Guidelines for Teaching Contracts

What happens to your teaching business when students don't pay or don't pay on time?

There aren't any rules unless you put them into place yourself. Set the rules at the first meeting because a freelance teacher's income is jeopardised when they are not paid on time, and their bills cannot be paid. And that is why you should always set payment rules from the outset. A regular income - a steady cash flow - keeps your teaching business alive. Remember, 80 per cent of businesses fail because they run out of money.

Make sure you have a teaching service contract detailing your payment policies: when students are expected to pay and what happens when payment is late when customers sit before you.

Teaching service contracts secure a legally sound footing for freelancers when making payment claims. It is their only legal and binding proof a teaching payment agreement exists between them and their students. In fact, should their relationship with one of their student turn sour, and they need a lawyer, the first thing they will be asked is: Do you have a contract?

Contracts are simple reality checks to decide whether freelancers can work with a customer. If both sides respect the contract, they can work together.

A lawyer is the best person to guarantee a contract is made correctly. On the other hand, they are expensive. For most teaching freelancers, a lawyer is a luxury they cannot afford - so a self-made contract must suffice. A self-made teaching service contract is better than none. If you have never prepared a business contract before, you may be quite daunted by the prospect of creating one.

For example:

§ What details must be written into contracts?
§ What elements are usually forgotten in agreements (absenteeism, etc.)?
§ Situations when a lawyer must check the wording in contracts

For this purpose, freelancers can use a teaching service agreement example as a basis for creating their own contracts. The contract example presented is for educational and demonstrative purposes.

Teaching English has been my business and passion - reading and painting my second passion.

I've been freelancing for around thirty years. I am semi-retired and wish to write a series of books giving practical marketing and business advice for teaching freelancers. I plan my books to help colleagues find students and earn enough to live from their profession.

I have worked in the Sales and Marketing departments in Belgium and Germany and completed a two-term voluntary member of the IATEFL Executive Marketing Committee. Marketing was the key to helping me thrive in the freelance English language teaching market. As a result, I successfully avoided the three-year death cycle most freelance teaching businesses suffer.

Meanwhile, I have been published in several language teaching magazines.

Please get in touch if you have questions.