Becoming a private tutor- all questions here

salsachic

I have been a primary teacher for several years, and like many others am getting fed up with working in schools - endless paperwork, behaviour issues and so on. I have decided to give up the job, and accept a lower income in favour of a less stressful life, and I think tutoring could be the answer.
Does anyone know whether there is a union that protects tutors? I'm sure that it is very rare for things to go wrong, but I'd like to know there would be someone to back me up if things did go wrong.

stugall

Hi
Register with Personal Tutors or Fleet Tutors, or put a small classified ad in your local paper or freebie, this is the time to do it before the exams.
As to charges, £20 an hour is the going rate (outside London).
Regards
Stuart.

Drag-Den

Hi,

I too run an agency and can tell you all that there is no shortage of work out there. We're finding at the moment that we have more work than available tutors so if anyone would like to register for free with us please PM me. We're relatively new, very fair and have lots of work available.

Like the poster above, I too dont want to be accused of spamming however there do appear to be a lot of other commercial links in this thread. I wont post a link but if you Google "Tutor Me" you will find us.;)

Thanks

pipkin71

Very interesting thread.

I can't work now, because of health problems, but this is something I would look at in the future.

As a home educator, I would also say look at the possibility of tutoring groups of children in this area. There is never a set age range, so you could be in a group of children between 5 and 15.

Pipkin xxxx

aliportico

I do some maths tutoring. I found a website which allows tutors to advertise for free, and put one advert on there about 10 months ago. ATM, I tutor for 5 hours a week - 4 at my house, 1 at the student's house - I prefer to do it from home, for convenience, but I charge extra for going out which helps! I'm not CRB-checked, and have never been asked. I charge £20 an hour (which I'll probably put up in the summer), and turn away enquiries at least once a fortnight.

It's a bit of extra work to do the planning beforehand, but when compared to friends who do stuff like child-minding or retail work, it's almost embarrassingly well-paid! As my children get older I'll probably gradually increase it, and if I don't find another path in the meantime, I'll be happy to continue for the forseeable future.

wordsfan

hi all

this is an area that very much interests me. I have a degree in English from an English university but no teaching quals. However have done some classroom assistant work voluntary while doing my degree and was a leader within the Guiding association for a long time - which know is not teaching but is experience with children/teenagers. Does anyone know if I HAVE to have teaching qual to tutor in Scotland? Also any agencies you would recommend - I am in Glasgow area.

Charlton_King

I am a private, one-to-one tutor for modern languages.

Advertising with any kind of agency is simply not worth it. Take this from someone with 20+years of experience.

There are plenty of internet websites on which you can advertise for free and which come high up on google searches. I use vivastreet and gumtree and get all the clientele I need from there.

Add on your free insertions in yellow pages, thomson etc and you're home free.

Charlton_King

Oh yes - and don't forget to have a few postcard size ads ready to place in corner shops. Choose somewhere in a lively section of town with professionals passing by, rather than the sleepy suburbs. Get yourself some smart business cards printed for next to nothing - always available on ebay.

Wait for the phone calls to come.

susanovenden

Hi I am thinking of tutoring pupils at home to earn extra cash(what else)! I teach pupils with special needs in schools, I have my police check, I work for an agency at present but little work is coming up at the moment is tutoring a possibility?

Queen_Latifah

tucbiscuit wrote: »

Hi to all, i am reading this thread with interest as my dad owns one of, if not the biggest private tutoring agency in the UK, I honestly don't know the details, but he covers all of the UK and has thousands of tutors and appears at the top of all keyword searches on tutors or related searches on google.

Anyway his website with all contact details is;


http://www.personal-tutors.co.uk/


He gets loads of Christmas cards from tutors if that is anything to go by

And I don't think he charges too much of-a commision.

Anyway that's the site, he's always looking for new tutors.

I taught with Personal Tutors a couple of years ago.
You have to complete an application form, they check your references etc.
For each £20 one hour lesson, I had to pay a £6 fee to the agency, every time. So if I was introduced to one student and had 5 lessons with that same student I had to pay £30 to the agency for no extra work from them. I then had to pay my income tax on this, plus my petrol. I would find myself with about £10 left for 1,5 hours work (adding the preparation time). I have a degree, a masters of Arts, a PGCE, teaching experience and am a French native. Needless to say, I stopped working for Personal Tutors as I don't feel my level of qualifications and experience is worth £6 net per hour.
Dear Tucbiscuit, your dad is a very greedy man.