What should a freelance teacher charge?

[pennylaneee]

I would appreciate some help as I am an experienced teacher who is starting out as a freelance (self-employed) teacher offering services in Key Stage 2 interventions in a number of specialist subjects.

I have been approached by a few schools who are interested but they would like me to give them some prices so they can consider what they would like to ask for. How much would be a reasonable amount to charge to lead an intervention group?

From research, most local schools pay rates for 1:1 services of about £36 per hour or £7 per hour for small groups. I was thinking of setting an initial charge of around £20 per hour for all services as I don't want to out price myself by pitching too high.

Any comments or suggestions would be welcome.

Speak to supply agency and find out how much they pay per hour and use that as basis?

As supply teacher I get paid £130 per day - would recommend that you don't charge per hour but per day?

And he 'working day' is 5h20m.

Thanks.
I'm not sure if I can charge per day though, as the nature of the intervention groups would probably mean the schools might offer afternoon/ morning slots but not whole days.

I agree with going with a daily rate. Try offering your last salary point as equivilent daily rate eg if you were point 11 or ups2 Google the daily rate.
All of my supply schools often employ me for an afternoon or a morning and the office staff tell me what percentage eg at one school am is .65 and the pm is .35.

I am the equivilent of a freelance supply teacher and the daily rate equates to my last pay level. Agencies are not having any of my money!

That's really helpful storynanny. So if they only wanted me to do an intervention group in the afternoon, they would only pay me a certain percentage of my daily rate.

I am hoping to advertise to other schools in the future and may extend to offering clubs etc. so should I just state my daily rate when I approach them or should I try and work out the percentages for the mornings or afternoons?

You could charge a daily rate - taking as an example the £130 suggested above (I'm not a teacher so can't comment on that!) but if you think that you are likely to be booked for smaller amounts of time then make sure you up your rate a bit for smaller time amounts, to take into account extra travelling costs you'll incur if you go to more than one school in a day for example.

So for example - charge £130 for a day, but £80 for a morning and £70 for an afternoon or £50 for a half morning or £40 for a half afternoon.

I've done other freelance work and have been caught out when a client wants some work spread over 4 half days instead of 2 days - was happy to do it but as travel expenses hadn't been included and I was getting the train it meant I had two extra train fares to pay for, plus four extra journeys in time and I wasn't getting any extra money. Unfortunately I was caught on the hop and not in a position to negotiate but as soon as somebody mentions half days now, I know to mention my half day rate to cover the extra time and costs involved!

If you're running extra sessions that you're doing preparation for before the sessions then you probably also ought to factor that in too. Once you've got some regular schools and regular sessions, you can offer them a discount - say if you're running the same session 3 times over then don't always charge a prep fee but it gives you the opportunity to give discounts later without changing your base fee (which apparently is a bad thing from what I've been told by lots of people!)

Yes that is correct. However, it is not happening in every county. Teachers new to supply in some counties are being offered a lower daily rate, but probably still more than through an agency.
Apparently as freelance, supply etc we enter a new "contract" on each visit and therefore under new pay and conditions schools are no longer required to match previous salary. Fortunately at the moment, my schools are honouring my daily rate from before the change in pay and conditions.
Each school has a slightly different number of minutes for each am and pm session so I would leave it to the office to work it out. They can do that easily from your annual salary.

Agencies add on extra for oncosts (national insurance etc) and profit - £185-190 in London per day

£20 ph for a teacher is too low

Would expect £30-35 ph including planning and prep

Be warned that unless you are working in several schools and have publicity material, you might find it hard to convince schools they can pay you outside of PAYE.

You won't be covered by their liability insurance either, you will need to take out your own

1:1 tutoring is paid at £25 per hour in my school.

I pay £16 per half hour for individual piano lessons.

Check out the DBS situation too. I'm not sure whether you would need a new one for each school you go into, or whether you can have a blanket one.

You need to factor in your resources, insurance, pension, travelling costs, no sick pay, no pay in holiday time, CPD costs and any accountancy fees.

Add those costs to the annual wage that you would get if you were in school. That will give you an idea of an annual 'figure.'

Divide that by 39 (39 teaching weeks in a year)
Divide that by 5 for a daily rate.

£20 per hour is far too low for a qualified, experienced teacher.