I'd be unable to work during the school day of that session - which locks me out of potentially a heck of a lot of work. I think that's why a lot of supply staff didn't go in for the scheme which is a shame really. Most schools I know of have the teachers doing it in-house as a little extra cash for themselves - but obviously this doesn't work if you're trying to fit lessons in during the school day.

I tend to have a lesson prep day once every few weeks where I'll plan/resource/print out everything for all my lessons for a few weeks in advance (and then completely go off plan when I find out they've been doing something in class they want to spend more time going over!) - at the moment I'm planned up until the February half-term - I used to plan a week in advance but I'm the queen of procrastination and found it takes up more of my life if I do things that way!

The one thing I'm realizing is that if you live in a semi-affluent area, there's a massive demand out there - enough that you can pick and choose quite heavily and still generate a fair income from tutoring. I tend to steer clear of those who seem to think they can wave a tenner and immediately make their child a genuis and go for those who come saying their child needs a bit of confidence and a bit of a push - you can usually work out which category people fall into from an initial phonecall quite well!

In terms of what I charge - around here the going rate for primary is between £15 and £20... I charge either £16 if I'm not going through the agency, or £20 if I am - because obviously commission cuts right into things otherwise! Things obviously vary quite widely depending on where you are in the UK though.

amy_lou_4

Is anyone else experiencing exam-stress-by-proxy at the moment?! All three of my A Level girls are doing exams and re-sits right now. Part of me feels so sorry for them, having been through it all myself so recently, and another part is so proud at how far they have come.

One of my French girls has just done her French AS re-sits and got questions in both her written and oral on the use and dangers of mobile phones- so we glad we spent a while practising that a few weeks ago! We have done a lot of grammar, "marqueurs" and essay planning too so I am sure she did fine- it is the marking I worry about, she should NOT have had to resit any of this, from my opinion of her language level, confidence, dedication and how she matched up to the mark scheme.

My Politics student has her resits on this Friday, and the Monday 9 days after (with Business and English resits in between, but thankfully 5 days to focus solely on her synoptic module revision) and she has been doing so many essays and plans for me, I have been really impressed! She used to talk about not understanding most of her main units, and now she is actually excited to be "nearly there" and making the most of her second chance. She is someone who has really benefitted from one-on-one tutoring (as her Politics classes, at a private school I might add, were lacking in the concentration dept) and she always responds so well to constructive criticism.

My other French student does not have any French exams this time, but she does have a History resit tomorrow. She came to me tonight to take her mind off it as she has done all she can for revision, but I could tell she is incredibly nervous just from the way she was acting and speaking. We took it very easy and I gave her a masive hug! She has recently been diagnosed with dyslexia, which is making her question her own ability to write down everything she has tried so hard to learn, although she gets a great deal of help from college.

So all in all, a big few weeks for "my girls" and only a fortnight left with them before I go to start my new job in France. I really hope our work (not to mention their money) has paid off, and the examiners don't screw over my poor Sally Roll on results day!