Hi there.

I am aiming to become a guitar teacher. However I am in full time employment at present.

Does anybody know if there are any part-time music teaching courses? I.E. a course that can be studying in the evening from home?

I gather there was a distance learning course with Trinity College bit that they suspended it altogether.

Can anybody advise?

Thanks.

The AB's own certificate of teaching course - the CTABRSM. You can do it in your spare time and when I did it plenty of the participants had full-time jobs as well. It's a brilliant course and I thoroughly recommend it.

Sounds great but there's one problem.

I checked the ABRSM web site - the course requires that you teach for at least one year prior to starting the course.

Is this essential???

In a word, yes, as that experience will be your starting point for your development. Once you've done some 'helping learners learn' ('teaching'), the course will relate to those experiences, and will be efficient use of your time.

To take an analogy, reading books about learning about computers is useless without first having played around with a computer to get an idea of how they work. Teaching is the same.

I'd certainly recommend the CT course wholeheartedly.

There's another course you can do before the CT course, for which you may not need any pupils. I think it's called 'An Introduction to Teaching Music' or something like that. Could be the right thing for you...