I was just wondering how lesson costs compare from country to country ( I know you can't really compare because of salaries etc) but for fun can you answer if you live in a different country.

To standardise we'll convert everything to an hour lesson and into UK pounds

So I'll start:

Country : New Zealand
City : Auckland

lesson in a school - not known

lesson with 'normal' piano teacher NZ $ 50 = 20 UK pounds

lesson with top level teacher (ie teaching at a University) NZ $80 = 32 UK pounds


your turn now ................

Okay

UK, decent sized town near Oxford

'Normal' Private clarinet teacher, £28/hour

Lessons in school, I only know my singing rate which is £5.50 for 20 mins in a group of 4 -6. So thats £16.50 each per hour and £66 - £99 per hour for the music service *Gets calculator* That is right...

I know, it is ridiculous! The amount of admin the music service must do is staggering to justify that... I think my clarinet teacher is on the more expensive end for teaching but it does seem to be sort of £23 plus here.

County Down Northern Ireland

I'm a "normal" (ish lol!) private teacher and charge £20 an hour

[Tangent alert]

dcmbarton - I worked out a while ago that we live in neighbouring towns - now I realise we have the same singing teacher. Small world eh?

Anyway - violin / viola teacher in medium sized town, and once a week in biggish city - my rate, depending on school / private pupils varies from £21 to £26 per hour. Private pupils currently on £24 but that's going up to £26 in September. When I go to teachers for myself, it tends to be more than that - up to the £40 of above-mentioned, worth-every-penny singing teacher.

K.

woah. you guy's are in the wrong county/country for value (not for the poor teachers that are getting half as much as they should though!)

Peripetetic teachers in schools, we pay £150 for a minimum of 33 20min lessons (you get them free if you're doing GCSE/AS/A2 music and you usually get about 36 a year)- i don't know how much that actually works out per hour, but think it's about £3 a lesson, so about £9 an hour(?). These are in groups of no more than three, and often groups of 2 or individual. But then, the school will put the other half in, so i guess teachers don't miss out- though it is definately cheaper (does that make it about £18 an hour for the teacher?)

Private teaching- ranges from £20 an hour to £30 depending on teacher- my brother is paying£12 for 45 mins for his private lessons at the moment which i think is very good. I think some may charge more if they have to come to you though for petrol etc.

we also have loads of opportunities like solo days, ensembles and orchestras to join etc. yeah, come visit the North west, all is good up here.

Currently £26 per hour.

Edge of London.

I currently charge £20.00 per hour (North Hampshire) which is probably a bit on the low side for this area. My friend charges the same.

My flute teacher only charges £20 an hour. Really cheap considering how good he is. My violin teacher charges £30 an hour.

My violin teacher, kevin weaver, charges £27 for an hour. I would class him as an expert teacher.

Unlike my last one who forced me to do the music exams and start at grade 3 when I was already grade 4!

Munich, Germany.

Flute teacher with conservertoire studies in performance and teaching and postgrad specialisation in Baroque flute: €40 per hour on a pay-as-you-go basis. That's about 32pounds at today's exchange rate (sorry, no pound symbol on my Swiss keyboard).

Mr Flutecake's piano teacher - concert pianist with additional teaching qualification and tons of postgrad studies: €50 per hour (about 40 pounds) with the same pay-as-you go arrangement.

My flute lessons seem to be around the going rate, although it would be less if I had a contract with a fixed weekly lesson time. If you have lessons through the city music school here it is cheaper, but I don't know how much choice you get about who teaches you, and they make children do two years of music and movement before they let them learn an instument.

I charge £20 an hour in the Blackpool area, outside the boundary (for a home visit) it goes up according to the distance travelled.
My Adult Education classes pay me £20 an hour

A local piano teacher charges £12.50 per half hour per pupil in groups of 4 = £50 per half hour!! Nice!!

Between £26 and £28 per hour in North Lancashire. Worth it, even though it does mean I can't go out for meals/glasses of wine as often as I would like/did before I took up music!

Seaside town in Somerset.
Private singing teachers charging between £25 and £35 per hour or pro rata.

I'm fairly close, geographically, to noodle and ad libitum and am £20 per hour, but most experienced private teachers seem to have recently broken through the £20 barrier. (I feel there's something psychological about over £10 a lesson, but am doing my best to get my head round that in time for September!) Local grammar school instrumental teachers are charging £24 per hour, but I also know several private teachers who are seriously undercutting us all!

Edit: Why is that capital A in front of the pound signs above? I've just edited it out of my own post, wondering where it came from, but I see in the above quotes as well!

Edit: Why is that capital A in front of the pound signs above? I've just edited it out of my own post, wondering where it came from, but I see in the above quotes as well!
[/quote]

I can't see an A!

In south Manchester I charge £28 an hour at home, school rates fixed by them are £24 at one and £22.20 at another.

I pay £30 for violin for one son, £40 for singing but these teachers are the Very Best and worth every penny!

Have just checked my last payslip. I work for the local Cultural Association of a very small town (known locally as « the village ») in south western France.

I was paid 1047 euros before deductions and what I actually received was 862 euros after deductions.

It was calculated that I had worked 68 hours which is about 15 euros before and 12 and a half euros after deductions. The rate of exchange against sterling varies between around 67 and 70 odd pence so you can easily say I sweat for less than £10 per hour after deductions.

I am paid the same rate for all pupils and for groups, no matter how many children in the group. That, of course is where the Association makes up some of its losses. The pupils pay (I think because it changes from year to year ) 15 euros per hour with a decreasing rate for group activities but these activities are not all musical. A family will pay a cheaper rate if they have, for example an inscription for music and another for drawing. There is no decreasing rate for individual lessons. Families also pay a
yearly general inscription to belong to the Association. I think this year it was 25 euros.

At the AGM in February we learnt that that for the current financial year the Association has just broken even. I have put in a request for a new piano and they are going to investigate what subsidies might be available from the local /regional authorities but they aren’t very optimistic.

The Association has no premises of its own and we rely on the local schools and the mairie for rooms.

I am extremely grateful to have this work and for the free hand I have in organising the teaching content but it is work for peanuts. There is high unemployment here and many families come under the heading of what the French government are now being obliged to call “poor workers” . There is an emerging “poor” middle class who really do struggle to give their children musical and other opportunities.

I am often in the position of having to ask parents for more money to enter an AB exam than for a term’s tuition.

By comparison the English rates look much more like what a teacher should be paid but I don’t know anything about UK overheads at the moment so it may not be as rosy as it looks. We used to be able to say the cost of living in France was lower than in England so even if salaries were lower here, there were compensations. This is no longer true.

Yes I think £20 is getting a bit below the average now - around here anyway. Like you though, I know a few kids taking a fiver a lesson and that sort of thing

[quote name='violincjj' date='Apr 1 2008, 09:59 AM' post='683794']
Edit: Why is that capital A in front of the pound signs above? I've just edited it out of my own post, wondering where it came from, but I see in the above quotes as well!
[/quote]

I can't see an A!

[/quote]

It's gone now! And my pound signs have turned into question marks!

North Italy, private lessons are approx 18 Euros/hour....approx 13 pounds. This seems quite cheap, but remember that salaries are lower here than in the UK and I think there's less demand, especially in the countryside.

Lessons in our school are approx 25 Euros/Hour.

But in the big cities, they can easily be double that.

Steve

Country : Japan
City : "greater Tokyo"

Lessons in Japan sound much more reasonable than they did last time somebody asked this question, because the yen/pound exchange rate has changed quite a bit! GBP50 would buy a night's stay and breakfast at a modest hotel or a one-way bullet train trip Tokyo/Osaka, for reference.

lesson in a school - no such animal

60-min lesson with 'normal' piano/theory/solfege teacher JYE4000 = 20 UK pounds
60-min lesson with 'normal' classical guitar teacher roughly JYE4-5000 = 20 to 25 UK pounds
60-min lesson with 'normal' violin teacher JYE5000 = 20 UK pounds (a bit cheaper for early levels)

lesson with top level teacher (ie teaching at a University)
according to the rumor mill , anything from JYE10,000 to 50,000 = GBP 50 to 250!
I'm anticipating that it will cost around 50 GBP per lesson, but possibly up to twice that??? Current teacher has picked out a more advanced teacher, but I'm too scared to ask about fees yet!

At the higher levels, lessons are usually an "extra" in addition to your regular teacher, scheduled at the convenience of the teacher, and no matter what you pay, you could be booted out in 50 minutes or kept for 3 hours, depending on the teacher's attitude.

According to the rumor mill, "pre-audition consultation lessons with university teacher who will be on the examining panel when you have your audition..." JYE100,000 a pop

...next!

When we were in France (89-97) it was much cheaper than the UK, though at that time, the exchange rate was quite advantageous for us. Cost of living is one thing. Quality of life is quite another. I only experienced the area around Lyon and Grenoble, but I had the impression that people had a much better life. Our music school had extremely low rates for poorer families, using the train to get to work was very cheap 'Abonnement de travail', the health service was unbelievably good, parks well kept, no hooligans/vandalism, children were polite, food and wine/booze very cheap, good range of affordable properties for buying or renting, cheap childcare.

I do hope it hasn't all changed!

Steve

South West England. -

My Piano techer charge £5. for an hour. I've been with her for 10 years but yes she charge that for ALL her students.

My clarinet teacher £13 including travelling. I've been with her for a year nearly now. Charges cheaper for pupils who come to her.

I had a piano teacher for £10 for 1/2 hour.
I also had drums, guitar lesson too but I can't remember how much it was sorry. Wasn't more than £15 under 1/2 hour [20 minutes to be exact].

Reading all this, I still cannot believe that my piano teacher charged me £8 for about 50 minutes per week for a good 4 years and never put her rates up.

In France the local music school has a degressive rate for children. My elder daughter costs 176 Euros a year (includes 30 minute trombone lesson, 30 minute cello lesson, 60 minute string orchestra, 90 minutes aural/theory), second daughter pays 156 Euros a year (30 minute piano lesson, 60 minute singing lesson, would be the same price if she did two instruments), third child would be cheaper still and fourth and subsequent are free. As an adult I pay 376 Euros for a year (45 minute oboe lesson plus an hour a fortnight reed-making and/or ensemble).

I don't know how much the teachers are paid but the cost of lessons is subsidised heavily. The teachers have a contract for a certain number of hours and are paid whether they have pupils are not. Their salary also depends on their qualification.

There is definitely a element of that too, and I was the same myself. I started out teaching the children of friends and charged £5 per lesson at the beginning. They recommended me to others, I improved myself, and I gradually raised to fee to the going rate as people became more and more distant. But there are definitely those who continue charging a low rate permanently in order to keep pupils that they wouldn't otherwise be able to get.

I pay £25 per hour for oboe lessons and a friend pays the same for tuba lessons. I think it is only slightly higher than some people are paying in our area, but they're both unusual instruments, and my teacher is great!

My lessons have always worked out at £20 an hour. Although I dont normally do an hour - usually either 30 or 45 minutes (I have a short attention span )

I don't know how much my flute lessons would be in school though as I get them free. I have one of the best teachers in the area though so probably quite a bit.

(I'm in the East of the UK).

At my school its £28 for 40 minutes with a peri...which subsidises the 50 or so music scholars or exhibitioners who pay nothing for them. I think that's £42/hour. That said, most of the teachers are professional orchestral musicians, soloists or teach at a university as well. So the level of teaching is exceptional.

I've been threatened with £150 for 1 hour consultation lesson, but the most I've paid is £100 for officially 1 hour (actually a bit more) with a famous violinist. Turned out to be good value for money.

That's the whole point though, isn't it? At that stage you were both charging much less than the going rate (as I did, too) because you had little experience and were still learning the job. So in fact the parents were getting what they paid for. That's not to say, of course, that all teachers make the effort to improve their teaching that most people on this forum probably do.

I'm in the North West, and I have to pay £15 for a half hour lesson, which works out as £30 an hour for the teacher.

My school don't contribute to music lessons at all, and don't really put much effort into the music department in general..

I'm jealous

suburb of london - at present 26.00 per hour but thinking of putting it up to 28.00 in September

Germany, state of Brandenburg.

Phew, I'm glad I live here!
I have lessons in the local district music school, which I'm sure has some state and voluntary funding but I don't know at what level. There is a small core of permanent staff who get all the usual employee benefits and the rest are freelancers. All are conservatory trained and most are active performing musicians.

As an adult I pay about 470 euros per year for 30-minute lessons, following normal school terms of about 40 weeks. So that works out as about 19 pounds per hour.
However, I take two instruments so there's a 10% reduction that means I actually pay about 10 euros per half-hour lesson, so a bit over 15 pounds per hour.

The adult fees are 10% higher than for children. There are also reductions for extra family members, or for low income students.

Manchester:
2x lessons in school (cello and clarinet) 25 and 30 mins respectively and both on my own: FREE!!!! and great teachers too!!
Piano outside school (only instrument not offered in school although in yr7,8,9 class music is quite keyboard based) 1.5 hrs is £30 and this time is shared by me and my sister.
I can see we are very lucky, my teacher has a waiting list for piano as there aren't that many teachers!

My violin lessons are £30 per hour and I go to his house(they were £25 per hour last year but my teacher put up the price). If the teacher comes to my house he charges £35 per hour. Lessons in London are getting more and more expensive

Hello! I have just started piano teaching in Buckinghamshire and charge £20 per hour. My children learn with two different teachers (me teaching them hasn't worked out ) and they charge £25 a hour and £16 an hour respectively. The one who charges £16 an hour is better I think. She charges less because she teaches for enjoyment not financial necessity.

[quote name='Dulciana' date='Apr 1 2008, 10:41 AM' post='683814'] [quote name='violincjj' date='Apr 1 2008, 09:59 AM' post='683794']
Edit: Why is that capital A in front of the pound signs above? I've just edited it out of my own post, wondering where it came from, but I see in the above quotes as well!
[/quote]

I can't see an A!

[/quote]

It's gone now! And my pound signs have turned into question marks! [/quote]

That happens to me sometimes!

Is there a standard piano fee list for we teachers to refer to? Else how do we know if we are charging piano fees accordingly?

.

North Yorkshire:

Private lessons (my sax / son's piano - have same teacher for both): £25 per hour plus £2.50 travel costs

Lessons via music service in schools:
- son no.1's trumpet (individual lesson) - £119 per term for 10 lessons of 20 mins: works out at around £35-£36 per hour, I think.
- son no.2's keyboard (group lesson) - £59 per term for 10 lessons of 20 mins: around £17-£18 per hour (but teacher has min of 2 pupils in the class).

I don't grudge the extra for the music service since I think having the facility in schools opens up the possibility of music to kids whose parents might not otherwise have the knowledge / gumption / drive to organise finding a private teacher, but it's not cheap...

I'm a professional pianist and piano teacher and charge £60 per hour regardless of whether it is a 5 year old having a first lesson, a teacher coming for a consultation session or a professional music student. I live in a market town in the home counties.

private piano teacher north west london 30.00 per hour.
I have a post graduate degree in music.

Just an observation - this thread has just been randomly restarted and a lot of the posts that are being quoted are actually from 18 months ago. People may not be drawing fair comparisons as some of the people who contributed to the original thread may well have had increases in their charges.

It would be interesting to know though how many of the charges given 18 months ago are still the same now.

A comparison between different countries is difficult because the exchange rate in the last 18 months has changed so much.

The Euro is much stronger now so everything from the UK looks cheaper than it did.

A lesson in our municipal music school is approx 25 Euros which would have been about 17 pounds.

But now, 25 Euros is approx 22 pounds.

Nobody around here can charge much more than this because people just don't have that money to spend, instruments are expensive and to be honest, the teaching seems to be quite old fashioned compared to the UK so I imagine there's a high drop out rate.

Steve

I just wondered, how often do most people increase their fees? My ex-piano teacher, who probably has about 25+ years experience and is (multi!)conservatoire trained says she increases hers by £2 every two years. I think she's probably charging around £36 now, but she does live in an affluent area. She always reduced her rates for me, though, because I was a 17/18/19-year old student and funding the lessons with my wages from working in a supermarket!

I currently charge £20 per hour, and I think I'm going to increase to £22 as of 2010. My last increase was in Sept 2007. I feel I can justify it because during the period since 2007 I have had experience in four different schools, and (fingers crossed) will hopefully have a Dip. ABRSM soon. Plus, I've been practising piano like crazy, unearthing new repertoire (which I think makes me a stronger teacher), gigging, writing music, and generally making an effort to learn and develop. I believe my students value the work I do and are generally each in a reasonable financial position. Do you think I'm using the right kind of criteria to justify my increase?

Exchange rates have changed a bit, but this year prices were:
60-min lesson with 'university prep' theory/composition teacher JYE7000 = 48 UK pounds
This is very reasonable, could easily be 30-100% more

60-minute lesson with 'university prep' piano teacher JYE 5000 = about 35 UK pounds (discounted as piano not main study, and usually actually 30 mins tacked onto end of composition lesson)

60-minute lesson with "university prep" solfege and voice teacher = about JYE 2,500-3,000 = about 16-18 pounds?
Positively charity rates in this industry - teacher states clearly that he earns his living through his main teaching job, and his private students are his to pick and choose, so he charges without reference to normal rates.

60-min lesson with 'normal' classical guitar teacher roughly JYE4-5000 = at current rate 30-35 UK pounds
About average.

60-min lesson with 'abnormal' violin teacher JYE5000 = at current rate 35 UK pounds
Wide variation, from about 20 pounds to over 100 pounds per lesson depending on student level, purpose, status of teacher etc. At higher levels you are paying for "invisibles" like the teacher's "pull" in the music world.

Most places here have municipal music schools and there are usually public "official conservatoires" for an area.

The fees are annual and independent of age and

beginners no instruments, 2 hours a week "musical language classes" = 220 per annum
elementary levels 1, 30" instrument one to one plus 2 hors music lang = 500 pa
intermediates 45" instrument 1-to-1, hrs music lang + orchestra = 840 pa


If you go the conservatory route fees go up from 1300/pa in first (usually at 12 years) to about 1850/pa (usually about 18years) in the last but there you are
getting

60 - 90 minutes of main instrument one-to-one
30 min piano or 2nd instrument
2-3 hours orchestra
30 minutes repertoire with piano
60 min chamber music
plus
2 hours/pw of harmony or analysis and/or music history

In New York, lesson fees vary among instruments. Voice lessons are the most expensive, with average teachers charging $60-90/hour and top-tier teachers charging $100-130/hour.

Piano and violin lessons $50+/hour, but again, top-tier teachers would charge $100+/hour.

£42 for 4 x 30 min piano lessons, and he comes to my house. Bargain or what?

And he's good!

I wonder why that should be?