How much should I charge for full time homeschooling?

Question

I am a fully qualified Primary School teacher and have interest in homeschooling one Primary School child. How much do you think I should charge per week/month/term?

Answer 1

I'm going to assume that Primary School is the same as our elementary school--roughly ages 6-12?

Find out how much home-based daycares are charging in your area for full-time summer care for students that age. Then charge a bit more than that. It has to be affordable.

You would also need to look at the laws where you live. Where I live, an adult other than their parents can be doing the instruction for homeschooled students (and can be paid for it). I've known a few moms who have done this--they've homeschooled other people's children. However, in some places that's not legal and you have to be set up as a tutoring business or actual school.

Answer 2

I am a fully qualified parent and would like to parent another person's child.  Do you see the silliness in this statement?  

Are you saying that you want to be a nanny?  

Somehow or another I think you have missed the whole concept of homeschooling.

Answer 3

Most homeschooled parents I run into are fully qualified teachers of their children, even though they don't have a degree in education. I don't know if you've ever worked with homeschoolers, but homeschooling is an entirely different model of education than schooling, usually requiring a completely different approach and philosophy than applied to classroom teaching.

Do you have a potential client yet? If not, I would suggest not quitting your day job.

Honestly, for 9 years I have been a homeschooling parent, I have been a writer for homeschooling and educational publications, I have been a teacher for homeschooling co-ops and tutors for homeschooling children, and I have been very active in a very busy homeschool community in my state. I have not come across one instance of a homeschooling parent employing or seeking to hire a full time teacher.



Most teachers who work with homeschoolers either tutor, offer evaluation services, or teach classes to homeschoolers.

The teachers who teach classes in our homeschool co-op

charge anywhere from $2 or $3 to $10 per session per student, but this will generally depend on the co-op as some rely soley on parents and don't invite outside teachers. Sessions run once per week for 14 weeks and generally have anywhere from 4 to 15 students in a class, with 4 periods per day. In our co-op, teachers have offered a wide variety of courses: science, photography, math, creative writing, anthropology, art, puppetry, music, learning games, embryology, engineering, video game programming, virtual travel, etc.

Of course, if you have a place to work with, you don't have to go through a co-op to offer classes-- you can always just advertise in the homeschool community... be prepared to let the parents hang around; you likely won't find a big turn-out if you expect parents to drop students off at a private home. Homeschool parents like to be involved.

For tutoring I usually charge $20 to $30 per hour, depending on how much work I am putting into it-- for older students, when I have to take home to read, correct and critique lengthy research papers, I charge more; 8 yr old who needs help with the parts of speech get charged less. I'm considered pretty fair, as I understand it most tutoring services charge more than I do.

Another way to earn money working with homeschoolers, if you are a licensed teacher, is to offer to evaluate portfolios or provide standardized tests for homeschooled students-- if your state does not require an annual evaluation, business may be slow.

Answer 4

What you are describing is not really homeschooling per se, but tutoring a homeschooled child.  

I am not sure what is fair to charge, I know that some people who tutor for just a few hours a week will charge $25 per hour and up, but I doubt many parents can afford to pay that much for full time homeschooling.

I would probably say about what a child care provider makes, perhaps with a little more added on for the tutoring.  That will vary depending on where you are, you might try asking some childcare workers what they make and then adding a couple of bucks per hour to that for your fee.

Answer 5

You would be a private tutor, and can call your state labor department to find out what the going rate for a full-time tutor is in your area.

You would have to set an hourly rate, figure in travel expenses if you go to the students home, and overhead expenses if you rent a space, or use your home.

This however is not considered home schooling, a child can only be considered home schooled if the parents are the primary teachers, so you would have to check if this is an option in your state.

Answer 6

An affordable price.

My best friend of 40 years is an elementary teacher of 25 to 30 years. Hillsborough County Florida school system. She makes around 40 to 45 thousand a year. That would be around $20.00 per hour. Some states pay much better than others.