Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Plans to take the leap in tuition

Helpful suggestions here. My input would be to have the same rates for everyone. With word-of-mouth advertising often being a piano teacher's best source of new clients, it is confusing for people to hear two different rates drifting around. I've always found that by being completely upfront with parents, and by giving lots of notice, people are usually accommodating so long as the change in price is not drastic and you have not raised the rates recently in substantial amounts.

My rates went up around 4% this year after staying the same for the past two years. Before that I would increase a small amount every year in January and have never had anyone complain about it. I send out a letter in December which gives details of new lesson fees and term dates for the coming year. Usually I include a nice Christmas message to soften the blow!!

My students pay a fixed fee every month and the hourly rate is slightly lower the longer lesson they have. It's very rare that I have to miss lessons but recently I have been thinking about increasing other activities like accompaniment and performing and was also worried about dealing with missed lessons. Eventually I decided the best way round it is to credit the missed lesson fee to the next months payment. So they pay the regular fee but if I have to miss and can't make up they get a reduction the following month. No real problems so far.

How long have you done this? So if there are 5 Fridays in a month, they pay the same amount as when there are 4?

Yes that's right. I have been doing this for several years now, ever since I worked out how much money I was losing due to cancellations on a pay as you go basis.

I suppose it's what most here call paying 'tuition'. There is the annual cost of lessons which gets divided into equal monthly payments so it makes no difference how many lessons are in any particular month. Of course it's very easy to work out the cost of one lesson which I can credit if I am forced to miss and can't make it up.

See, I currently charge tuition per semester, and students can either pay for the whole semester upfront, or pay per month. The per month amount is divided evenly so each month's payment is the same. This is fine when I have to miss lessons, but for the semester students it's harder to credit them for missed lessons since they don't pay very frequently. Then I end up owing them lessons. Since I had to take the month of April off, it was fine for the monthly students but not for the semester ones, and I will have to go into the summer making up those lessons. It's that sort of thing I'm trying to avoid. I suppose I can keep my structure pretty much the same and simply have everyone on the monthly payments.

I do the same as Morodiene. Matter of fact, this is the first year I've even offered the option of paying the set monthly fee. Years past, I just charged by the semester. I only have 4 families choosing the monthly pay option. It ends up being $10 more for the semester, for the trouble of collecting each month (and also charging late fees).

I don't offer any discounts. Families with more than one student get the benefit of more computer time, as I allow both students to come for the same time and then switch them off.

I think you'll be surprised how many people will NOT quit lessons because of cost, and how much more respect you'll have.

Chris:
Do you credit the student if he is forced to miss a lesson and can't make it up?
I have parents who ask me to do this

Barb, what do you mean by "forced?"

Hi Barb, I would only credit the student in exceptional circumstances in which case I use my discretion. My policy states that missed lessons will be charged for and I try not to make exceptions (although it doesn't stop them asking). It puts me in control as I have already had the fees and it's up to me whether I decide to offer a credit. Most of the time I can make it up so it's not a problem but sometimes it isn't possible.

Great question/point made

poor word choice on my part. Of course they are not "forced" to cancel lessons most of the time (see Betty's thread today on why people cancel lessons, they are at Disneyland and forgot to reschedule, etc.)
I find that when I bend my own rules "trying to be nice" by refunding a missed lesson, it comes back to bite me later. Word gets out that I issued someone a credit towards their next month's bill, and this opens the door. It's hard to say "no" if you've been saying "yes" to credits/refunds even on rare occasions, IMO.

I would charge them all the same. I used to charge different fees, but it just isn't fair. Also as someone pointed out, it isn't any less work for a long time student versus a new one. For that reason I charge full price for families too. Actaully, for families I should charge more because I'm usually babysitting the other student while the other is having a lesson! (I used to charge less for families too, but it makes no difference in them staying/leaving so what's the point?)

Good point. I also used to charge a discount for families, until I had a family of 3 kids and two of them needed longer lessons for which I didn't have a discount figured. Whenever I go to take a coaching lesson with someone, they charge by the hour. So why should my hour be less than two half hour students from different families? Making concessions for a family that may be having financial difficulties is something different and done as needed.

I currently charge one thing for adult sand another for grade school students, because I offer a group lesson to the grade school students. However, having two or more pricing tiers is very complicated, and I'm going to just have one hourly rate for everyone.

I have been having month-to-month payments since I began teaching. I have a completely different rating system. I have rates based on the students' ages and they span for two years. The families that have these plans seem to like it. Each payment plan has a discount built in for family blocks. I have found this to be convenient for me. So at the interview, I'm able to sell these plans and get an extra student in the process. The accounting does not bother me and I have an accurate spreadsheet to keep track of all of the plans.

For anyone interested:

Repeat after me 10 times, changing the inflection in your voice until you find one that sounds like the you that means it:

"I am no longer able to give credits for missed lessons."

Followed by a script or written message to parents:
"Lesson times are reserved for you in my schedule on an annual basis and even though we attempt a 100% attendance policy, we know that some of those weeks there will be absences because life is like that."

"For the times when you must choose between another activity, event or appointment and your piano lesson, you will be forfeiting your lesson unless you give a minimum of 24 hours notice of the absence. Rescheduling the lesson may be possible if I have time available that would fit for you. There is no rescheduling of a rescheduled lesson."

Tweak this however you want.

This way you offer the make up if you have time and it fits for you and they have given you lots of notice.

It points out that they had the conflict not you and that they chose the alternative to a regularly scheduled lesson, inconveniencing your schedule.

In the event they do this often, you just won't offer the rescheduled lesson. You'll feel that you are now offering a student two lessons a week from which they will choose.

If I were doing this: I would state Friday afternoons at 4:00 and save only 1 hour till 5:00. (Or, whatever your last teaching hour is each week). That way you can fit in 2 people if you need to, or give an hour make up for 1 person. Using the same hour every week for this establishes that you can use it or not, your preferance.

I don't do so well with the time it takes to keep multiple fee systems so I want to do the least in bookkeeping as possible - keeping it simple is my best answer for myself.

A piano teacher may feel he or she are working in behalf of the clients, but it's really best to put yourself first as "Numero Uno" as I think we must meet our needs first before we are prepared to be useful to anyone else. It's our time, our energy and our sanity at state.

Betty, your thoughts and ideas are encouraging to me, thank you!

I, too, will be raising my lesson fee beginning June 1, presenting this to families this coming week in the form of a revised studio policy which also states that there will be no credits for scheduled missed lessons. I have not taken a price increase in 4 years.
Question, along the lines of this thread:
How much notice do you typically give on taking an increase in tuition, and do you present a cover letter with the new studio policy reflecting the rate increase? (in other words, how much explanin' do you do?)

When I announced my big rate increase (50% over 2 years) I wrote a nice cover letter explaining all that I do. Parents have no idea what we do for their children and the continuing education that we do as well. I also wrote a paragraph about how many of my students participated in competitions and guild with high marks.

Betty, that's very sage advice you have offered. I believe we teachers need to hear this over and over.

Sorry to bring this thread back from the grave, but I'm still rethinking my rates and policy for next year. Something that I've observed is after taking April off from lessons, I was very excited to come back to teaching, so that was a good sign. However, I am starting to feel as frazzled as I did before I started and I'm still trying to nail down what the problem is.

I've done the "number crunching" that we talked about in another recent thread, and I've looked hard at what I'd like to make to come up with a reasonable solution. However, I'm still concerned that if I have as many contact hours as I have calculated I will need with my new rate, I will still feel as though I'm running around all the time.

Currently, I have roughly 17 contact hours (I say roughly because a couple of new students have started this week or will start next week), and this seems a bit much, despite scheduling in breaks after every 2-3 hours. For my new rates and what I'd like to be making, I would be fine with about 14 contact hours. My hopes is that is enough of a change in the Fall to make me feel more on top of things. My summer will be less contact hours, and spread out a bit, closer to 14 hours, but each student is only required to take 6 weeks, spread out over 9 available weeks, but ti should be a good enough gauge.

My question is, I think part of the problem is just sheer number of different students. Currently I have 15 half hour students and 8 45-minute students. Do you think it would help to increase some of those 30 minute students to 45 minutes? I'm pretty sure I will lose some of them for financial reasons - probably 4-5 of them so then I'd have to offer scholarship through Musiclink and then they'd be at 50% off. Sort of defeats the purpose of increasing rates. I would net a loss of income considering the rate increase and time increase of -$6.25 per lesson. Some of these kids I would lose are mostly younger piano students who have been with me for a few years.

Also, next year I have 5 graduating seniors, so I'd hate to lose students in the Fall and then hope to gain some by the next summer. Any thoughts?

Take care of yourself first. Feeling frazzled, lack of time, etc. is telling you to re-structure, IMO. I would go ahead and take your students to the 45 minute lesson time period. Take the step now to set up your studio the way you want it to work, and it seems like from what you have said, the 45 minute lessons work best.

I agree with Barb860. Take care of yourself, and set up the studio the way you want it. You might be surprised by how much less-frazzled you'll feel with the 45-minute lessons. Thirty-minute lessons feel frantic to me (such as when a student arrives late or has to leave early). Musiclink sounds like a good way to help students who can't manage the tuition change.

Good luck, and I hope you'll keep us posted.