To ask how much you pay/paid for a tutor?

[Sparklfairy]

A friend of mine is looking for a tutor for her DC, She has found one she likes the sound of but was moaning to me about how expensive she is.

Obviously its not the same, but I used to be a self employed cleaner, and occasionally you would get people acting all shocked at my hourly rate and try and haggle me down. Its not like I was or this tutor will be laughing all the way to the bank, and the tutor has more work to do than just turning up for the hour. I also think that with any service, if you get the results you want then its good value, rather than going cheaper and being dissatisfied.

So its touched a nerve, and I can't be an objective friend if you have or have had a tutor, how much did you pay? We're in the SE.

I tutor.
I do 11+ and I am SW.

I charge £30, but always have a waiting list. I could charge more, but I am happy that this is a fair price for my area.

the thing is, for 1:1 tutoring, one hour's worth of teaching can take a lot of prep time. One reason that I do 11+ is that I have so much material already prepared now, that it is really time efficiant for me.

I'm in the North West. I charge £25 an hour. I don't do A level. I don't travel. They come to me or it's online. If it takes the tutor an hour to prep one lesson then they don't have enough experience. I have a bank of resources on hand that I can tweak and it's not unusual for a student to say we did X in school today and I didn't get it can we do that instead?

In SE I have paid £25-45 an hour.

I'm happy to pay a premium for 1 to 1 tuition.

I paid £30 an hour 6 years ago for maths GCSE. It was worth it as DD's grades went up from a B to an A*.

Online primary tutor in maths and english, £38, which is slightly above the going rate around here, but she is awesome.

Other ads on the site included a teaching assistant with spelling mistakes in her advert for £20/hr, or a headteacher for £70/hr.

@fiftiesmum

It's not just the tutoring time - each lesson takes at least an hour to plan and prepare for plus chasing student to find out what topic they need help with, timetabling, rearranging plus travel time, petrol, parking, business insurance plus the cost of books which the exam boards seem to change in a yearly basis (one set for each of the for exam boards - each board is very specific in their requirements).

That's a really good point about the cost of resources. I worked with a student this year where to offer a decent service I had to buy a textbook and pay for an online resource - I have the subject knowledge of course, but different specs will have very different requirements. That cost about £100 and although you can claim back against tax, it will still be a significant expense, potentially different with each student (thought I do hope to use this one again :)

I don't agree about someone lacks experience if it takes them an hour to plan a lesson. I was using that as a rough guide anyway. If I am very familiar with the spec then I can plan a lesson in 10-15 minutes. But there is GCSE, iGCSE, different boards within those and different requirements which need to be thought about.

I am a GCSE tutor and charge £30ph in the South East. I think it is a fair price, but I will probably put my prices up in the Summer when I get new students to £35ph as the cost of living has increased and I have more enquiries than I can cover, so there is obviously demand for it.

North West, £30 per hour for 11 plus tutoring a couple of years ago. In person, at our house. Head of year 6 at another local primary. Wouldn't have passed without him. Worth every penny.

@clary
The vast majority of the students I get tend to use the same exam board. The differences between the exam boards for my subjects tend to be the style of question rather than actual content. I teach languages and the vast majority of students need practise with either speaking or grammar. For my area the £25 that I charge is about the going rate. If it took me an hour to plan I would have to charge considerably more and would therefore be pricing myself out of the local market. For after school slots, covid aside, I'm usually fully booked. I don't imagine this would be the case if I was charging, say, £40.

@Cosyblankets that's great, works well for you. In the last 18 months I have worked with students taking AQA A level, Edexcel A level (they are pretty similar tbf), AQA GCSE, Edexcel GCSE, Edexcel iGCSE, Cambridge iGCSE; yes the grammar and speaking are similar (though not the same, and the format and mark schemes for the Cambridge iGCSE, for example, have changed a good deal in the last year) but the skills needed are not. No point working on translation skills if a student won't be asked to translate in the exam they do.

I guess we have different experiences and that's fine of course. I don't always spend an hour planning every lesson, but for A level it can take a fair bit of time, especially if we are looking at the literature elements. I totally agree tho, it is important not to overcharge and then not be affordable for people. I enjoy doing it and am happy to spend time on it so it's money for fun as far as I am concerned :)

We pay £20 per hour for 11+ exam preparation. It's 1:1 online, and I prefer it to teacher / us travelling.

@clary
That's why I don't do A level. I have 27 years of experience but none of them at A level and I don't think it would be fair to charge the parents when I don't really know what a typical grade would look like.
I teach a lot of adults who want conversation and I love it when they come back from holidays and tell me how much better they did.
I'm very wary of a lot of these agencies who make a point of using the word tutor rather than teacher though. They're full of uni students who don't actually have teaching experience

Central Scotland an hour once a week for National 5 , £20 via zoom

£19ph for key stage 3 maths
£16ph for English
£15ph for Spanish
All one on one and online. I'm a qualified secondary school teacher and have sat next to DD for a few lessons to make sure her tutors are good, and they are.

I looked at a lot of tutors online. I'm in the Southeast too. I found a really good one via a recommended tutor directory website earlier this year as well. She does one weekly one hour long lesson via Zoom in French. This includes all of the homework which is sent too via email etc. I pay her half the price, my mom pays the rest however. I recommend her truly in addition to anyone.

I'm impressed with her honestly.

In New York I paid $80ph for a year 11 maths tutor who came to the house. When the kids were preparing for standardized uni admissions tests (called the SAT here) we used an online service for one on one tutoring and that was about the same.

Thanks very much!

North West Surrey, primary level, we pay £30 for 50 mins and she's amazing

£30/hr. KS2. This is now. South west. She has a waiting list.

I tutor (I'm a finak year undergraduate so bear that in mind), of the £20 an hour my agency charges the parent I see £11, so do remember that any tutors booked through an agency don't see as much money as the agency charges.

I charged £45 for A’level per hour and £35 for GCSE. I added £5 on to each of these if I had to drive to my student. (SE)

South West independent tutor here. I charge £35 ph for a home visit within my (very) local area and £32 ph for a session in my own home or online. Current tutees range from Year 2 to Year 11, including 11+ prep and SEND support. Fully booked with a waiting list and have tutored several sets of up to three siblings individually over the years. I am well overdue for a fee increase! You have to factor in the time spent prepping, the time and expense of travel, and the cost of resources, subscriptions, and professional fees. My chiropractor charges £36 for 10 minutes! If I lived in the South East I would definitely be charging £45 - £50 ph minimum.

@DrPeppersPhD

I tutor (I'm a finak year undergraduate so bear that in mind), of the £20 an hour my agency charges the parent I see £11, so do remember that any tutors booked through an agency don't see as much money as the agency charges.

This is why I refuse to work for an agency.

North west, qualified teacher. I charge £20 for primary and KS3. £30 for GCSE and £35 for A level. I usually have a waiting list and I either have people come to me or work online. As a general rule I don’t travel but for someone likely to be long term, I make an exception.