I came up with the idea of opening a thread on this subject in another thread:

If there are any music teachers or musicians out there who are on a low budget, I can really only suggest that you look into claiming Working Tax Credit. If you are working at least 30 hours a week (or even 16 in certain cases), you might actually get something.

My partner and I felt quite reluctant to do this for a while (admitting that your income isn't massive is still a taboo for many people), but both being self-employed and not always having a stable monthly income, the pressure simply was on at some point. After we got the okay, we were actually quite angry with ourselves that we didn't try it earlier.

Some people who are self-employed, including myself, find it difficult to actually estimate their working hours. But I had a talk about this with my local Citizen's Advice, and in the case of a music teacher, the working hours are not only "contact hours" with your students. The preparation that goes into your lessons, administration/marketing, gigs or concerts you might do - that's all working time. See it merely as your "office hours", you might actually be surprised how many hours a week you actually spend working.

This is of course not only valid for teachers, but also for performers ...

Edit: I'll also post this link here:
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBen...edits/DG_073802

I don't quite understand how this could work. If you teach for, say, 22 hours a week and also do 8-10 hours admin/preparation (which seems a little disproportionate) to make up your 30 hours' work, even if you only charge £20 per hour for instrumental tuition (which is a very low rate) and only work for 30 weeks of the year, you would still earn too much to qualify.

I can't remember what happened, but I tried to apply for this last year and got turned down; I don't earn that much at all to be honest but I think that because my fiance earns a full time wage I didn't qualify for anything.

I'm thinking of changing careers anyway; as much as I love teaching I can't live on it. Hence my MA studies and hoping I can get into something else soon.

Yes this was the same as me and my boyfriend. He works full time so we earn enough to not qualify. Also on your last point, one of my friends currently works for the local music service and I was under the impression she works almost full time. She is currently applying to do a PGCE as she feels she'll earn more money as a classroom teacher than teaching instruments. I think it's a real shame as she's a good teacher, but she clearly doesn't earn as much from it as I thought.

Lucid

Sorry if this sounds critical, but it seems a bit odd to invest all that time and money in an MA in Music Education and then immediately give up teaching.

Perhaps I'm being naive, or just plain stupid, but I don't see why people can't make a living through teaching, unless perhaps they only teach an obscure instrument or live in the middle of nowhere where pupils are hard to come by. Even chosing fairly conservative figures of charging £26 an hour, working for 30 hours a week for only 33 weeks of the year earns you well over £25K. Surely that's not impossible to live on? And that's without earning a single penny for the remaining 19 weeks!

And if you're charging £17.50 per half an hour (just to pick a figure out of the air, ahem...) you only have to work 30 hours a week for 30 weeks of the year to earn £31.5K.

No more than anyone else in the UK who earns £25-30K.

I don't know much about all of these benefits really but I know you can claim Jobseekers' Allowance and council tax benefit when you are self employed as I unfortunately had to. When me and my boyfriend first graduated from uni we found it really hard to get a job so had to go on to Jobseekers' Allowance for a little while. I was put in touch with the Princes Trust who would have given me a small loan to help start up teaching, mostly for advertising and to buy books etc. I decided in the end not to go with it because it seemed pointless taking out a loan to start up in my circumstances. I managed to get a couple of students but was still able to claim some Jobseekers, and my boyfriend eventually found a job, with no help from the Job Centre, and when that time came we both signed off. It's something we both hated doing as, despite applying for a lot of jobs through the Job Centre, we never heard back from one - they didn't even bother sending a letter to say no - and it really made us feel like we were getting money for doing nothing, which we didn't like at all. It was also getting to the point where the Job Centre were going to send us on a week long course, some distance away from us, to do things like CV writing. We did struggle a bit but I eventually got my part time job and student numbers gradually increased. We've never had to claim a single benefit since.

Lucid

No more than anyone else in the UK who earns £25-30K. As far as I'm aware self-employed people don't pay a higher rate of tax.

I guess if you are able to do that then that's really good. I imagine a lot of teachers who only work privately don't necessarily have enough students to fill 30 hours a week, or can't work the right patterns to get those hours in. I guess if you work in schools during the day for most weekdays as well as teach privately then you would be making a decent living out of it.

I always imagine it's the piano, vocal and guitar teachers who have the highest student numbers, although could be wrong. I can just imagine they are the most popular instruments.



No we don't pay a higher rate of tax or NI, but I guess when you factor in that we don't get holiday and sickness pay then we do in effect have the potential to get paid less than salaried people.

Lucid

Well I can assure you you can! I'm including school and music centre teaching (as my original point didn't specify private teaching) and yes, I do teach piano, but I teach about 32 hours a week and the most I've ever done in the way of advertising is to sign up to musicteachers.co.uk. I still have plenty of time for admin (not to mention an MA) and only work about 36 weeks of the year.


Obviously freelancers risk losing money if they are ill, but employees don't get holiday pay in addition to their salary, it's just that their income is paid out more evenly. A salary of £30K is still a salary of £30K whether it comes in one big lump or 12 monthly installments.

Czerny, I think you're very lucky to work that much. The only way most of us can work 32 hours a week is to have a fair amount of school teaching, which is not always particularly easy to get. It depends on where you live, how much demand there is for your instrument, how many other teachers are in your area who are more established than you etc etc. 32 hours is over 6 hours a day, and it's pretty hard to fit that in when you're only doing after-school / evening teaching slots.

That's really good to hear that some people are able to make a proper career out of music teaching. My old teacher used to work full time for the music services, so I know it is possible. Also Czerny I hope it didn't seem as though I was being sarcastic in my previous post. I genuinely meant it's great if you are able to work full time just teaching.

Unfortunately I went down the wanting to teach in schools route and failed. I had an interview with the music services when I left uni and didn't get the job - it would have been a flexible response scheme. I was really upset at the time as their excuse was that without a PGCE I wasn't experienced enough. What they didn't know/realise was that two of the people who did get offered the job were my friends from my music degree who also didn't hold a PGCE. However I'm now pleased that I didn't get a job through them as one of the friends who got offered the job is now going for a PGCE for classroom teaching as the income is not secure enough. Also my old teacher did a bit of work with them for a little while and left over a year ago as they were so demanding with travel expectations. I did try writing to local schools to see if they were in need of a teacher but got nowhere with that. I know one of my other friends also had the same experience. Obviously if you are lucky enough to get in the door with these teaching positions then it's good, but it's not as easy as just wanting to do it.

I've recently resigned myself to having to work in an office part time and teach privately. In some ways this is better as my part time job are very flexible with my working hours. They understand that I do things like grade exam accompaniment and often let me go off to do the exams without having to make up the hours - this wouldn't happen if I was working in a school. I would also find practising impossible if I was working full time during the day. I currently live in a flat so can only practise during the day. As someone who occasionally plays for a living as well then I need to practise. Finally we have a dog and there's no way we can leave him on his own all day, even if we got a dog walker to come and take him out. Obviously that's our own choice having a dog, but again working in schools wouldn't work well in this situation. So there are my reasons (excuses ) as to why I'm a struggling music teacher who can't earn a decent living. I'm actually quite happy with what I'm doing now, although am considering going for a pay rise in my office job as I found out recently (from the annual accounts) that my colleague in my department earns a substantial amount more than me. Not sure how well it will go down at the moment but I think I deserve to get paid more of a professional wage, especially now I've got more experience. I also want to get into more playing work, and am thinking of trying to team up with my old teacher to offer wedding work etc.

Also Czerny, I see what you're saying about the illness and holiday pay and I know holiday pay is worked in to employees' salaries. With me, if I take holiday from teaching it costs me a week or two's earnings which I guess seems like a lot to me as I don't earn a lot.

Lucid

I don't earn anywhere near what I should unfortunately. I teach at 2 schools for half a day each and have only 7 pupils at the moment, unfortunately a lot have left because they can't afford lessons with the credit crunch. I am working about 10 hours at the moment, nowhere near enough. And Piano is my second instrument, Recorder is my first, and there is just not enough interest in it (I'm writing my Dissertation about it in fact). I do feel sad about leaving private teaching eventually, but I just cannot survive, seriously. Last year I only earned about 6k and this year it will be less with losses. I have thought long and hard and I just cant see how I can make it work, I can't actually afford to do this much longer. I have looked back at my registers for the year since September, and can't believe how many parents have cancelled lessons or missed them - this means of course that I lose money. I also have to use public transport to get everywhere as I don't drive. And I certainly don't have a full teaching timetable!

I love my MA so far and I still want to work in Music Ed but not in teaching. I can't see myself being a classroom teacher, I just don't have the confidence. I want to be a peripatetic teacher but I have to be realistic about my options. I have spoken to the staff on my MA and they have given me other suggestions, like working in Music Education research. But no matter what way I look at it, and no matter how sad I feel about it, I can't make a living out of private teaching. It's a combination of instruments, finances and prospects I think and I just have to be realistic.

There is no way I am giving up Music, or Education, but I will have to come back to private teaching later, or when I can find an opportunity that suits me.

I work pretty much full-time for a music service & there always seems to be plenty of work. Of course, piano is always popular, but I have colleagues teaching a wide variety of instruments, even in some of my primary schools. We also work at music schools in the evenings & at weekends & I have some private pupils (+ many enquiries). It seems to me that location is an important factor - in this area I know very many people making a full-time career of instrumental/vocal teaching.

Then I might remind you that Working Tax Credit is not calculated on your gross income, so if you take all expenditure off if you are self-employed, this is very well possible. Again, self-employed people cannot always be compared with employed - the chunk that is taken off our gross income might be considerably higher than that of an employed person since it does not only incorporate tax and NI, but also business expenses. Your calculations are a bit obscure, since teaching 30 lessons a week, no matter at what fee, does not give you an income of 30 x (£...) x (xyz weeks) - you forgot to take business expense, tax and NI off. The claim for tax credit is post-tax, not pre ...

If you set up a new business, you might work like mad and still make a loss.

I cannot help but wonder if there is an underlying assumption here that private music teachers who might think about claiming just don't WANT to work enough. We all don't know the circumstances (and areas!) people live in, if work for the music service or a school is at all available (not in my case for instance, because the local music service does not even offer voice as an instrument), so everyone can and should work out for themselves what is possible or not ...

I know that mortgages are supposed to be more difficult to deal with when you are self employed. When we applied for the mortgage on our flat we earnt enough for the loan amount in our salaried jobs that our mortgage adviser didn't bother including my teaching income as it was such a small amount and not worth the paperwork.

As far as benefits are concerned I think that the self employed are just as entitled to them as employed people. There's probably more paperwork involved to prove earnings etc. but if you are entitled to it then you may as well take it and there should be no shame in it either. I'm sure most people have heard of the Money Saving Expert but I'll post a link to the benefits check up section:

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/protect/benefits-check

Which gives you a link to this site: http://entitledto.co.uk/ where you can check what you're entitled to - if anything.

Lucid

I DO have a lot of school teaching, as I keep saying!! I didn't realise that was being excluded. I started off with one day in a school, and interest has grown to the extent that I'm now there five days a week.


No, I didn't think that.


Sorry, I didn't realise it was worked out on net income. Anyway - I was wildly underestimating with figures like charging £20 an hour.

I wasn't trying to score points, merely saying that it is possible to earn a decent income working as an instrumental teacher. I know this because I do. And I've already said I appreciate it's easier with some instruments and in some locations. I don't think that's particularly contentious...

It is most definitely worth applying for working families tax credit. Don't forget that the figure they work on is after expenses have been deducted - pianotuning, heat and light, expenses for running concerts, buying books, use of mobile phone, contributions to professional organisations, etc and so on. It's not simply the £20 per hour (or whatever you charge) multiplied by the number of lessons you give per year! It's easy to apply, and the worst they can do is say no.

I am fortunate enough to have made a very good career out of teaching both in private schools and at home. I teach about 54 hours a week and have 104 students.

I have no life and am always exhausted, but in such a precarious profession I feel you have to take it when it is there.
I teach the violin, singing and piano. If I did not teach singing I would be a pauper as the demand for the piano and particularly the violin has reduced enormously.

I moved to Devon from Hampshire 6 years ago and was told there would be no work here. It was a worry as I had loads of teaching in Hants and thought I was committing career suicide. I could not believe how quickly the teaching and playing work piled in.

I do spend a lot of time persuading people that they need to settle their fees though!