The tutoring industry has grown globally in recent years. More and more people are choosing to hire tutors or to become tutors. If the latter sounds like you or you're even simply considering it, there's more to it than simply saying you're a tutor and waiting for students.
Parents and individuals are more willing to pay for extra tuition outside of school, university, or work, but they also care about how they spend their money, which means you need to charge the right rates.
In this article, we'll be looking at how different subjects will affect a tutor's rates and how you can use the subjects you teach to help you work out how much you should be asking for.
Private Tutors Charge Different Rates by Subject
Private tutors' hourly rates are affected by several factors, including:
- location
- experience
- the student's level
- teaching format
- subject matter
When you set your hourly tutoring rate, you need to factor in all of these.
So why is there so much to consider?
It's one of the first things that potential students will consider, especially if you're using a site like ours where a tutor's hourly rate is prominently displayed on their profile.
Potential students will make judgements about you and your tutoring service based solely on your rates so you need to make sure it's reflective of who you are and what you offer.
Low prices might entice students on a small budget, but they will also make potential students believe that you're unqualified, new to tutoring, or offer a lower-quality service. Even if none of this is true, you could harm your reputation by setting your rates too low!
Conversely, high rates will immediately rule out students who can't afford it or turn away potential students looking for something more cost-effective.
Your rates also need to be high enough to cover your costs. No matter how much you love teaching or tutoring, you can't do it professionally if you're making a loss for every hour of tuition that you offer.
There are plenty of tips on how to set your rates, but today, we're focusing solely on how you should adjust your rates according to the subject that you teach.
Private Tutoring Rates by Subject in New Zealand
For these rates, we've used the averages from our very own Superprofs on our New Zealand website. It should be noted that all the rates featured in this article were accurate on the Superprof site in February 2024.
We'll be looking at New Zealand nationally, but remember that rates for tutoring can vary from region to region so make sure that you also factor that in once you have a better idea of what you should be charging.
Mathematics and Science
The average rate charged for maths is $31 an hour whilst the rates for various sciences can vary typically between $30 and $40.
Economics tutors likely understand how this all works better than others and command an average of $39 per hour of tutoring when compared to other science tutors who charge between $32 and $34.
| Economics | $39 |
| Chemistry | $34 |
| Physics | $33 |
| Mathematics | $31 |
| Biology | $32 |
Humanities
The humanities tutors in New Zealand charge a slightly lower average than their scientific counterparts, but the averages are still in a similar range. Typically, humanities tutors earn between $28 and $31 an hour.
| History | $30 |
| English | $28 |
| Geography | $31 |
Modern Foreign Languages
The fact that modern languages are a popular subject to learn with a private tutor means that your typical language tutor earns less than some of the subjects that we've seen so far. After all, tutors are at the behest of supply and demand and with language tutors both all over New Zealand and around the world via webcam, their rates have to be more competitive.
| Mandarin | $31 |
| German | $36 |
| Arabic | $31 |
| Russian | $31 |
| French | $37 |
| Italian | $38 |
| Spanish | $32 |
Law
While not always taught to every pupil in every school, several academic subjects like law require expert knowledge, qualifications, and experience. The average law tutor in New Zealand charges $41 an hour, but specialist subjects like civil law ($45 an hour) and criminal law ($50 an hour) both charge more.
Social Sciences
The social sciences tend to charge less than law, with the average tutor charging $33 an hour.
| Sociology | $33 |
| Psychology | $31 |
Music
The average music tutor in New Zealand charges $46 an hour, but if you'd like specific tuition for a particular instrument, it depends on what you want to learn how to play.
The average rate for music tuition in the UK is £24.88 per hour, however, there is a large variation from one instrument to another. Brass tuition comes at the highest hourly rate, whereas rock instruments such as the drums are on the lower end of the price scale.
| Trumpet | $50 |
| Piano | $52 |
| Violin | $58 |
| Guitar | $44 |
| Drum | $68 |
Tutoring Rates by Academic Level
As you can see, tutoring rates will vary wildly according to what you want to learn. However, the level of each of these subjects or skills you want to be taught at will also affect the price.
While each subject has different levels, for simplicity, we've outlined three main levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced:
- Beginner Tutoring: At this level, the pupil is learning a new subject or skill and has no prior experience with it. This level of tutoring is usually cheaper than the average since the tutor will likely cover more basic topics and concepts and there'll be typically less preparation required.
- Intermediate Tutoring: This level of tutoring provides students with an opportunity to delve into more aspects of their subject or skill. While covering broader areas than advanced classes, which are usually more specialised, intermediate tutoring will require more preparation than beginner tutoring and usually costs around the average price for a given subject.
- Advanced Tutoring The most advanced private tutorials are for students with extensive knowledge and experience in a given subject or field. Only the very best and most experienced tutors can offer these kinds of tutorials, which allows them to charge a premium for their rare and sought-after expertise. Advanced tutoring is the most expensive and comes with above-average rates for the subject.
How Academic Level Affects Tutoring Rates
The more advanced the tutoring in a given subject, the more you can charge. The same is true for academic levels so if your students are older or further along their educational journey, the rates are generally increased.
Primary school tutors won't charge as much as those tutoring university, master's, or PhD students. As always, however, there can be exceptions to this, especially once you factor in location, the type of tutoring, the subject, etc.
Why Do Different Subjects Charge Different Rates
It might be quite annoying if your subject commands lower rates, especially if you've been educated to the same level as a tutor teaching a more lucrative subject, but that's because of the number of factors that go into a tutor's rates.
Here are just a few of them.
Supply and Demand
The market will generally dictate tutors' rates. Tutors will charge what they can get away with as they need to cover their costs and will look to strike a balance between having a schedule filled with students and earning money.
When students have lots of tutors to choose from, the rates will likely go down as students opt for cheaper tutors. In this case, tutors either have to lower their prices or offer a better service.
Rates will go up when a subject is in demand. Subjects that offer high earning potential or job security are usually more popular and those offering tutoring in them will be able to command higher rates.
However, if you live in a certain area that bucks a trend, you might be in luck. If you're the only economics tutor in town, then you can pretty much charge whatever you want. Of course, you can overdo it and some people may choose simply not to study with you rather than pay outrageous hourly rates.
Equipment
You may have noticed that drum tutors were charging more than other tutors. This is likely because their travel costs are higher. After all, they often need to transport a drum kit with them. They also need an entire drum kit, which is quite an investment.
The same is true of horseriding tutors or even personal trainers. Both of these kinds of tutors require equipment, space, and other expenses far beyond that of a language tutor, for example.
Outside Factors
Certain tutors require qualifications whereas others don't. There are some subjects you can teach without needing formal qualifications and if a tutor hasn't invested this time or money, they don't have the investment to recover. However, a tutor who spent a decade studying at university will have something that other tutors don't and will be able to charge more because of their experience, knowledge and expertise.
A tutor's experience and background are also taken into account when deciding rates and as a tutor gains experience, you'll likely see that their rates will increase.
Anyone considering being a tutor should look at local tutors teaching the same subject as them to see what the average is. From there, they can decide if they're above or below average in terms of experience and the service they offer. From there, you can set your price relative to the going rates.
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