Teacher (Private Education) — Job Description & Salary in Germany

Common hiring mistakes for this role

The most common bad hires for teachers in the private sector happen before the job ad even goes live: the wrong sector, the wrong qualification bar, or a skipped practical test.

1. 01

   Using this guide for a public-school civil-service role

   Public schools hire through the regional school authority (Landesschulamt) or the state ministry of education, usually as civil servants or under the TV-L collective agreement, with their own application portal and selection process. This template, the salary band and the sourcing channels apply to the private sector: independently run private schools, language schools, tutoring institutes, private nurseries, and corporate training providers. Applying them unchanged to a public-sector role advertises the wrong salary band and bypasses civil-service law or the TV-L, which is the actual legal basis there.

2. 02

   Mixing up the qualification bar for Ersatzschule and Ergänzungsschule

   Hiring for an Ersatzschule without checking whether the teaching permit is likely to be approved risks a rejected application after the contract is already signed, right when the new teacher is supposed to be in front of the class. Conversely, requiring a completed teaching degree for a tutoring institute or language school filters out capable career changers for no legal reason and needlessly narrows the candidate pool. Establish your own institution's type before you write the requirements.

3. 03

   No trial lesson before signing the contract

   References and certificates show subject depth, but not whether someone can hold a group of fifteen eleven-year-olds' attention for 45 minutes. A paid trial lesson before the final decision, with real or simulated learners, is standard practice in education and reveals weaknesses that stay invisible in an interview alone. Skipping this step under time pressure tends to mean replacing the teacher again after the probation period.

4. 04

   Only requesting the enhanced certificate of good conduct after the contract is signed

   For roles with regular contact with minors, the enhanced certificate of good conduct is part of the hiring decision itself. Requesting it only after the contract is signed, and then getting a relevant result, leaves the institution facing a probationary dismissal instead of a clean rejection. Request the document at the latest before the final offer, ideally already during the interview.

5. 05

   Setting up a freelance contract without a status check

   A freelance contract with fixed weekly hours, a set teaching location, and integration into the institute's own timetable often looks like employment for social-security purposes, regardless of what the contract is titled. A later audit by the German Pension Insurance (Deutsche Rentenversicherung) can trigger back payments covering several years, as the Goethe-Institut case in 2017 showed. A status determination procedure (Statusfeststellungsverfahren) before the contract starts costs little time and protects against exactly this risk.