Chile Forum

zer0nz wrote:

Steph wrote:Anyone got a ballpark figure as to what Native English Teachers get paid per hour? Either in an institute or a Colegio. Any input would be appreciated, trying to negotiate a contract and no idea where to start. Also any info as to what relief teachers get paid in schools, not necessarily english teachers. Thanks!!

english teacher, between $3000 - $150000/ hour big range, depends on experiance, age, and how dodgy the school is

was that 15 as opposed to 150k?

My brother taught in Chile about 4 years ago now..... He made about 700k per month....

The money is in getting your own private students on the side. Andy (my bro) taught one young man in Lo Barnechea.... they paid him like 10k per hour. The thing is his student was a high functioning down's syndrome. He spoke like 4 languages at a high level. But yeah.... His parents had money to burn.

As important as salary are your working conditions.... A lot of places will make you work split shifts and if you are a distance from your home you well end up hanging around the instituto for better part of the day....

Same goes for private lessons.... If you have to travel an hour each way to teach one you might factor that in as opposed to if you are doing 2 or three hours with someone..

It has so many variables. I mean if you have an actual North American teaching degree and teach in English at Nido you are obviously going to make more than if teaching with just the tesl certificate..... But I would think 600k would be minimum I would want to teach for.

zer0nz wrote:

Steph wrote:Anyone got a ballpark figure as to what Native English Teachers get paid per hour? Either in an institute or a Colegio. Any input would be appreciated, trying to negotiate a contract and no idea where to start. Also any info as to what relief teachers get paid in schools, not necessarily english teachers. Thanks!!

english teacher, between $3000 - $150000/ hour big range, depends on experiance, age, and how dodgy the school is

$150 lucas per hour? wow!! thats 1 palo/day. Where can I apply????

if you work at a language institute, you will probably get 4500 to 6500 pesos per hour of CLOCK TIME, which is not always the same as CLASS TIME. Some institutes will pay you for your travel time, especially if the assignment is far away. If you have experience and/or a TEFL certificate you might get a little more, perhaps as much as 8000 per hour. you probably won;t get offered a contract that gives you health insurance until you spend a year or so at the institute and demonstrate to them that you are the kind of employee they want to make a bigger commitment to.

if you work in a colegio, teaching children, the hourly rate goes way down but the number of hours goes way up, and you'll get health insurance. you might work 35-45 hours per week, and make 400,000 to 600,000 per month, again, depending on your resume and your negotiating skills and what other options the employer might have.

private lessons are the most lucrative, but also the hardest to find and they are notoriously UNSTEADY. these students are typically executives of some kind with busy schedules and they will cancel on you with almost no advance notice. you need to be clear when you negotiate with them what will happen in this case....something like.....if they cancel with less than 3 hours advance notice they still have to pay for 1/2 the lesson.

there is also the option of working in a language institute but not as a teacher. i have seen people rise up fairly quickly to administrative positions after only a few months of experience as a teacher. this usually requires fairly strong bilingual skills.

Thanks for the replies everyone, and thought I'd add what my other research has determined:

Substitute teachers at colegios - subvencidos (private, but government subsidies) get 13.800 per hour (not sure if that is class time or clock time). In colegios particulares (in santiago at least) that can range to more than 20mil per hour, depending on qualifications, the school, subject matter, etc.

Permanent teachers here (Iquique, colegio particular) start at 1200 lucas per month. I don't know if the salary is seemingly better here due to the mining industry factor, and the associated increase in cost of living here, or what the salary is in colegios particulares in other parts of the country.

Private tutors (english) get at least 10 mil per hour, often 12, that's for private work from home type work. Working for an institution is a different stories. The institutes often charge the companies that send their employees for lessons a fortune, but pay the teachers minimum. We pay our private spanish tutor 8 mil per hour, not sure if that is a gringo price, though I doubt it as she knows there would be 100 teachers lining up to take the job if she was taking advantage.

As for my own situation, I am here with my husband's job, so the health insurance etc is not an issue for me. I will be working at a school, but not full time. Set hours until the end of the year to replace a teacher that has left unexpectedly and they have augmented her schedule with a couple of other teachers that had some extra hours free. Works perfectly for my situation, youngest daughter just started full time school, oldest daughter is in the class affected by the changes and has so far had 4 english teachers this year, the last 2 of which were checking with her (the only non chilean in the class) to see if their pronunciation and grammar was correct. Also works perfectly for the school, they get a native english speaking qualified teacher (though not north American PDC, but we speak some bastardised version of english in aussie-land), at chilean rates without having to pay benefits. Win win, except for my 9 year old who is currently excited to have mum coming to teach, see how she feels in december .

I will probably negotiate for about 15 mil per hour, not here for the money for sure (it's less than half of what I would get for supply teaching in aus), but I would not have even told the school I was available if I did not expect some sort of lower salary. I am not sure that I would do it for 6 or 8 mil per hour, except for the fact that my daughter and her compañeros need some stability and a teacher who can not only speak the language but teach it too.

So, it seems maybe you're better off working either for yourself or in a colegio particular - for me private lessons aren't an option as people generally only want afternoons and evenings and I am busy with my kids at that time of day, so pretty happy with the situation as it is.

Steph wrote:Thanks for the replies everyone, and thought I'd add what my other research has determined:

Substitute teachers at colegios - subvencidos (private, but government subsidies) get 13.800 per hour (not sure if that is class time or clock time). In colegios particulares (in santiago at least) that can range to more than 20mil per hour, depending on qualifications, the school, subject matter, etc.

Permanent teachers here (Iquique, colegio particular) start at 1200 lucas per month. I don't know if the salary is seemingly better here due to the mining industry factor, and the associated increase in cost of living here, or what the salary is in colegios particulares in other parts of the country.

Private tutors (english) get at least 10 mil per hour, often 12, that's for private work from home type work. Working for an institution is a different stories. The institutes often charge the companies that send their employees for lessons a fortune, but pay the teachers minimum. We pay our private spanish tutor 8 mil per hour, not sure if that is a gringo price, though I doubt it as she knows there would be 100 teachers lining up to take the job if she was taking advantage.

As for my own situation, I am here with my husband's job, so the health insurance etc is not an issue for me. I will be working at a school, but not full time. Set hours until the end of the year to replace a teacher that has left unexpectedly and they have augmented her schedule with a couple of other teachers that had some extra hours free. Works perfectly for my situation, youngest daughter just started full time school, oldest daughter is in the class affected by the changes and has so far had 4 english teachers this year, the last 2 of which were checking with her (the only non chilean in the class) to see if their pronunciation and grammar was correct. Also works perfectly for the school, they get a native english speaking qualified teacher (though not north American PDC, but we speak some bastardised version of english in aussie-land), at chilean rates without having to pay benefits. Win win, except for my 9 year old who is currently excited to have mum coming to teach, see how she feels in december .

I will probably negotiate for about 15 mil per hour, not here for the money for sure (it's less than half of what I would get for supply teaching in aus), but I would not have even told the school I was available if I did not expect some sort of lower salary. I am not sure that I would do it for 6 or 8 mil per hour, except for the fact that my daughter and her compañeros need some stability and a teacher who can not only speak the language but teach it too.

So, it seems maybe you're better off working either for yourself or in a colegio particular - for me private lessons aren't an option as people generally only want afternoons and evenings and I am busy with my kids at that time of day, so pretty happy with the situation as it is.

Surely some of the rates you quote are for elite schools like Nido, no?
I mean 20 mil an hour times 5 times 21 days a month...... That's not chump change in Chile for teaching.....

Hawaii pays 155 USD per day for substitute with teaching degree and it is expensive there.....

In aus it is $65 per hour for sub teaching, but I am surprised by the 20 mil per hr for chile. I imagine that would be schools like SC, Redlands, and likely Nido too. That was from one source though, and she does not work in the NE of Santiago, not sure if she was talking it up? But the 15 mil per hour here is from a few sources, so it's not a big leap from 15 to 20 when you consider the tendency to believe here that you get what you pay for, so the "better schools" must pay the better wages, right? And by and large that's true, attract and retain etc.

Steph wrote:In aus it is $65 per hour for sub teaching, but I am surprised by the 20 mil per hr for chile. I imagine that would be schools like SC, Redlands, and likely Nido too. That was from one source though, and she does not work in the NE of Santiago, not sure if she was talking it up? But the 15 mil per hour here is from a few sources, so it's not a big leap from 15 to 20 when you consider the tendency to believe here that you get what you pay for, so the "better schools" must pay the better wages, right? And by and large that's true, attract and retain etc.

Oh yeah I have no doubt about the figure but was just wanting context. I mean 2.2 million if you worked full time is a very good salary in Chile for many professions.....

65 AUD per hour? Awesome! Here in Canada in my province a teacher tops out at about 70k CDN per year at top increment.

Yep, in my home state a class room teacher tops out at about 75k pa and a principal at about 130k pa. 65 AUD per hr, would equate to about 65k pa if you worked every school day, 5hrs a day. but that would rarely happen. As with any casual job, it would be a relatively unreliable income depending on exactly where you live etc. I have no idea if that's the same in chile - would there be teachers who work casually and still get to work full time or almost full time? I guess there would be some, but it would not be the norm. I know in my case I will work at the casual rate this year, mostly because that is the fastest way (in terms of my visa etc) to get me into the job, but I bet if they wanted me to stay on next year, even to continue as part time, they would offer a contract rather than an hourly rate if it was going to save them some pesos.