as someone who has walked down that very bitter road before, maybe i can share some insights:


1) what u make in 10 months, must last 12 months, because usually no kids have tuition during sch holidays. Can u pay rent, pay yourself, for 2 months a year?

2) no weekends, no nights free, means whatever u make, must divide by 1.5, to consider as \"OT pay\", to compare with other professions. U think tutors make much more than a clerk?

3) during the year when O levels was brought forward by 1 week, i suffered an instant \"pay cut\" of around $1K that month. Whenever one of my students have to quit because CCA infringed upon our tuition lessons, i suffer an instant pay cut too. In other professions, your pay gets cut when u don't perform. In this line, your pay gets cut because other ppl perform LOL with such wild pay fluctuations, it was real hell to plan for the future.

4) I was the only experienced tutor in my centre, i had to hire newbies for my other classes....they were inexperienced, late, tardy, heck-care....it was hell looking for qualified professionals to help u. When i approached an ex-sch teacher, she wanted $5K monthly, not including profit sharing. I don't blame her, she was well-qualified to open her own centre herself, why should she work for me? Anyone still thinks it's easy to open a tuition centre?

5) Because of market saturation, students that are drawn to a new tuition centre are usually those who failed to improve at existing ones. Why? If u don't kena delinquents or ADHD kids, consider lucky already. I once had a bunch of delinquents, forced to have tuition by their parents, came and smoked outside my centre, wrecked havoc, skipped classes. And their parents refused to pay for lessons skipped. U think going to the police will help? I had an ADHD case who damaged my computers in the centre. Advised the mother to bring her son see a doc, she refused, still believing her son is \"normal\" when in fact the son's schoolmates told me he's been identified in school already as an ADHD case. Does this seem like HELL to u?

Now i'm back to giving private tuition, and my life has never been better

Seriously, to anyone, don't bother opening a centre unless u got tons and tons of cash and energy. And if u do, why bother?

And those who love kids should just volunteer at Spastic Children's Association or Chao Yang School.

Cheers

since u claim it’s not really for the money, but the "love of children and the drive for education", then just charge cost price only lor LOL


c’mon lah, what’s wrong with working for money? Only with money, then u can employ very gd tutors, provide very gd environment, and spur yourself to do more.

if it’s not for money, nobody will bother working. If u don’t believe, flush all your money down the toilet bowl, see whether u will still attempt to open tuition centre "for love of children and drive for education" LOL

if u want my opinion, don’t bother opening a centre…it’s very very very hard work for very very very little money. When i opened a centre, i was making around $4K, working EVERY SINGLE DAY, every weekend, every night. Life was really a nightmare.

jamiechia73:

it's not really about the money..

really? wow, why not make it free then?

winth:

Hi,


My friend was a full-time tutor and was earning good money until he decided to open his own tuition centre.

He had set up his centre in one of the most prominent tuition hubs in Singapore. For the past 5 years, it was like hell for him. He couldn't sleep well, suffered poor relationships with his family and barely had enough to spend, after deducting all the revenue to pay his teachers, rental, course materials, utility bills. In order to recoup his losses, he almost wanted to open another centre (for the hope of more revenue since he felt that his fixed cost should only increase marginally), but it was a blessing that he didn't.

He finally gave up after 5 years, sold his tuition centre away and went back to full-time tutoring. We avoided this friend of ours for many years too as he kept coming to us for loans and all the lies he told us so as to hide away from his real situation. It was really bad.

In total, he loaned about a $100K from his mum over the past 5 years, plus his own savings and couldn't recoup his losses.

Tuition centres might not be look like such a very lucrative business as it seems. And if you are not careful, you might end up with huge losses. Please think through carefully.

My 2c worth.

sounds exactly like what i went through it was sheer hell.

thanks for linking us up!

I'm a SAHD (Stay at home dad), also a WFHD (work from home dad)....omg all the acronyms lol


wishing to know other SAHDs so we can share ideas and resources

Cheers.