There are lots of advantages to learning to speak Maori with a private tutor over getting traditional language classes. However, one of the major downsides to private tutoring is often the cost as an hour of private tutoring often costs much more than what you'd pay to attend a group class.
In this article, we'll look at everything that affects the price of private Maori tutoring and also look at the different average costs of Maori tutors across the country.
What Affects the Price of Private Maori Tutoring?
While the average cost of a Maori tutor on the Supeprof website is around $40 an hour, you'll see that there are tutors offering lessons for every imaginable price.
This is because there are so many factors that can affect the price of private tutoring and to understand what you're paying for and why a tutor's rates are what they are, you need to consider all of the following things.
Experience
Experience comes at a premium and the more a tutor has of it, the more you can expect them to pay. A more experienced tutor will likely offer better Maori lessons and as a result, will charge more for their premium service.
There's also the factor that the more experienced a tutor is, the less likely you'll be able to find a Maori tutor with the same amount of experience. The rarer something is, the more you'll pay for it, and this is especially true with private tutoring.
Just remember that a tutor with more experience won't automatically be the best choice for you and you need to find tutors whose experience translates to better tuition for you.
A tutor with decades of experience tutoring children mightn't be worth paying a lot for if you're an adult and vice-versa. Make sure they have relevant experience!
Expertise
Much like experience, expertise will affect the price. While experience and expertise are related and a tutor with experience will likely develop some degree of expertise through it, you can still enjoy the benefits of Maori tutoring from tutors who have relatively low amounts of experience but are experts in exactly what you need to learn.
For example, if the tutor's expertise is particularly rare, you'll see that they're able to charge much more and this can be true just for the language they choose to teach.
Though factors like demand will also affect the rates (more on this later), Maori teachers have expertise in a language that not many other tutors have so this can make their lessons more expensive.
Beyond just the language, they could have expertise in providing Maori tuition for specific exams, certain grammar points, or cultural expertise that other tutors mightn't be able to offer.
Lesson Frequency and Duration
Lesson frequency and duration can help you save money on your private Maori tutoring.
Longer lessons can work out cheaper per hour if you can agree on a discount. For example, if your tutor is going to travel to you three times a week for an hour lesson, a single three-hour lesson might save them money and allow them to charge less per hour for the session.
The same is true for how many lessons you have. Some tutors will offer a discount if you're willing to pay for several lessons at once as this allows them to rest safe in the knowledge that a lot of their schedule is confirmed and paid for.
If you book several longer sessions at once and pay for them all upfront, your private Maori tutor may offer you a special discount on their typical hourly rates.
Location
Where you are can drastically affect the cost of everything, not just private Maori lessons. For one, the cost of living is different in different places and tutors operating in certain areas have more costs to recover than others.
More expensive places will generally result in more expensive private tutoring, but the prices in a given area might also end up being lower if there are a lot of tutors competing with one another.
In places where it's easier and cheaper for tutors to travel to their students, you can likely find cheaper private tutorials.
If you're on a tight budget, make sure to check out the best free Maori resources.
Qualifications
Qualifications confirm a tutor's experience or expertise and are a quick way for students to check that the tutor knows what they claim they know.
Much like experience and expertise, tutors with relevant qualifications in Maori or teaching can charge more than their counterparts without them.
Common qualifications include bachelor's degrees in Maori Studies or a Graduate Diploma or Master's Degree in Maori Language. There are also Maori language certifications that they could have.
The New Zealand Certificate in Adult and Tertiary Teaching could also be useful for a private Maori tutor to show that they're familiar with different teaching approaches because it doesn't matter how good your Maori tutor is at speaking the language if they can't effectively teach it to you.
Resources and Materials
The resources and materials that a private Maori teacher uses will also be factored into their hourly rates. Tutors can't offer their lessons at a loss and if they're spending money on resources and materials, they'll likely increase their rates to make sure that they make that money back.
Of course, a tutor can always charge the students who use said resources more and offer a discount to the students who don't need them, but you will need to discuss this with them before you start working with them.
Skill Level
Some tutors will charge different amounts based on the level of the student. More advanced students require more work (generally) and you can expect to pay a premium for top-level Maori tuition.
Conversely, lessons for beginners should be cheaper but there is sometimes a premium to pay for absolute beginners (at least compared to other beginners) because they need to be taught absolutely everything and this may result in more work for the tutor.
Supply and Demand
This is an economic concept and how it affects the cost of private Maori tutoring is fairly simple. If there are a lot of Maori tutors and few people wanting Maori tutoring, lessons are likely to be cheaper as tutors compete to offer the best rates to draw in the few potential customers out there.
On the other hand, if there are very few Maori tutors but a lot of people wanting lessons, these few tutors can charge a lot because there's little competition and a lot of demand for lessons.
It's far more lucrative for tutors to operate in areas where there's very little competition, but you'll find that the greater the demand for tutors, the more tutors you'll find popping up.
Supply and demand are in constant flux and will change over time, but it'll still affect the cost of private Maori tutoring.
Type of Tutoring
There are different types of tutoring and your private Maori tutor may have different rates for different kinds of lessons.
Face-to-face tutoring tends to be the most expensive kind of tutoring because it involves more travelling, more preparation, and more work from the tutor. You're not just paying for the time they spend teaching you but also all the work they do outside of your lessons to get ready for them.
Online tutoring is usually offered at lower rates than face-to-face tutoring because the travel costs don't need to be factored into each session. This also means the tutors have more time to teach because they won't be travelling as much and can schedule more students each week.
Group tutoring is usually the cheapest available and if you're looking for a way to spend less on private Maori tutoring, getting sessions with other students, some friends, or members of your family is a great way to end up spending less per student per hour.
How Much Do Private Maori Tutors Cost Across New Zealand?
We mentioned earlier that location can affect the cost of private Maori tutoring so let's see what some of the average rates are across the country.
- Auckland: $39
- Wellington: $52
- Rotorua: $41
- Hamilton: $41
- New Plymouth: $35
- Whangarei: $37
While a lot of the average rates are close to the national average of $40 per hour, remember that these averages don't consider the qualifications, experience, or even lesson types being offered.
In some places, for example, there may only be online tutoring available from tutors elsewhere in the country so the average rates may appear lower because there aren't more expensive in-person tutors available.
You can use these amounts to give you an idea of how much private Maori tutoring costs when you start your search, but you'll soon see that there are too many factors to consider to get much use out of the average rates.
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