I transitioned from classroom teaching to creating a tutoring company over 15 years ago.  Unlike a previous career transition I had made in my life, this one was better planned and went relatively smoothly.  I was able to hold on to what I liked most about teaching which is working alongside teachers while at the same time being my own boss.  I believe such a transition would be more difficult nowadays as the tutoring sector has since become flooded with new entrants.

Teachers’ knowledge of the syllabus places them in a very strong position to be competent tutors.  However, there are different skills too that are needed to become an effective tutor.  Instead of managing classroom behaviour, tutors usually must interact more frequently with parents – often anxious and demanding ones.  In tutoring, especially in well-heeled parts of London, there is a good deal of what the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein described as “projective identification”.  Anxiety and ambition are increasingly being projected on to tutors to internalise.    Having said that, to transition to a new career or to reinvent oneself can be refreshing and invigorating.  It can also help to keep us (half) sane.

I frequently receive calls from teachers who want to meet for a coffee to discuss whether they should quit classroom teaching.  In the course of the chat, I try to establish a few basic facts and place them in either a “push” or “pull” category.  It is often a mixture of the two, but generally it is “push”. 

Quite often they are just a bit fed up and want to see if they could be viable as tutors. I feel a weight of responsibility to provide useful advice.  It means trying to gauge their needs and the likely demand for their skills.  For instance, while it might seem banal, I try to get a sense if they are just fed up with their particular school or whether it is teaching in general.  Are they young and hoping to acquire a mortgage?  Being a self-employed tutor is not great for one’s credit rating. 

Some teachers are even surprised that tutoring is usually restricted to a couple of hours after school, weekends and holiday time.  How do they feel about that?  Do they have children? A partner? Will household finances come under strain? In general, I advise teachers to see if they can go down to .8 or .7 of their current contracts and see if they can build up some tutoring on the side. Sometimes that is not possible.

Frequently, teachers can have very specific subject skills for which my company receives very little demand: GCSE Italian or A-Level music for instance.  So, I think to encourage people to ‘jump’ on the back of such skills – while it sounds romantic - would be irresponsible of me as I feel I would be signposting them to an impecunious future.  Do not get me wrong, in life we need to jump – often before we are pushed - but it helps to have some sense of where we might land. 

Here’s a funny story: back in 2014/15 I received a call from a young Arab woman who asked that I meet up with her for a coffee.  She provided me with her family name, and I quickly established via Google that she was a well-known princess, a veritable royal.  I was a bit surprised that she agreed to meet me in a café near where I work in Parsons Green as I am accustomed to being summoned by such people  to their well-appointed homes – rather like an ageing and loyal butler.

Early into the conversation, my mind began to automatically sketch how I might be able to assist her.  She was in her 20’s so her children must be young I thought.  Any tutoring will therefore need to be face-to-face.  So, I then established where she lived, close to the Albert Hall.  Should be fine I assured myself – easy to get to.  Then the conversation took an unbelievable twist, it sort of jack-knifed.  She was not looking for a tutor after all rather she wanted to become a tutor herself.  

Recovering my composure, I politely asked her what rate per hour she was expecting, and she replied “around £400 to £500”.  “Per hour” – I repeated. “Yes, per hour” – she replied.  I suggested that I thought it might be a little on the high side but she quickly consulted her phone with the dexterity someone of my generation can only marvel and pointed me to a series of articles where a tutor was claiming that he was receiving over £400 per hour.

I was president of The Tutors’ Association at the time, and I asked around to see if this rate could possibly be true.  Someone who knew the tutor asked him directly about its veracity and his response was something along the lines about having received £200 for some “consultancy” he did once which took him around 30 minutes.  I asked the journalists if they had seen any invoices to corroborate these stories.  They had not, and the story stopped doing the rounds shortly after that.

What is the moral of this particular vignette?  The importance of basing your new career choices on realistic expectations, I guess.  Usually, I tell prospective tutors that tutoring will earn them credit card money – not to expect much more.  No doubt there will be some exceptions.  And in case you are wondering, in the case of this Arab princess, yes, it was a “pull” factor.

Tom Maher

Director - British Home Tutors (BHT)

London