Freelance teachers and trainers will find enormous variations in the fees available depending on whether they are working in the private or public sector.

Teaching can be really rewarding - and also extremely exhausting, especially if an hour's paid work turns into a day's actual work - or some nights' work, if loyalty to students built up over a year leads to over-involvement with assignment deadline panic.

Public sector colleges and universities often have fairly firmly set hourly rates - so the teacher's negotiations will be over how many hours they are paid for. As noted in the section on negotiating, pay is often for very nominal "teaching hours" and both sides need to be clear how many actual hours are expected.

Rates for private colleges are more flexible, and for commercial training extremely so. There the field is wide open for negotiation over price. In some cases the client will feel they've got better value if they've paid more - just as more expensive perfumes are per se better value than cheap ones.

Generally useful links: