Is anyone working as an online tutor?

[LapsedTutor]

I retired from teaching /tutoring around 10 years ago but I'm thinking of doing a small amount of online tutoring. I've masses of experience because for 15 years I worked solely as a tutor based at home. I had a waiting list but I stopped for family reasons.

I'm an English/ Literacy specialist and tutored to GCSE including adults. I've tutored KS3 too and Common Entrance.

Where do I go now? Do I advertise myself or join an agency and if so, which?

It's just a thought at the moment and not sure I will do it, but any thoughts welcome.

I tutor as my main job and am almost completely online. I tutor every evening and Saturdays online in term time but run in person mock exams etc in the school holidays.

I've never used an agency really except for some alternative provision work during the school day. All my work comes from local ads and words of mouth.

Happy to answer any questions. All you really need is a laptop/computer, decent internet and possibly a graphics tablet to write on the screen. I use various bits of software but it depends what you want to teach as to what is useful.

I'm working as a speed awareness trainer, delivering online courses. Bit different to tutoring. It's probably not as lucrative as tutoring but it's very flexible and you're not stuck with school holidays, not sure if that's something you're interested in as an alternative.

Im retired so it's a pension top up for me.

That sounds interesting! How do you get into that?

The best part of not working in schools and being self employed is being able to go on holiday whenever you want. I'm away currently and it's so lovely and quiet! Far fewer school aged children... I sometimes take my laptop away with us and sometimes just take the time off. I love the flexibility, even for simple things like being able to book dental appointments or take the car in for its MOT as and when needed, instead of saving errands up for the school holidays.

Yes I tutor online but only 2 evenings a week. I’m looking to cut down to one after half term. There is a big demand for core subjects so I don’t think you’d struggle to find students. I do a mixture of agency and private clients.

I'm doing it with a company called TTC. You need to have some training or teaching qualification. I applied via their website back in February but because I wasn't leaving my teaching job until July I had to wait for my interview.
So I had an interview via zoom in June, had to do a 10 minute micro teach on any subject and then a brief very informal interview. I was offered the role there and then.
It's a freelance/self employed role so you don't get holiday pay or sickness pay but you can do a much or as little as you want. The courses are 3 hours long you can do online or in a classroom. The basic pay is £65.75 for each course. If you do 11-22 a month it rises to £67.75, if you do 23+ it goes to £71.75. Evenings and weekends pay more too. If you do classroom courses I think it's more.
Training was good, seems that lots of teachers, ex police, driving instructors make up their pool of trainers.

We used a tutors online and it is great. The discipline problems are gone and it's just all pleasure. We find our tutors from website that list lots of people with a short bio and a photo. I think the photo and the biography are really important because I assess whether the person's personality would be a good fit for my DC from the photo. I always choose people with teaching experience and ideally experience marking exams. That's what is in the biography.

I think you could get work easily through those sites.

I've been using this one:

We used a tutors online and it is great. The discipline problems are gone and it's just all pleasure. We find our tutors from website that list lots of people with a short bio and a photo. I think the photo and the biography are really important because I assess whether the person's personality would be a good fit for my DC from the photo. I always choose people with teaching experience and ideally experience marking exams. That's what is in the biography.

I think you could get work easily through those sites.

I've been using this one:https://www.firsttutors.com/uk/

You may have some parents who'd be worried choosing a tutor who'd been out of the classroom 10 years - the syllabus & expectations have changed a lot.10 years ago gcses had more coursework plus kids coming through from primary now are expected to have a much stronger grammar knowledge.

A lot of parents are also trying to get their kids off screens and some might not choose online unless it was considerably cheaper than face to face.

Thanks.
Yes fully aware I'd have to do some work before launching myself.
I've had gaps before in my career and can access material to get up to speed.
Grammar not an issue as I taught English to A level and also KS3 and dyslexia trained (long career.)

I've moved fully online this year due to the behaviour of parents who insist on in person tuition. It had become completely unmanageable and was causing me so many problems. I used to tutor from home.

I was worried I'd struggle to fill my spaces but that wasn't the case! I'm full and no longer have to put up with the constant late collections, inconsiderate parking, multiple illnesses being brought into my home and my home feeling like (badly respected) public property.

Online works brilliantly for many many students. If parents are genuinely worried about screen time, then maybe it's time for them to step up to stop the video games and phone scrolling. An hour a week on Zoom, working productively with a tutor is not in the least bit the same as those things!

TBH @utterlyfedup2 they are some of the reasons I stopped, as well as the commitment to be at from 3-6pm every week day, looking presentable and having my house ready for tutoring.

Wear and tear on my house, parking issues, colds and germs, use of my loo (ok- understandable but extra work cleaning it) late pick up etc.

Yes!

Last year was my worst so far for really terrible, irritating parent behavior and really rude, disrespectful children. It's got worse and worse and I've become less and less tolerant.

After 10 years of teaching from home, all the little problems added up to me just needing a break from people coming to my house!

My advice is don't join National Learning Group. They're really bad on sexism racism and any other ism, my friend used to tutor for them and got roasted by parents loads of times through National Learning and they just didn't care. She gave up and they tried to take money from her for training costs supposedly. She's done much better tutoring independently not having the ahency take a masive cut.

It got the point where I had to ask parents not to send their child if they had a cold etc.

I also had a couple of terrible parents who kept me waiting for weeks to pay even though they were invoiced early. I know this isn't applicable to working from home but it really annoyed me and I had to introduce a 'late payment = lessons paused' on invoices. (They paid for half a term in advance.)

I have had an infectious illnesses policy in place since covid, where parents agree (in writing) to not to bring their child to my house if their child has anything infectious at all.

Sadly, many just ignore this and then lie or make up excuses, pretending they've 'misunderstood' or 'forgotten' or 'didn't think it counted or applied to them'. 😡

Last winter, I was unwell almost continuously from end of September until February half term as a result of this.
It has left me with a lasting painful chronic health condition and a complete unwillingness to keep allowing students to come to my house for lessons. I realised I was becoming hyper aware of any coughs, sneezes, 'sniffles' etc and it was making me very anxious. Ridiculous really, but the constant illnesses were meaning I just wasn't enjoying my job or my free time!

I won't be going back to face to face teaching. It's simply not worth the downsides.

I don’t do it myself but I have colleagues that do. They use gostudent I think - there are other platforms though. One teacher earns £800 a month on top of their teaching salary - 3 hours an evening, and up to 6 hours at the weekend. You have to be very strong at time management to do this as you have to also complete the workload with the main teaching job which they seem to finesse!!! If you’ve got a family and young DC then it will be a struggle balancing a full time job too.