Ten guides, one question: who do you want to be useful to?
The ten guides on this page share one feature: what you have already learned counts for more than stamina or a brand-new qualification. In every other respect they differ a great deal. Tutoring and teaching, childminding, after-school workshops and school transport escorting put you in front of children. Exam invigilation, exam marking and the school caretaker post make you work for an institution, with its calendar and its rules. The independent speaker, the public writer and the mentor to young entrepreneurs speak to adults and feel more like a personal project than a job.
So the useful question is not "which activity is easiest?" but "who do I want to be standing in front of, in what setting, and at what pace?" The sections below compare the guides on those three points, then on status and typical pitfalls.
With children: four guides, four levels of responsibility
The starting point is how alone you are during the assignment. The more you are the only adult with the child, the more the parents' trust and your own responsibility are engaged.
Teaching: private lessons and training
The guide on teaching in retirement describes three routes: going through a tutoring organisation that supplies the pupils, signing up with a matching platform, or finding pupils yourself. The further you move from the organisation, the more freedom you gain over fees and the more simplicity you lose. Income has to be worked out after counting preparation, travel and quiet months, because demand climbs before the June exams and falls away in summer.
Looking after children at home
This is the activity in which you are most alone with the children: school pick-up, snack, homework, sometimes dinner and bedtime. The guide separates the family that employs you directly, the home-services company and the platform. It stresses allergy instructions, emergency numbers in plain view, first-aid training for young children and checking the family's insurance.
Running after-school workshops
Here you are no longer alone: the workshop sits inside a team, a registered venue and an educational project. Slots are short and broken up, at midday, at the end of the day or on Wednesdays. An activity-leader qualification of the BAFA type is often expected, along with a suitability check. The difficulty is pedagogical: three minutes of instructions and twenty minutes of hands-on work hold six-year-olds better than half an hour of talking.
Escorting on a school bus
The escort does not drive. He or she helps the little ones on board, checks seat belts and hands each child to the right adult. There are two stretches a day, morning and late afternoon, following the school calendar, with several free hours in between. It is the most tightly targeted commitment of the series, with little preparation and few prospects of progression.
For an institution: invigilating, marking, looking after the premises
These three guides share a trait: you do not choose the rules or the calendar, you apply them. In exchange the framework is clear.
Invigilating exams
The invigilator marks nothing and judges nothing: the job is to make sure the conditions of the paper are respected, from welcoming candidates to collecting scripts. No particular qualification is usually required. Pay is by the session, and several services calculate it on the gross hourly minimum wage; payment often arrives several weeks after the assignment. Applications go to education authorities, universities and certification bodies, each running its own recruitment campaign.
Marking exams
Marking asks for the opposite: a solid command of the subject and of the level being assessed. You apply a mark scheme imposed by the organiser, after a standardisation meeting that guarantees equal treatment of candidates, usually on scanned scripts. Batches arrive all at once and demand several consecutive days of tight work. Some language certificates require a specific accreditation that does not follow automatically from a teaching career.
Becoming a school caretaker
The caretaker watches over the buildings, not the pupils: opening up, controlling access, greeting visitors, reporting faults. The employer is generally the local authority, with permanent staff recruited by competition or directly at the entry grade, and fixed-term staff for cover. It is the only guide in the group that can lead to a stable post, full or part time, though with a sometimes wide working day and breaks in the middle. Tied accommodation is occasionally offered: it links your home to your job and deserves a close read.
With adults: speaking, writing, mentoring
These three activities rest on no collective recruitment. Nobody summons you: you have to become known, define what you offer and decide whether you invoice.
Independent speaker
The guide reminds you that a talk is not a career story. You need a precise subject that answers a question organisers are already asking, an outline tested on a demanding audience, a short presentation file and a video sample. Speaker agencies list newcomers slowly, and first appearances are often badly paid or unpaid. Invoicing follows, generally as a micro-business.
Public writer
The text remains the client's own, in the client's words and tone. The work can be done at a voluntary drop-in session, as a self-employed professional or as a life-story biographer. The title is not regulated, so reputation and clear pricing matter. The limit is sharp: helping to word a request is not the same as telling someone which legal step to take.
Mentor to young entrepreneurs
Most often unpaid, within sponsorship networks, associations of former managers or incubators. Paid coaching exists, but it is a separate consulting offer with a status and invoices. Attitude counts for more than expertise: listen before advising, help people decide without deciding for them, and know when to pass the matter to a lawyer or an accountant.
The ten guides at a glance
- Alone or in a team: alone with the child for childminding and home lessons; in a team for after-school work, school buses and caretaking; alone with your own diary for speaking, writing and mentoring.
- Pace: a few days a year for invigilating and marking; the school year for workshops, buses and mentoring; a daily presence for the school caretaker.
- Way in: a summons or an application to an exam office; a municipal job notice for the caretaker; a family, a platform or an organisation for childminding and lessons; your own network for the three adult-facing activities.
- Background checks: common whenever a minor is involved, which means childminding, workshops, school buses and lessons, and sometimes requested for exams too.
- Income: always supplementary and irregular; no guide sets an amount.
Status and contract: seven forms not to confuse
The same word, "working", covers very different situations here, and mixing them up is one of the commonest mistakes.
- A session fee pays actual hours on a limited assignment: exams, sometimes marking.
- A local-authority or fixed-term contract applies to the school caretaker and, depending on the area, to the bus escort.
- The private employer arrangement fits childminding: contract and payslip drawn up with the family.
- An employee of an organisation is the case with tutoring companies and home-service firms.
- The micro-business is the route for speakers, public writers and self-employed teachers.
- Volunteering is the norm for association-based mentoring and writing drop-ins.
- The invoiced consulting service is what a paid mentoring offer amounts to.
On income, one single precaution applies to every guide in this group: before you sign or register, get your pension body to tell you in writing how taking up work changes your pension.
Pitfalls specific to each activity
- Private lessons: promising marks rather than a method, and leaving cancellation rules vague.
- Childminding: housework creeping in without agreement, and hours that stretch with no compensation.
- After-school work: underestimating the noise fatigue and the strain on the back from working on the floor or at a low table.
- School bus: improvising when nobody is waiting for the child at the stop instead of following the written instruction.
- Invigilation: arriving at the last minute, letting a phone ring, or committing before working out the journey.
- Marking: clinging to your own criteria when the mark scheme is the organiser's.
- School caretaker: mistaking it for a pupil-supervision job, or accepting accommodation without reading what happens when the contract ends.
- Speaking: telling your career story rather than delivering one idea, and using anecdotes from a former employer without making them anonymous.
- Public writing: fees set too low, and no final written approval of the text by the client.
- Mentoring: telling people what to do instead of clarifying their choice, and being reachable at all hours because no framework was agreed.
Choosing which guide to open first
A few typical profiles help you decide, though none is a rule.
- You have taught: start with exam marking and invigilation to test the calendar, then compare with private lessons.
- You come from business: mentoring and speaking make the most of a manager's or director's record; the first is simpler to start, the second needs a presentation file.
- You have written a lot: the public writer suits you, provided you accept listening more than typing.
- You like children but not the solitude of childminding: prefer after-school work or the school-bus escort, where responsibility is shared.
- You want a stable framework with no teaching role: look at the school caretaker post and its working hours.
- You want to stay free: choose the most occasional activities, invigilating and marking, and accept an uneven income.
Read two or three guides in full, note what puts you off, and keep the activity you can sustain without weariness for a whole season.