Looking to work for a tutoring college but have a few questions. (1 Viewer)

[kami]

Hi everyone, :wave:

I'm looking to tutor sometime in the near future and I was weighing up the pros and cons of working for a private college vs. on my own. To this end I was wondering which centres hire undergraduate students for Advanced and Extension 1&2 English as well as possibly Biology or in my friends case the history subjects? And as students or teachers what do you think of the college/centre that you go to? I've also heard something about placement tests being neccesary before you can tutor at certain colleges, can someone verify/expand upon this?

Thank you in advance to anyone who has taken the time to respond.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I am looking to be the tutor not to recieve tutoring.

 

[A1]

Hi Kami,

I may be able to help you a little bit, as I own a tutoring agency and know a little about private colleges (learning centres).

The advantage for working at either one of these types of service providers is that you will get access to students, and potentially even resources. You will get guidelines and perhaps even some training. Basically, all you do is teach and the rest will be arranged for you.
The downside is that you may have to work within certain guidelines. This may or may not impinge on your personal creativity and desires.
Working for yourself allows you much more scope. You are your own boss. You can charge whatever rate you want, teach where, when and how you want. You don't have to answer to anyone else. However, you take full responsibility for your actions.
The drawback is costs. If you want a serious number of students you will have to find them. This may mean taking the time and effort to create and print ads. Doing it yourself, will probably not give you much of a return in terms of student numbers. Therefore, you will need to pay for advertising. Local newspaper ads are a good idea, but there is a bit of competition there too. You may need to pay to get lots of ads printed and have them distributed on a larger scale. In fact there are heaps of ways to advertise, but if you want good exposure, it will usually mean costs.
If you don't want to risk the expenses, and want regular work without hassles, join an organisation. Otherwise, do it yourself.
In regards to tests and the like, I don't know, so I won't comment on this area.

 

[chinesefireball]

Try www.tutoringforexcellence.com.au - they accept fist year uni students

Not at all sure what they are like though

 

[kami]

Thanks for that A1 and chinesefireball.

 

[Riviet]

kami - check out Prior Education Australia, I'm currently going to there as a student, and the pay is really good, and they are accepting all HSC graduates. All you need to do is enquire/apply from their main site here. The only course that they have which you would be interested in is probably just Advanced English. I've been told that if you are accepted, you will be invited for an interview with either Rob or Murray, and you will need to do a practice lesson to a class of tutors already teaching at the college to show you can teach a class.

Rob's a really nice guy too, and he's always willing to have a chat or negotiate and talk about things.

Good luck, if you decide to apply!

 

[Dreamerish*~]

kami - check out Prior Education Australia, I'm currently going to there as a student, and the pay is really good, and they are accepting all HSC graduates. All you need to do is enquire/apply from their main site here. The only course that they have which you would be interested in is probably just Advanced English. I've been told that if you are accepted, you will be invited for an interview with either Rob or Murray, and you will need to do a practice lesson to a class of tutors already teaching at the college to show you can teach a class.

Rob's a really nice guy too, and he's always willing to have a chat or negotiate and talk about things.

Good luck, if you decide to apply!

Apparently my friend had an interview there and it didn't go to well. She was a student as well, and her teacher told her that the personal questions bit of the form wasn't that important. She finished her test with little time to fill out the rest so she wrote very brief answers for the personal survey. When she was in the interview with (I think it was) Rob, he said something like "Don't you think you're a bit arrogant? Think you're too good to fill the application form properly?". My friend was quite frightened.

 

[wanton-wonton]

kami - check out Prior Education Australia, I'm currently going to there as a student, and the pay is really good, and they are accepting all HSC graduates. All you need to do is enquire/apply from their main site here. The only course that they have which you would be interested in is probably just Advanced English. I've been told that if you are accepted, you will be invited for an interview with either Rob or Murray, and you will need to do a practice lesson to a class of tutors already teaching at the college to show you can teach a class.

Rob's a really nice guy too, and he's always willing to have a chat or negotiate and talk about things.

Good luck, if you decide to apply!

Oh my god, shut up about Prior. You talk like you're the owner. No wonder I think you're shit.

 

[xeuyrawp]

My friend was quite frightened.

Sounds like really good tutor material to me.

In terms of tutoring, which I totally wound-down last year, and probably won't continue this year, I got all of the students through contacts.

I got a few off this website, a few through advertising at the school I went to (it always pays to be the TP), a few through a tutoring school that I briefly worked for (and ended up stealing business from), and a few through parent's friends.

In this sense, it really pays to be a generalist; I did Ancient History (Egypt and Rome), Extension history, Japanese + Extension Japanese, Advanced English + Extension English, as well as helping with 4U english, some guy's DT project, and some guy's extension history work.

I found it really good business to help them with their major works, although a tutor really has to be careful about the helping vs doing border. That being said, a few things to note were parents, preparation, and stupid kids that wanted to bludge.

You also need to be careful when, going to a 2$ mil + house in Killara, a kid offers you $500 to write his major work. It can be pretty awkward. Moreso of they offer you like $5...

I think my issue was that I was so dedicated to uni that I found it hard to give them enough time, especially considering I'm lazy when it comes to collecting/setting my price.

 

[Dreamerish*~]

I enquired about tutoring at Prior. They don't hire anyone who can't tutor 4U maths on top of whichever subject they want to teach, because most of the Prior students do 4U maths. And apparently 3U is just not good enough.

 

[Sweets]

Personally I think it is much better to do it on your own. Tutoring companys just rip you and your students off. I have 12 students now, 8 I got on my own and 4 I got through a certain company, who were giving me 18 and charging my students almost 30. Some of them decided to finish their alotted lessons with the company and now just pay me less directly, but I still get much more then I was getting from said company. Companys are annoying too, they are always harassing you and calling you. So i'm all for tutoring on your own, although it can be hard to build up a student base. Once you get like a couple, they tell their friends etc, so it works out. One thing though, don't tutor kids who are really dumb, because you just end up doing everything for them and its boring.

 

[Kulazzi]

and you will need to do a practice lesson to a class of tutors already teaching at the college to show you can teach a class.

Rob's a really nice guy too, and he's always willing to have a chat or negotiate and talk about things.

Good luck, if you decide to apply!

I was in the maths tutoring last year up in chatswood and our tutor, who's really easygoing, told us to purposely ask some questions while murray came in. Only one guy did. Our tutor later told us that murray told him to go easy on us