Summary
Your salary pays you for your contracted timetable. Teach & Earn lets your expertise earn beyond it: set your own availability and rate within your institution’s rules, teach only when you want, and build a verified teaching reputation.
Staff find it on the Exchange tab. Learners who have been invited to become peer tutors find it under Get help → Teach & Earn.
1. Build your profile
Open Professional Profile.
- Who you are to learners — the name they see, a one-line headline and a short bio. Do not include phone numbers, e-mail addresses or social media; learners reach you through skillSYMS, and the profile will not save with contact details in it.
- Roles — tutor, exam coach, industry expert and so on. Some roles are institution-controlled (facilitator, lecturer) and some are regulated (assessor, moderator, invigilator, marker). A regulated role needs a verified, current credential of the right kind — a good rating never substitutes for one — and regulated work is not bookable by learners.
- What you teach — search your institution’s curriculum and add the modules you teach. Matching works on the exact module, so this is the single most important part of your profile.
- Rates — your price per 30 minutes, within your institution’s band. You can add a small premium for instant (TeachNow) sessions and a minimum charge.
- Languages, delivery modes and accessibility — including voice-only and text-only sessions for learners with poor connections, and SASL or dyslexia-informed teaching if you offer them.
- Availability — the weekly times learners can book you.
Your relationship (institution staff, peer tutor or external expert) is set from who you are at the institution. It decides the commission you pay: institution staff teaching their own institution’s learners pay only a small infrastructure fee.
2. Credentials — your SkillPassport
Add the credentials that back your profile: qualifications, professional body membership, a police clearance, a child-safe clearance and so on. Each one is reviewed by a verifier at your institution, who records how it was checked.
Credentials expire. A police clearance, for instance, is valid for a year from verification. When one lapses, anything that depended on it — a regulated role, or teaching learners under 18 — stops automatically until it is renewed.
3. Submit for approval
Press Submit for approval. You will be asked to accept the code of conduct: help learners with their own work and never do it for them; never sign or alter evidence; keep all teaching and payment on skillSYMS; protect learner information; report safeguarding concerns. Your institution then approves you.
4. Go online
On My Teaching Business, switch on Available to Teach and choose the session lengths you will take. While you are online and the page is open, TeachNow requests appear with the topic, module, length and what you will earn. Accept quickly — the first educator to accept gets the session.
You go offline automatically after a while so that learners are never sent to someone who has walked away.
Open requests lists learners who asked for help in your subjects and are happy to receive offers. You can propose a time and price.
5. Deliver the session
Accepted sessions appear in My Sessions with a Join room button (a LiveOS room). The learner is already admitted; nobody else can walk in.
Before you start, read the Session Context Passport — it is everything the learner chose to share: their first name, module, objective, and possibly their latest result and any accommodation.
Afterwards press Mark delivered and write your notes: what you covered, what still needs work, and the next step. For an async question, your written answer is the delivery.
If the learner does not come, you can report a no-show 10 minutes after the start and you are paid as the cancellation policy says.
6. Earnings
When you mark a session delivered, your share shows immediately as pending. It becomes available when the learner confirms or the review window (usually 24 hours) closes. Tips go to you in full.
From Earnings you can withdraw (your institution pays it through its normal payout process and records the reference) or move earnings into your own learning wallet to pay for sessions yourself.
Demo earnings — while your institution is trying the Exchange out — can never be withdrawn.
Your reputation
Learners rate subject mastery, clarity, reliability, professionalism and preparation, not just stars. Where learners have later results on the same module, skillSYMS shows your observed learning impact — the change in their results after your sessions. You progress from New to Verified, Pro, Elite and Master Educator by quality and volume, and your platform commission falls as you do.