Pros
Work from home, if there is work available, which is rarely. I’d say 70% of students are good.
Kontras
I will try to explain the cons as thoroughly as I can, and for the ease of understanding the bigger picture, I separate them into different sections. But to begin with, I would like to stress the fact that most of the 5 star reviews here are fake. They are either from their employees that work in their office, or recruiters who want to lure applicants, or certain teachers who call themselves ‘Teacher Reps’. Further, a few months ago there was an email circulation that ITG asked teachers to advertise its brand by leaving reviews on websites like Glassdoor, though indirectly. Due to their terrible reputation, this company had to rebrand itself. Search for ‘TutorABC Reviews’ to get a more logical insight into this company. They don’t seem to do any better even under the new name anyways. Scheduling: First and most importantly, iTutor doesn’t have enough students, so you won’t get scheduled sessions regularly. The situation wasn’t as bad up until a few months ago, but they recruited hundreds of new teachers, but didn’t manage to equally attract enough students. Now there is almost 3 teachers to 1 student. To give an example, you could book 5 hours with them, but might only get 2-3 sessions booked and each session is 25 minutes. So if you think you can make a living working here, think again. In addition, you might think you don’t have a session booked, only to realise that one has been added to your list just a few minutes before it actually starts. If you miss it, you get an absence, and 6 absences means you are out. So if you are not booked for any sessions, you kind of have to sit by your computer for the duration of 5 hours in case they decide to randomly add something. Rating: The rating system in place is flawed by design, aiming to minimise the earnings of teachers and maximising the company’s profit. To earn more money, you need to get a high rating in every session, and by high rating I mean 10. Anything below 10 and you lose money, and the company pockets that. Let me explain using numbers: There is a base rate + bonus system in place. Let’s say you have a 45-minute session with 6 students. If you are from the UK, your base rate for this session would be £6.92. If all students rate you 10, you can earn something around £0 for this session. But this is only in theory. In reality, you will get 1 or 2 students to rate you. And that can be anywhere between 1 to 10, but very often between 7 to 9. So if you get a 10 and a 9 in a session like this, you only get around £12-13, company pockets the rest (on top of what they already take from the students). When it comes to 25 minute sessions, the rating is for the whole month and there are different tiers. For example, if you average 9.86 to 9.99 you get certain amount, if you average 9.76 to 9.85…The real problem here is that you try your best the whole month and then on the last day a grumpy kid decides to give you a very low rating because I simply don’t want to be there and bang, you lose hundreds of pounds because the rating pushes your average down to a lower tier. And guess what, the company pockets that money. Further, you are not allowed to ask them to rate you, and they only rate when they are not happy (mostly in 45-minute sessions). You, as a teacher, lose. Regardless. Pay: The pay is shambolic, like everything else. Again, I will give you UK example. Base rate for 45-minute session is £6.92 and for 25-minute session £5.19. On average, all things considered, at the end of the month you will earn something around £8 to £9 per hour. This is not considering the times you have to spend on unpaid training, lesson preparation and all the hours you are not scheduled a session and have to sit there by the computer. If you are from the US, Canada or Australia, I believe the rate is almost the same in number, but in your own currency. For example, $5.19 USD or $5.19 CAD. If you are from any other countries and are not a native, this is considerably lower, I think around $2-3. Communication: All communications are in a very passive aggressive format. There is a threat of some sort in almost every email or message you receive from this company. They merely bully their employees. I genuinely feel sorry for people who have to work under such conditions. Students: Most students are misplaced in their levels. For example, you come across a student that is supposedly level 10 (12 is the highest) but can’t answer a simple question like ‘What did you do today’. On the other hand, you come across a supposedly level 4 student who should be level 9 in reality. What happens in both cases is that both these students would rate you low for 2 reasons: the former doesn’t understand anything and think it’s your fault, the latter is bored with the lesson plan and think it’s your fault. In addition, in many cases it is their parents that rate you. So if the kid is not doing well, your fault. When it comes to adults, they are very demanding and I think that’s because of all the false promises this company make to them to sign them up. For example, you have 4 students in a session and you have to allocate equal time to each. The trouble is that all of them want the full attention and talk-time. So at the end they are not happy and rate you low for it. And they only rate if they are not happy. Lesson plans: Most lesson plans are badly designed and very often you have to divert from it and teach your own lesson. A lot of them are also just ‘one word per page’ lesson plans. Good luck with that in a 45-minute session with an 8-year old.