Demand for after-school tuition has been soaring, with total revenues at more than SGD $1 billion annually. Besides being highly lucrative, teaching can be extremely fulfilling as well. Most tutors report high levels of job satisfaction as they help our youth build knowledge and sharpen their minds.
Interested in starting your own tutoring journey? Here are 3 ways you can get started:
Start with your neighbours
If you have been consistently scoring well in your studies, you (or your parents) may have built a decent reputation around your academic record that your neighbours have started to notice. If you are interested in making some extra money, it might be useful for you to express your willingness to tutor your neighbours’ children when you next speak to them.
Alternatively, if you have some skills with image editing, it could be even more effective for you to print out some flyers to put into mailboxes and on notice boards around your area. For just a few hours of work, you might be able to expand your outreach to hundreds of households a stone’s throw from your own home!
Register with a tutoring platform
Registering with a good tutoring platform can also be very helpful in getting you started in your tutoring career. While it is good to sign up with many platforms, it can be a tedious process. Further, most of them simply take your data and reach out to you with un-targeted leads – some even sell your data to third-parties!
Consider signing up with trusted platforms like Learnable, which not only matches you with qualified leads, but also helps you with administrative tasks (e.g. attendance tracking, invoicing, etc.) and provides you with the best benefits and incentives package (e.g. free insurance, cash rewards, professional development) in the market. Teaching may become an even more enjoyable experience, as Learnable allows you to vet your leads before accepting them.
With flexibility in-built into the system, as well as a lack of overheads (think car rental costs), and teaching only topics you’re familiar with, Learnable could be an ideal way to start building a side income.
Given that a part-time tutor can charge upwards of SGD $60 an hour, teaching a few students could provide you with an excellent part-time income.
| Instructor | Number of students | Rate per hour | Hours per session | Earnings in 1 month | Earnings in 1 year (est’d) | Earnings in 5 years (est’d) |
| Artie | 1 | $35 | 2 | $280 | $3,360 | $16,800 |
| Bernard | 2 | $35 | 2 | $560 | $6,720 | $33,600 |
| Charles | 3 | $35 | 2 | $840 | $10,080 | $50,400 |
| Dawn | 4 | $35 | 2 | $1,120 | $13,440 | $67,200 |
| Esther | 5 | $35 | 2 | $1,400 | $16,800 | $84,000 |
[Illustration] How much you could make as a Learnable tutor
Sign up to teach at a tuition centre
If you are comfortable with teaching larger groups, teaching at a tuition centre may be a great option for you. Teaching at a centre can provide a high level of certainty in terms of your location of teaching. Centres also tend to take on most of the marketing work themselves – so all you need to do is show up.
If you are interested in teaching at a centre, what you could do is to check out the neighbourhood centres near your home, and ask them outright if they are looking for additional teachers. Otherwise, you could register with a tutoring platform – tuition centres often look there for aspiring tutors.
What other tips do you have to get started? Let us know in the comments below!
Learnable is here for all our tutors. We are always but an email (help@learnable.asia) or a WhatsApp text (+65 6974 2819) away, and we will do our best to assist and support our tutors.
Interested in writing for Learnable? Email us at jach@learnable.asia to discuss how you can contribute!
