Korean Job Discussion Forums

[pkang0202]

Has anyone thought of being a dedicated substitute teacher?

The thought ran across my mind today. Charge 50,000w an hour. If a hagwon or public school needs someone to fill in for a few days they can just call you up and use you to sub. It is pricey, but it is better for the schools because they won't have to cancel classes. Also, the schools would be paying you under the table. They don't have to worry about pension, taxes, health insurance, etc...

Also, other native teachers can use the subs to teach in their place if there is an emergency where they need to go somewhere.

The drawback is that you don't have a steady paycheck and your work schedule can be erratic.

I think it could be a lucrative business. Think of the thousands of schools. Whenever someone is going to call in sick , they can always tell their hagwon, "Check it out. This guy will teach while i'm out but you have to pay him 50,000w an hour."

[Yu_Bum_suk]

I've thought about it, too. To make it work on a regular basis you'd basically need a kind of agency, which would also need a cut. Now, as we know some hagwons require their teachers to be at work 8-10 hours a day. What kind of cheap-ass wongjongnim is going to fork out W400-500,000 to cover a day's absence? Do you really think a guy who apparently can't afford W5,000 for some A4 paper or new marker pens is going to take this up? And for that matter, what FT would be so desperate for a break to loose a month's pay for a week off?

As for public schools, it may be possible to organise a sub's lessons into three or four continuous blocks, but that's still W150-200,000 not in the school's budget. And what's he going to teach to a class of 20-45 he's never seen, much less assessed, before? Furthermore, many FTs are paired up with co-teachers for all or some of their lessons, and if a sub's needed the CT or HR teacher could just do it.

[JamesFord]

Turn the situation around and put yourself in the Hagwon owner's position. Would you shell out that kind of money when you don't have to?


Nope.

[JamesFord]

And 50,000 an hour is hardly a lucrative business. If all of the schools were magically close to you so you had little travel time and they were all in little neat block hours and all conveniently fell on different days of the week, then you could make a decent living. For that all to happen, you would have to be living in a fantasy land.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

[pkang0202]

Ok, lets play around with the numbers. How about 30,000w / hour

30,000w X 20 hours a week (not likely you'll be able to fill up 40 hours week in and week out)

Muliply that by 4 weeks in a month and it comes to:

2,400,000w under the table, untaxed.

Even at 25,000w an hour, you would clear 2,000,000w a month.


Thats not too shabby. Finding work should be easy. Consider the thousands upon thousands of PS/hagwons in Seoul. A lot of places just need a native teacher for a day or weekend.

[JamesFord]

[shaunew]

When I was teaching English I was making 40,000 won to 70,000 won per hour. This was steady work, 35 hours a week. I did think about this and seen the potential. This is why I started my own business. Now I'm paid per job but the hourly rate is 3 to 4 times what I was making teaching. If you are creative and have the balls to take a chance. You can make it big in Korea.

[Cheonmunka]

[FUBAR]

[SHANE02]

[pkang0202]

Then what would be a good figure? Lets all brainstorm on this. In order for any endeavor to be successful, you have to have a good plan. I'm a busienss major, so I'm used to mkaing business plans. LEts start with a SWOT analysis for being a subtitute native teacher.

Strengths: Little to no competition. Flexibility. Untaxed income. Freedom to work in many different work places. Networking, you'll meet many many different people who you may need to contact in the future.

Weaknesses: No housing/allowance. No steady schedule. Costs. No benefits. No prior basis of comparison for market, income, marketability. Is there even a market for this service?

Oppurtunities: There is no competition so all you have is oppurtunities.

Threats: Barriers to entry. Other Koreans who can charge less to substitute.


So, the market would be places that need a Native Teacher ASAP, who are desperate. These will be places where the parents have already paid money, and the school/camp/institute is short on native teachers.


What about wages? There has to be a balance. SMOE gives the best housing subsidy at 500,000w / month. So, tack on housing with a base salary of 2,000,000. The MINIMUM a substitute teacher should be making a month is 2,500,000w.

So, instead of being paid hourly, how about being paid by the day. Obviously, if a place needs you to sub, they won't just have you come in for an hour or 2. You would be there the entire day.

So, you charge 200,000w for 1 full day of classes. 200,000w is a reasonable amount a hagwon owner will pay someone to sub for 1 day. You work 4 days a week, and you make 800,000w a week. That comes to 3,200,000 a month.


Yeah, I like that. Instead of being paid hourly, you can get paid by the day or half day. 200,000w for 8 hours, and 110,000w for 4 hours.

Even if you have a slow week and you only work 3 days, that is still 600,000w for that week.

[Otherside]

Nice swot analysis. The tax-free aspect is an interesting one, but if you plan to make a "business" of this it might be wiser to go legit.

Anyways, I thought i'd compare your numbers with that of a PS teacher (who also doesn't pay tax).
Base salary:2mill
Housing allowance: 500K
Medical: 50K
Pension: 100K
Severence/12 = 167K
Flight tickets 150K (bit of a crap shoot this one, but 900K each way seems reasonable...so)
Options to earn overtime: an extra 100-200K a month wouldn't be out of the ordinary.

Total: 2.967,000 per month vs the 3,200,000 you propose. Not to mention 21 days paid vacation and sick days, where you wouldn't get paid if you didn't work for vacation/sick reasons. (Though the flexibility makes up for that). Finally, I think 2mill is right at the bottom of the PS food chain, 2.2 shouldn't be that hard to get which would put the overall package up to 3.2mill and 1-2 classes a week of OT and you are looking at 3.4mill all in.

All in all, I think your idea is a good one; just need to fix the numbers a bit to make it fly. In addition, I think the first few months of a plan like this would be pretty rough until you've proven yourself and gotten some word of mouth out, after that if you are located in Seoul, you should be filling 4-5 days a week without a problem...

[Netz]

[madoka]