Tutoring Prices: Pakistan and the UK Compared

Our number, and the unit it comes in

We charge from PKR 6,000 a month for families in Pakistan and from USD 25 a month for families abroad. That buys live small-group classes on Zoom with a recording of every session, and it starts with one free demo class before any money changes hands.

It is a monthly subscription to a repeating class, not an hourly purchase — which is exactly where the comparison with British tutoring goes wrong. UK tutoring is quoted by the hour and Pakistani tutoring by the month, so the two look further apart than they are and then, once converted, closer than they are.

Do the arithmetic yourself, with the figure your local tutor has actually quoted. Take an hourly rate — say GBP 35, purely as a worked example — and multiply it by the lessons in a month. One a week is four or five, so roughly GBP 140 to GBP 175 for one hour a week of one-to-one attention.

Now set that beside a monthly fee for several group classes a week. Both numbers are real; they are buying different things. Reduce every option to two columns — cost per month, and hours of teaching per month — before anyone says the word value.

What the difference is actually made of

Four things account for nearly all of it, and only one of them is about teaching.

The largest by far is cost of living. A tutor’s rate has to cover their rent, their food and their household, and those cost a fraction as much in Lahore as in Manchester. Nothing about the mathematics being taught differs; the ground underneath the price does.

Second is class size: a tutor’s hour split between five students costs each family a fifth of what it costs to buy it whole. Third is overhead — no premises, no travel, no agency margin between you and the person teaching. Fourth is specialisation, and this one cuts both ways: a specialist in Lahore charges more than a generalist in Lahore, exactly as they do in London.

• Cost of living where the tutor lives — most of the gap
• Group size — a shared hour costs each family a share of it
• Overhead — no premises, no travel time, no agency margin
• Specialisation — a premium in both markets, not a difference between them

What the lower price does not buy

It does not buy anyone in the room. If the difficulty is that a child will not work unless somebody is physically sitting beside them, an online class at any price is the wrong purchase, and we would rather you spent the money on a local tutor who can be there.

It does not buy local knowledge of your particular school. A tutor in Pakistan does not know your child's teacher, has not seen the school's mock timetable and will not bump into the head of maths at parents' evening. Some of the value a good local tutor adds is exactly that, and it does not travel down a video call.

It does not buy unlimited hours. The time zone is a real constraint, and in Canada and the western United States a severe one. And a group class is a group class: if a child needs one-to-one attention, buying group teaching because it is cheap is not a saving.

Five questions that make two quotes comparable

Price is the last thing to compare, not the first, because two quotes are rarely for the same thing. These five questions turn them into the same thing.

Ask them of us as well. If the answers are vague from anyone, that is information.

• How many students are in the class, and what is the maximum?
• How long is each session and how many are there in a month?
• Which board and specification is being taught — 1MA1, 8300, J560, 0580?
• What happens if a session is missed: a recording, a credit, or nothing?
• Are past papers, mark schemes and marking of written work included, or extra?

One piece of context worth having

Private tutoring is not unusual in Britain. The Sutton Trust's 2026 polling found that 29% of secondary school students in England and Wales have had private tutoring at some point, rising to 45% in London against 27% in the rest of England and 24% in Wales.

That matters for how you read a price. A British parent is not choosing between tutoring and nothing; they are choosing inside a normal, widely used market, much of which is priced out of reach for the families who would benefit most. Online teaching from a lower-cost country is one of the few things that changes that arithmetic — which is the honest case for it, and a better one than any claim about being just as good for less.