Job Discussion Forums

[MBee]

Hey everyone! Hope you're enjoying life out there...

I have a few questions on giving private lessons:

-Is it easy or difficult to achieve a full-time salary based entirely on lessons for private students in Japan?
-What cities might be best for doing this successfully?
-What would be the income range, if you were to give 25-30 hours of private lessons per week?
-Also, what permit/visa would someone apply for to be a legal freelance private English teacher (is there one)?

Thanks so much for your help and insight! Hope exciting things are happening in your life, wherever you are this evening.

[Glenski]

If you are just starting out and have no contacts yet, don't even think about it. A guy I used to work with had 5 years of experience in eikaiwa, and it still took him the better part of a year after that to get enough privates to sustain himself.

If you aren't here yet and therefore have no work visa, forget it. You can't get a work visa with just private lessons. If you work for a year at a regular job here, you can "self-sponsor" that visa with private lessons, but you need to prove contracts with students and I don't know more than one person who claimed to have done that. Otherwise, immigration seems to NOT accept private lessons as guaranteed wages, so you would need to have PT work at companies/schools to self-sponsor.

[Ryu Hayabusa]

I'd like to help you think about this as realistically as possible. I think being a free-lance teacher and just teaching private lessons isn't worth it. I'll do my best to show you why I think so.

The average hourly rate in Osaka is about 2500 yen/hour. So, if you work 30 hours a week that works out to 300 000 yen a month. Students should pay for transportation and if you buy a one-day unlimited transit pass everyday, the transportation fees students pay you will cover the cost of the pass and you'll make extra with the money left over. Pretty good, right? But you have to factor in transportation times. And you have to think about where you're going to have your lessons. In a cafe? Well, factor in the cost of a drink there (about 300-500 yen). Your students might pay for you, but more often than not, they won't. And if you're gonna be using the same cafes regularly, they won't tolerate you being there for an hour or two giving lessons without buying a drink or two. So factor in about 2000 yen per day to be spent on drinks.

I mentioned transportation times above. Assume a work day of 6 hour-long lessons in Osaka. Here is a possible schedule for a Sunday:

10-11am Umeda
11:30-12:30 Umeda
1-2pm Namba
2:30-3:30pm Shinsaibashi
4-5pm Tennoji
5:15-6:15 Tennoji

Transportation/break time= 2 hours and 15 minutes
Transportation cost= 800 yen for a 1-day unlimited use subway pass

Pay for the day= 14 000 yen (15 000 yen + 1000 yen bonus money left over transportation fee surplus) - 2000 yen drinks)

That's looks good for about 8 hours of work. But that's a Sunday when many Japanese people have a day off. Your schedule will probably look very different on a weekday.

Here's something just off the top of my head:

7-8am JR Tsukamoto
9-10am JR Sakai
4:30-5:30pm Hankyu Shukugawa
6-7pm Hanshin Fuku
7:30-8:30pm Bentencho
9-10pm Namba


Do you really want to be doing that for most of your days? I wouldn't. And what happens if a student cancels? No money for you. Some students are ok with paying for a month's worth of lessons in advance. Most aren't.

Part of your off-hours will be spent preparing lessons and dealing with scheduling and finding new students.

20 years ago when the average rate for private lessons was much higher (I have been told it was around 5000-10 000 yen/hour), doing this kind of free-lance stuff was a very feasible plan. But these days, I would give it a pass. Unpaid holidays, uncertainty of pay, unpaid lesson prep, and fickle students all contribute to a stressful "job".

For 300 000 yen/month, much better jobs exist if one has the credentials and drive to get them--jobs with paid vacation, shakai hoken, excellent work conditions and benefits. These jobs are not common, but they're out there.

Doing free-lance work like this for 25 hours a week works out to about 250 000 yen/month. ECC pays about that and you work 6 hour days in one location. And when students cancel at ECC and there aren't any students, you don't teach. But most importantly, you still get paid.

If anyone has any questions, ask away. I wrote this up quickly and didn't have much time to check for readability and stuff.

[Glenski]

RH makes some good points.

However, to say that "Students should pay for transportation " is not true, IMO. Yes, as a private lesson teacher now and in the past, I hoped they would, but you just have to factor that into your costs somehow. For example, what if you traveled to one cafe and then held 2 consecutive lessons? Do you charge both groups a separate travel fee?

" But that's a Sunday when many Japanese people have a day off. "
Well, private lessons take place any day of the week. Whenever the student is free and comfortable to study. As far as the schedule looking different on a weekday, perhaps. It may likely run later into the evening to catch the business people and HS / college students. Depends on who are your clients.

[Nagoyaguy]

Another option is to take a 'usual' teaching job, like ALT, and supplement your wages with part time work. There are many companies, such as CTS Nichibei, who specialize in recruiting teachers to do business English classes. They pay in the 3500-4000 yen per hour range, plus transport costs. Most of the classes are evenings and weekends, when ALTs are free.

Most often, the classes are 2 or 3 hour blocks of time, once or twice a week. If you can teach, for example, 3 nights a week (or perhaps two nights and a Saturday morning), the extra cash would be: 6 hours times 4 weeks is 24 hours. Assume 3500 yen an hour, that's 84,000 yen extra per month.

Plus, there are sometimes intensive classes offered. Slightly lower hourly rate, but paid all day- for example 3,300 an hour for 8 teaching hours, so 26,400 yen for a day.

From that, you can build a client base and eventually freelance if you want.

[MBee]

Wow, thank you all for all this, you all put together really informative responses and I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the great info. Thanks--I'll let you know what I end up doing. Have a great night!

[Glenski]

Many of the business English agencies prefer to hire teachers who have already had some life experience working in a business, where they have learned the jargon and use of the terminology & situations. Keep that in mind if someone says no, thanks.