During April and May, I know many teachers take time to revise their piano policies. So I thought I’d let you know how this process usually works for me and find out what works for you as well.
As I revise my policies, I ask myself the following questions:
- What kinds of problems with payments occurred in the last year?
- What kinds of scheduling problems occurred?
- What kinds of misunderstandings occurred with parents or students?
- What kinds of problems in general occurred?
And of course, the follow up question:
- What can I do to fix these problems?
Some of the most common problems that occur in teaching studios include issues with makeup lessons, payment scheduling, tuition, and scheduling issues. So, I thought that I would offer some advice on each of these issues for your consideration.
Makeup Lessons
By far, the most often discussed business issue amongst piano teachers is makeup lessons. I wrote a lengthy article on this last year titled “To Give or Not To Give Makeup Lessons” in which I discussed 8 options for makeup lessons. But, I’ll just summarize my favorite option: No makeups. You have reserved a specific number of minutes for each of your students and you should not be required to offer 2x that number of minutes with a makeup simply because they cannot be there. Your time with your family, personal time, etc. is something that you must protect with all your might! Once you set a policy of no makeups and enforce it, your families will adjust. See the Makeup Lessons article to view wording to put into your policy which helps explain this option. And should you decide that “no makeups” is not for you, that article give you other options.
Payment Scheduling
If you are currently charging per lesson, I would strongly encourage you to please stop. Charging by the lesson communicates that you only spend 30 minutes a week (or whatever the lesson time) for each student, which we all know is not true. Think of all the hours you spend finding music for each student, attending teachers meetings that help you be a better teacher, administrative tasks, lesson planning, etc. Your families should realize that they are paying for much more than the lesson time and the best way to do this is to charge a “tuition” rather than a per-lesson fee. You can do this any number of ways, but here is one example.
Take the total number of weeks you will teach in a year (remember to give yourself a number of vacation weeks and optional days off) multiplied by the price you wish to collect per lesson/weekly effort (remembering that its okay for you to think this way…not your families). Then, you can divide that number by the number of months in which you wish to collect this amount. For example, say I want to teach only 34 weeks in the school year. I want to charge $30 per weekly lesson and I want to receive payments from September through May (9 months). My formula looks like this: 34 x 30 / 9 = 113. So, my families will pay $113 per month from September through May regardless of the number of lessons in each month.
Requiring families to pay the same amount each month is helpful for a variety of reasons:
- Families will not be as prone to thinking about a “per lesson” price structure.
- Your families will be able to budget much more accurately.
- You will be able to budget accurately and have a consistent paycheck.
- Accounting is much easier.
Of course, your summer tuition can be calculated in the same way for the months of June-August, though you may want to consider a registration fee for the month of August should you choose to take a month off. See Kristin’s great post about how to do this. You may also want to consider a tuition that covers the entire year as I do. I collect the same tuition every month of the year because my summer tuition is rolled into my tuition for the school year. So even in July, when I often take the entire month off, I still collect the same amount of money. Occasionally, parents will question this, but I just remind them that they are paying for lessons that have already occurred and that the payment structure is for their convenience so that they can budget easily.
Help Parents Understand Tuition
Print and hand out this free “Where Does My Tuition Go?” brochure to help parents understand that they are paying for much more than just the minutes you spend with the student in the lesson. It is too easy for parents to “do the math” to try to figure out what you make an hour, but this brochure helps explain that their payment pays for much more than what they see. It also reminds them that you are not just the lady down the street teaching piano for fun, you are a professional and conduct your business affairs in a business like manner.
Help Others Respect Your Time
One of the best things I have ever done is to place a small digital clock just outside my door and require that students not ring the doorbell until the clock displays their start time. I tell parents that this helps make sure that every student gets quality time for every minute of their lesson. I also tell them that my breaks help keep me from being a grouchy teacher and they would do well to make sure they follow this policy. (I say this very gently, but directly.) To see more information about the clock and to read ideas on troubleshooting problems, read Preparing for Fall: Respecting Your Time.
What kinds of problems did you have last year that you would like to fix this year through a change in policy?
You’re reading my mind. I spent the morning revising my policy, Wendy. I’m switching over to a tuition plan (finally). I ran into a problem with so many holiday’s falling on Mondays. It ended up that the Monday students had a total of 45 lessons whereas the Tue and Wed students had 48 lessons during the year. My solution was to take the extra 6 tues and wed and make them “make-up lesson” days. That way all students will have 45 scheduled lessons for the year, and I get a scheduled vacation.
Thank you for a very useful and informative post. I do not offer “make up” or “catch up” lessons – if a student misses a lesson, for whatever reason, I do not make it up, except in very exceptional circumstances (e.g. if an exam is upcoming). If I have to cancel a lesson, I usually refund it. I’m too busy these days to keep track of carried over lessons – it’s easier for me to just forfeit the fee. Fortunately, it happens very rarely.
I agree that it is important for parents (and students!) to understand that the teacher is not just working during those 30 mins when she’s teaching the little darling. Those of us who are committed and conscientious teachers do a huge amount of prep work, all the time.
I had a couple of “problem students” last term – an adult who does not practice, and a child who has attention issues (he’s not ADHD, just inattentive). Conversations with the adult, and the child’s mother sorted these things out. So my advice is not to be afraid to discuss issues with students/their parents. Sometimes things are revealed that are not always obvious. It clears the air and helps one to stop resenting a problem student (as I was). Sadly, the adult is not practising much more, but I have decided that it’s her choice: she pays my fees without complaint! Good luck for the new term, everyone! FRAN 🙂
What excellent, practical and thought-out advice! Thanks very much for the post.
I have not raised my rates in the four years my studio has been opened. Do I dare raise them even though I still don’t have the number of students I’d like? There is money is my community–it just seems that people would rather pay the $10 a half hour person, or the person who is mainly a singer, etc. etc.
Hi Mary,
That’s a difficult question to answer and it’s definitely one you’ll say “hindsights 20/20” after making it! Ordinarily, I would say, “Yes! By all means raise your rates.” But I think there is great fear in the economy getting even worse, and that fear may be big factors in people’s decisions. However, I think you have to remember that you too are experiencing higher costs of living and like all the restaurants and grocery stores, YOU have to stay in business by raising your rates so that you can make a living. In the end, I think teachers make bad business decisions because they base them on empathy rather than on good accounting/business principles.
Whatever you do this year, I think you must add something like this in your policy, “Families should expect a yearly increase in rates.” I have this in my policy, “Families should expect a 3-5% yearly increase in tuition rates.” In actuality, I don’t increase that much now that I am at a “fair” rate. But, I do consult the consumer price index every year to determine how much my groceries and other things have increased over the last year. Then, I use that and other factors to decide on my rate increase. One year, I didn’t increase my tuition, but rather taught 1 less week during the year, so I had one extra week of vacation, but the same amount of money. There are lots of creative ways you can make increases.
There are a lot of concerns in your comment and one of them that may be explored in later posts is marketing. So, I’ll put that on my list of topics to talk about in the future.
It’s not direct advice, but for now I’d tell you…if you need to make more money and you are not charging what you are worth, then I would say increase your tuition. But, doing that is an art and you’ll need to remind all of your families why YOU are the best teacher and why their money is well invested in you rather than someone else. Perhaps a new motivation program or summer piano camp, or fall challenge can be unveiled at the same time you increase your rates so that they can immediately see why you are worthy of the raise.
Hope that helps!