Determine Your Online Preschool Tuition Rates

Whether you are just starting on your preschool journey, thinking of adding an online component to your existing local preschool, or transitioning to an only online preschool model, you may be wondering how much to charge for your online preschool tuition. Regardless of where you teach in the world, use these factors to decide. You may be surprised that you can make more teaching online preschool than you can teaching local preschool!

Local Preschool Versus Online Preschool

Other than the obvious differences between local and online preschool, the number of hours you need to teach varies also. A local preschool typically meets about 2 ½ hours a day on either a M-W-F schedule, a T-Th schedule, or a M-F schedule.

An online class meets on the same days, but instead of a 2 ½ hour class, the online class would have a 30-minute Teaching Time segment and a 30-minute Preschool Pals segment. The Teaching Time part can be pre-recorded.

This is where it gets good! If you were going to teach four different T-Th classes of 10 children each here is an example of what that might look like:

• T-Th 12-12:30 p.m. (Class A)
• T-Th 12:30 – 1 p.m. (Class B)
• T-Th   1 – 1:30 p.m. (Class C)
• T-Th 1:30 – 2  p.m. (Class D)

Notice these are only 30-minute classes. The Teaching Time session can be prerecorded and sent to each of these students, and then they would attend their live Preschool Pals portion of their class during their allotted class time.

So, if you add up the Teaching Time schedule you get four 30-minute classes (4 X 30) for a total of 120 minutes or 2 hours. Add the 30-minute teaching time to that and that is a total of only 2 ½ hours of teaching on each day for a total of only 5 hours spent teaching each week.

Now consider this, that’s four classes of 10 students each: 4 X 10 = 40 students! You would be teaching 40 students in only 2 ½ hours a week!

The Formula To Use To Figure Out How Much To Charge For Online Preschool Tuition

That was a lot of numbers, but how does that translate into more money than a local preschool?  To figure out how much to charge for your online preschool tuition, calculate how much money you need to make each month. Then figure out how many students you need, at what rate, to make that amount of money each month. For example:

• You need to make $4,000/month

40 students paying $100 tuition each month = $4,000

OR

• You need to make $3000/month

40 students paying $75 tuition each month = $3,000

OR

• You need $3,500/month

30 students paying $120 tuition each month = $3,600

Play around with the formula until you get your ideal number of students, at the ideal rate to earn the amount you want to make each month.

How To Add Value To Your Online Preschool

To warrant charging a premium tuition rate, you need to add value to your preschool. The higher the perceived value of your classes, the higher tuition the parents will pay. Here are some ways to add value to your online preschool classes:

• Keep class sizes small
• Offer free subscriptions to ABC Mouse to each family
• Email free printable worksheets to the parents
• Send the links to every video used in your online classes (songs, games, virtual field trips, etc.) to the parents
• Remember your student’s birthdays with a special email greeting

There is a lot of flexibility in how much to charge for your online preschool tuition; create your preschool to earn however much money you want it to make.