hi

now i dont want to sound rude here at all, but without people perosnally say what they get a week, can you tell me what the average weekly wage is for private tuition?

If you dont wish to comment then i will understand.

Have a look at the ISM website - ism.org. That will tell you the range of fees. Multiply that by how many hours you teach a week, and you will have your answer!

thanks ann, just seen prices.


i hope you didnt think i was being rude, just wanted to get an idea what i should realisticly be getting as a teacher.

Well my teacher charges £20 an hour. Multiply that by 37.5 (I'm sure he does more hours than this)...£750 a week, multiply this by 52 (weeks a year)...£39,000 a year, before tax. You're probably looking at the highest tax bracket (40%), depending how honest you are with your accounts. So £39K times 0.4 = £15,600 in tax per year. This leaves £23,400 after tax, divided by 37.5 = £624 per week. Easy peasy. Just wish as a nurse I earned that much. Heigh ho..............I'm sure I'll get flamed for this post lol

I don't think most teachers have that many contact hours per week, and very few work 52 weeks a year.

37.5 hours a week is 75 pupils! Even if 75 pupils wanted your services, I doubt if any teacher could possibly do them all justice! One-to-one tuition is pretty intensive, unless you're going to shout instruction from the kitchen, or from in front of the TV. Five or six in a row is all I can cope with without a break. Most of us, I imagine, do around 40 weeks per year; I do about 37, as I like to stop early before Christmas to allow time for other things.

No, but that's not how tax works .

Income in the lower interest brackets is still charged at the rate of that bracket - the whole lot isn't taxed at 40%. Otherwise, if you earn £5 above the upper rate cut-off, you'd earn a lot less post-tax than someone just below it.

I do think you've over-estimated the amount of chargeable contact time in a week and how many weeks a year they can sustain this for - even the pupils are on holidays for a good many weeks, plus their time off, etc.

Then there are the tax deductable things.

Hear hear, YAP, Patricia & Sarah!

I've sent you a PM, Gazdude, to explain the harsh reality of it all....

Bag (with hackles everso slightly raised....) x

hi guys,

thanks for the information, hope i havent been too rude in asking, its just i do teach and have been for 13 yrs, but am putting prices up from january and to more realistic price, plus ive got work coming too from local music shop.

Aww you guys don't do too badly money wise surely!! (runs and hides behind parapet)

I teach piano nearly full-time, and don't make anything like 39k-I wish!

Unless one does full-time peri work in schools (and that's often only 30-33 weeks per year) most pupils want lessons after school/work and on Saturdays. It would therefore be very difficult to physically fit in 37.5 hours per week-even working every late afternoon/evening and all day Saturday. And you don't get paid for 52 weeks per year-the majority of one's students are children and young people who, much as they enjoy their lessons, want a break from activities during the school holidays. The handful of adults who carry on through the whole of the holidays provide some welcome extra cash, but certainly not a living wage! And even they go away on holiday themselves for a few weeks of the year.

It's impossible to compare freelance teaching income to a 'normal' full-time job-you have to get used to fluctuating income and save during busy times so the summer holidays on next to no income aren't a worry. I'm not knocking it-I used to do a full-time job and earned considerably less money than I do now-and at the end of the day I'm being paid to do something I love-but yes, agreed it is hard work and very intensive compared to other jobs (also hard work) I've donel. To find out what your teacher earns, you'd have to know the pupil numbers, hourly rate and number of weeks each one is taught-and multiply accordingly!

Hope it's a good sturdy parapet....
No, we don't do badly, all in all - if we teach at home, we don't have to waste time and petrol getting to work, we don't have to wear special clothes, and overheads are fairly low. On the minus side, there IS a limit to how much we can do in a week without going barmy, we don't get sick pay (sickness is not allowed) and we don't get holiday pay.

I have never managed to earn 10K. This tax year, I envisage earning 12K before tax. I teach for about 20 hours a week, 39 weeks of the year, and my expenses are quite high because I have to travel.

Also, although the "hours" may seem less than a fulltime job, the actual contact time that the teacher gets paid for is not all they do... the higher hourly rate of pay reflects that the 30 minutes is not just 30 minutes, it's backed up by years of learning, experience, and weekly plans, ideas, and research. Which is another reason why it would be incredibly difficult for a teacher to teach 37+ hours per week effectively, because those 70 odd students would create more than 37 hours' work.

If one lives in a poorer area it is simply not possible to ask the sort of fees that one can in a city. This is a farming area and if I were to charge £20 or more an hour I would be excluding many very able and gifted students, simply becaust their parents could not afford lessons. I often begin work at 3.30 with the tinies who are out of school at 3 oclock and work all through until about 7.30 by which time I am tired. One day a week is spent directing recorder groups etc for which I get no payment, and I usually spend at least a couple of hours a day on my own practice, arranging pieces, composing etc for which I get nothing but satisfaction. One is not in it for the money of course, and it would be possible, in theory, to make a high salary if one worked every evening for about five hours, taught several adults during the day, and worked all of the weekend too. In oractice this is not possible of course, and one never works more than around forty weeks a year.

Hi Folks,

I charge £24 per hour and run over time especially with adults.

Tuesday is my day for ladies and I really enjoy it . We have cups of tea and coffee, and time for a chat which is why I run over a little as my pupils always get their hour's tuition. They all work very hard for me.

Children are £12 for half an hour or the older ones an hour, as suitable. Here in the North West, this seems quite reasonable.

I teach 37/40 weeks and put a percentage away each week from each pupil to cover sickness and holidays. This means that I can have all of August off, two weeks at Christmas, Easter and Whit.'

I never charge for lessons missed unless they just 'don't turn up' but very few let me down and I will always try to accomodate the ones who want to change the time for a birthday or school event.

I do hope that this is helpful, by the way I teach piano, great fun

Your lessons sound fab Lesley! I'd have you as my teacher if mine wasn't brilliant

If teaching were like working in a regular 9 to 5.30 job and I taught for 37.5 hours a week I'd go nuts!! I don't earn anywhere near your suggested income target and I teach in an area considered to be crammed full of extremely wealthy people - in fact most of them are just swimming in debt so deep they may never manage to pay off. The reality of teaching privately means that lessons invariably run over their allotted times and additionally I need time within the week to reflect on what each student has done (or not, in some cases) and to think about where they need to be heading next.

A lot of private teachers also have freelance committments or are indeed permanent members of an ensemble - work which doesn't always pay particularly well, but frequently involves long hours - so there are occasions where this clashes with teaching and one or the other has to be waived for that particular day. I try to put my students first, but sometimes a signed contract doesn't allow me to make that choice.