Insurance

Please Note: I do NOT sell insurance! I am not an insurance agent nor can I recommend insurance companies. This article is to advise readers on the importance of having their own insurance and anyone wishing to arrange that should talk directly with an insurance broker or company.

Insurance is important for lots of reasons the main ones being to protect you from problems arising from teaching the general public. This can range from anything to an injury received during a class, to tripping or slipping on the pathway when entering or leaving the premises, and a myriad of other things. Many teachers don’t bother with insurance because they can’t believe that one of their students would ever sue them – ‘they are all so nice’ is a popular one!

However, what happens if a student trips over someone’s bag or on a loose paving slab and is injured badly enough to have to take time off work? Who pays for the time spent recovering or for any treatment necessary? It’s important that all teachers take out Public Liability Insurance, to cover these sorts of eventualities, just in case an accident should happen. Prices vary but on the whole they do go down commensurate with your age, experience and qualifications.

So how do I go about arranging for cover? There are several ways of doing this:

As an extension of your home insurance policy. Some insurance companies will offer this if you are only teaching one or two classes a week and offer limited liability.

Public Liability Insurance Policy. Many insurance companies are able to offer insurance to dance teachers under the same cover as they offer to small companies and the self employed. It may be worth asking your car or home insurer for a quotation.

You could consider joining Equity (the UK's performance arts union). Membership will give you Public Liability Insurance, plus access wide range of other services.

Dance UK offers an insurance scheme for members at competitive rates and includes cover for teaching as well as accident insurance for dancers.

Mosaic Arabic Dance Network (MADN). MADN has a teacher’s insurance scheme at quite reasonable rates. However, it should be noted that the people who run the scheme do not know many other dance teachers and they have been known to ask quite well-known and well-established teachers to prove that they are ‘of a suitable standard’. That said the scheme is very good value and well run.

If you are considering teaching classes locally and are looking for insurance the following will also help when it comes to getting a quote:

A First Aid Certificate.
Proof that you have been dancing for a reasonable period of time.
Some form of adult educator’s qualification. There are several available including City & Guilds and RSA courses.

If you are looking for formal training teacher currently there are two certificated courses run for Middle Eastern Dance teachers in the UK. One is the JWAAD course run by Josephine Wise and the other is the ASMED Teaching Diploma run by myself.

This article first appeared in Taqasim Magazine and was updated in July 2006