Skooli

What is Skooli?

Skooli is an online tutoring platform that enlists freelancers to tutor in academic subjects ranging from English to higher math.

How it works

To become a tutor for Skooli, candidates must have a bachelors or masters degree or teaching certificate. And you’ll need proof of that, plus a government-issued ID, and a copy of a criminal record check completed within the past six months.

Assuming you have all that, you’re invited to fill out a detailed profile, including what subjects and grades you can teach. If your skills are needed on the platform, you’ll be contacted by a Skooli representative for an online interview. Assuming you pass that, you’ll have access to tutoring jobs on the platform.

Skooli Review:

Skooli is one of dozens of online tutoring platforms that enlists freelancers to teach subjects ranging from basic reading to higher math. The site, which once specialized in just math instruction, pays tutors by the minute, with a 15-minute minimum, to teach online.

Tutors can either be enlisted for scheduled sessions, which have a set start and end time. Or they can essentially be on-call, taking any tutoring questions in their area of expertise during the time they agree to be online.

Where earning $25 an hour is a fine rate for some types of tutoring, Skooli’s method of paying tutors becomes problematic with these on-call sessions. That’s because you’re only paid for the engaged minute. So you might earn just $6.25 for a 15-minute session and not have another session to fill the rest of your hour.

Far and away this is the biggest complaint we hear about this site. Tutors sit online for hours and only get a few minutes of work.

Wealth of competition

With other types of side gigs, getting paid 42 cents a minute might not be considered too bad. But in the highly-competitive online tutoring market, tutors can do so much better. Sites like Wyzant, TutorOcean and LessonFace allow tutors to set their own rates and schedules. And that means you’re never online without getting paid.

Meanwhile, Varsity Tutors sets tutor pay, like Skooli. But it pays by the hour, not the minute. So you don’t have to worry about getting paid for only a fraction of an hour.

And Skooli asks for a lot of credentials for a site that pays so modestly. With similar credentials, you could tutor for  Chelsea International Education and potentially earn far more.

Getting paid

You can only cash out your pay once you accumulate $100. So, if you don’t get a lot of work here, you could be waiting for your money for a long, long time.

Once you reach the $100 threshold, you send in a cash-out request and the site sends the money to your PayPal account.

Bad reviews

Not surprisingly, freelancers who tutor with Skooli review the site negatively for a combination of reasons — bad pay; lack of students; and a high cash-out threshold that made it impossible to leave the platform without losing earnings.

And worse…

The site’s terms also say that Skooli reserves the right to modify the amount it pays tutors at any time. The site says it will take “reasonable efforts” to notify tutors if pay terms change. But you’re only entitled to what Skooli pays you, regardless of what you were promised.

Recommendations

There are worse places to tutor, but decent tutors can do so much better than Skooli. (If you still want to sign up with Skooli, you can find the site here.)

Our top recommendation in this space is Wyzant, one of the largest and best-established sites in the tutoring industry. Wyzant lets you set your own rates and schedule. Some tutors, particularly in math and science, earn hundreds of dollars per hour here. But Wyzant supports tutors in any subject, from academics to art. You can sign up with Wyzant here.

What their users say (from Glassdoor)

Low conversion rate between student interest to paying customer

Updated 5/9/2024