Budgeting for Tuition Fees

How do you do budgeting for your child's tuition fees?

First time getting a home tutor?
How much can I afford?
Comparing the rates from different tutors?

Every parent will have to do budgeting on how much they can afford on tuition fees, especially different subjects require more hours or additional tutors to be hired. Improper planning could see your wallet lightened considerably at the end of every month!

Other than budgeting, an important consideration is should you spend more to get an experienced tutor? Or should you offer a low rate to engage a young tutor?

What we suggest is that you cannot use price as the only factor, but the quality of tuition that brings you the desired results.

Some pointers on your decision-making process:

Rate per hour

The most common charging mechanism for tuition fees is the tutor’s rate per hour.

Each category of tutors charge a flat rate per hour to determine the final tuition fees. The higher the qualifications & experience, the higher the hourly rate. Student tutors e.g. polytechnic students or undergraduates, offers the lowest rate due to their lesser experience.

School teachers and retired school teachers charge the highest, often twice or thrice the rate of a normal home tutor.
Somewhere in the middle would be part-time and full-time tutors who have completed their studies and have about 3 to 20 years of tutoring experience under their belts.

Duration & number of lessons per week

Each lesson normally lasts for 1.5 or 2 hours, which is adequate to cover 1 or 2 subjects in the same session. For 3 subjects or more, the 3^rd subject has to be taught in a separate lesson.

It is common to have 2 or 3 lessons a week, depending on how many subjects or how weak the child is in the subjects. There must be a sufficient break in-between the next lesson to allow the child to do homework and catch up with the rest of the syllabus.

Having too many lessons in a week may result in fatigue and straining the child’s social life, however some parents will increase the lessons just before the exam period.

Shorter hours e.g. 45 mins or 1 hour, is normally for music lessons or Pre-school / Kindergarten levels as the attention span is lower than higher levels. For some tutors, they tend to decline tuition assignments with less than an hour as it is cost-inefficient in terms of time for the preparation and travelling.

To get an estimate on tuition fees, for eg: Rate of $30 per hour, twice a week at 1.5 hours per lesson.

Tuition Fees = $30 x 2 lessons x 1.5 hrs x 4 weeks = $360

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