“The last two weeks before the finals are the busiest time of the year. I start tutoring from eight in the morning until midnight,” said Sadia, a private Egyptian tutor. “I’m not complaining at all. It’s really good money and the fact that parents are really desperate for their children to get good grades makes them pay whatever we want,” she added.
Parents have no choice but to approach private tutors and ask them for help with their children’s schoolwork to make sure they succeed. “My daughter goes to a private school which is expensive in itself but that’s not all we pay for; we still have to pay for private lessons at home,” said Maha Mohammed. “It’s so frustrating how much we pay to these private teachers. Their rates especially increase at the end of the semester. It’s crazy,” she added.
According to Moneera Al-Saadi, a public schoolteacher, teachers earn very little and that they have to tutor privately to increase their income. “I’ve been giving private lessons to my students from the school where I’ve been working for seven years. The money I earn from private lessons is better than what I earn each month from the school,” she said.
“Now I have my own house and car from the money I make from private tutoring,” she added.
Ayman Abdullah is an Egyptian teacher who quit his job as a teacher and focused on private tutoring as his permanent job. “I give private tuition to both boys and girls on a daily basis and charge SR250 an hour,” he said. “I can say that I’m financially stable as I make around SR4,000 a day during the last two weeks before final exams. But I work hard. I sometimes arrive home at three in the morning and start again at eight,” he added.
However, some parents say private tutors are greedy and take advantage of students who are in desperate need to get good grades. Umm Mohammed said that when her son went to his teacher and asked him to explain something he offered him private lessons.
“The teacher came almost every day and charged us around SR4,000 a semester. What surprised us is that at the end of the semester he told us that if we paid him SR2,000 more, then he would give my son the questions for the final exam and help him with the answers,” she said.
