Viewing topic: Freelance teaching & schools in St Petersburg

Greetings all froma new member here at Visarus. I have a few questions, and I hope that someone out there has answers. I have just completed registering at Visarus, and started to look at the forums. My questions relate to teaching in St Petersburg, of the freelance variety. There are schools, yes, but I just wanted to get an idea of private instruction there. How does a person combine teaching for a school, and teach privately? Do schols allow that, or is it an understood practice? Have a great day. William

Good question. The key to combining private students with schools is to be free of any kind of contracts or other 'obligations'.

If you are working freelance (i.e. with no binding contract) then any schools you work with have no business dictating their conditions to you. You can take or leave anything they offer.

If you plan to work freelance (which has its own advantages and disadvantages) you shouldn't sign any contracts. Schools that I've worked with have usually been too keen to get teachers to sign full-time contracts. This dictates your working hours and your earnings.

A standard contract (I've just fished one that I never signed out of a drawer) states your daily 'on duty' hours, typically 12, usually 9am to 9pm. Most will state a weekly contact hours limit, but not all. And of course, your monthly salary is there, plus any 'overtime' (generally only applicable to weekends or hours outside the stated on-call hours).

You are obliged to be available during those hours and have no right to refuse classes.

From the contract:

6. The teacher has no right to work for company having business equivalent to the *name of school* till the contract termination.
7. The teacher is forbidden to behave as follows:
to receive payment from individuaal or corporate clients without written permission from the General Director;
to be employed by other educational institution and to provide private services on teaching individual or juridicial persons upon the duration of this contract. Failure to comply with this provision leads to the teachers lay off;

I've been free-lancing in Spb for the past three years - avoiding private schools completely. If you are new to Spb or Russia and don't speak Russian i would recommend you get at least some work in a private school - for stability...you will be guaranteed several classes at a fixed rate whether students are ill or not. Rob knows which schools are "fair" and which are just rubbish and rip ppl off. I get a lot of private students through networks of friends and contacts in Spb...over time you acquire a reputation...and word-of-mouth is important in a country like Russia. A lot works on a personal level...which is why it's good to cut out the middleman and go private if you can get enough students. It is more unstable but pays better. You should be getting min: 700 roubles max: 1000 roubles for 1.5 hrs (2 academic). Free-lance work usually involves a lot of travelling...but if you don't mind the distances on the metro that shouldn't be a problem...take a book...go through lesson plans...look at beautiful russian ladies - the time flies by! In term of FINDING students for private classes...i'd advertise in the Spb Times newspaper in the classifieds section...also online - but you have to know russian for that - somewhere like
www.irr.ru
www.doski.ru
are good...place small ads...studes come to you. The other way to do it would be to approach small businesses and ask if they want private language "training"...a lot of them are pissed off with private schools so are willing to get a free-lancer in. Charge no less than 1000 roubles/1.5 hrs for companies...they can pay!
If you get stuck give us a shout!
Schastlivo
Alex

In order to do in-company freelancing, do you need your own little business, an official tax number for the company to set against its invoice, or do they just pay you in cash?

Do you make an provision for tax in setting your charges? (You might want to PM me on that one!)

Thanks,

Jonathan.

All cash Setting up a business here, even just registering as self employed, would open up a whole world of pain for you!

Example - I'm setting up an online translation business so I can keep my clients when I leave the country, etc. I asked my two biggest clients if they could pay online by credit card. They replied that cash is easier

And we're sometimes talking 4-figure sums for large projects.

So, no worries there! The Russian economy largely revolves around 'black' and 'grey' cash transactions anyway.

That's good to know! Here in Poland you won't get paid by a company unless you have a business tax number (regon), which is different from your one as an individual (NIP).

Needless to say this means that you have to add tax & NI (ZUS) to the cost of lessons!

Ahhh, I think most of us would go out of business here if we had to do any of that kind of paperwork. We'd spend most of our time standing in queues! (See Alex_j's article on http://www.timesrussia.com/)

Coincidentally enough, I was talking to an accountant today about why businesses here like to pay in cash. She couldn't explain, and promised to ask another accountant friend.

The only thing I can see is that it's just plain laziness, or that it's something they do when they have to spend a large cash income (more possible). But it's hard to see where an international company would get that amount of cash-in-hand.

Anyone else have an answer?