How to find teachers who want to tutor

[millefiore]

A friend of mine runs a tutoring company in London, typically employing grad students to work for her but is finding it difficult to retain the tutors as they all eventually get full-time jobs, often at a moment's notice. We have been brainstorming over coffee to come up with ideas of where to find fully-qualified teachers who may want to do some tutoring as she feels that they will be more reliable. She is happy to have teachers looking to supplement their income, retired teachers, teachers taking a break or even those in the midst of teacher training.

Can anyone suggest where she could start looking? She has thought of advertising in TES - too expensive and has tried putting an ad at a university with a PGCE programme - no response. She would be very grateful for any suggestions.

Most teachers won't tutor because of all the tax and insurance implications - that and having no time.

When I retire, or start dropping my hours, I might consider tutoring, but if I did, I would operate on a private basis to families I already know.

Good tutors don't need to register with agencies as their reputation precedes them. If you are serious about getting proper teachers on your books then you and your colleague will have to bite the bullet and advertise in an actual teaching publication - the TES - even though you don't want to pay for it.

Anyone who is teaching full time won't have time to tutor. The majority of people who are part time have chosen to do part time for a reason ie children, aged parents etc etc and so are unlikely to have time to tutor. During my PGCE I certainly didn't have any spare time to tutor at all. Having said all that, there may well be some teachers out there who want to supplement supply work or have had a change in circumstances so they now have more time, so it's worth a shot. I have no idea where jobs in London schools are advertised. On the BucksCC jobs pages there are sometimes out of county/not in school jobs - there's been one for someone to run cookery lessons for an after school club recently - so they obviously take external adverts. Maybe wherever the London jobs are advertised does the same? What about The Guardian? They have plenty of education job adverts too. Again no idea of cost. The green sheets (schoolvacancies.co.uk) does lots of places west of London, but too far out for what you are looking for. Might there be something similar in the area you're looking at? What about publications like The Metro? Gumtree? But I'm really not convinced that there are many teachers out there who have the time to tutor. And I agree - if I did have the time/interest, I'm sure I could find enough tutees easily enough through my own contacts.

Has she checked out her competition? There are good websites out there already which act as an advertising tool for tutors that are full of teachers (and don't charge the tutor/teacher).

Full time teachers don't have the time. You should aim your adverts at the teachers who are about to step out of classroom teaching but still love the actual teaching part of the job. There are loads that fit this description.

So advertise in the TES, local papers, the Metro etc.

I'm a tutor. There is a company that I am able to go through and they pay me but it's a pain so I just go direct. No deductions that way. I looked into running an agency but the profit margins aren't in it tbh

Thank you all for your advice. I will pass it on to her and encourage her to look at advertising in TES.

difficult to retain the tutors
Everyone I know who does tutoring (as I did!) joined an agency initially to get referrals from happy customers, but with the intention of only staying long enough to build up their own direct business via word-of-mouth.
That's the game - the agencies use the teachers, the teachers use the agencies, and so it goes around. No-one good will stay - so she need to keep getting in new ones and just accept the attrition.

I have teaching friends who are constantly being approached to tutor. No working teacher has time for that.

For a good tutor it is very easy to build up a business by word of mouth. There is no need to join an agency (or to advertise!). Sorry, but that's the truth.

A graduate/uni student would need an agency to find them work as they won't have the same social network - stick to them