If you've been putting off raising your fees, or you're never quite sure how to handle the annual policy update, this episode is for you. I walk you through the exact process I use every June: calculating the increase, checking the policy wording, and communicating the changes to families in a way that feels straightforward rather than awkward.
In this episode:
Why now (late May or June) is the right time to do this, and why leaving it until September is too late
How a small, predictable annual increase is far less disruptive than a larger one after years of holding steady
How to calculate your increase and what to say to families, including the per-lesson breakdown
Why ambiguous policy wording causes disputes, and how to spot it in your own document
My three-channel communication approach: email, physical copy, verbal mention
How getting signed agreements back before the summer holidays eliminates the September uncertainty
The three objections that hold teachers back, and the reframes that make them manageable
Links mentioned:
Monthly Billing Transition Toolkit (£12)
One to One Focus Session (60 min, £67)
If you bill monthly and you’re ready to work out next year’s rate, the Monthly Billing Transition Toolkit calculator tool does all the work for you. Check out the Free Studio Policy Template for tips on how to make your wording crystal clear.
If you find this episode useful, I’d be so grateful if you could leave a review on Apple Podcasts: it goes a long way in helping other music teachers find my podcast!
-
Part 1: Why an annual review matters
The families who never came back
Every September, without fail, there were one or two families who just didn't come back. No message, no notice, no explanation. They just disappeared over the summer. It also meant I had no idea what my income was going to look like in September, because I had no idea who was coming back.
Since then, I've fixed both of those things, with one simple process I do every June, and that's what this episode is all about. And don't worry: if the idea of raising your fees makes you feel slightly sick, stay with me, because I'm going to make it feel a lot simpler than it probably does right now.
This episode is about the annual review of your studio policy and fees, why now is exactly the right time to do it, and how to communicate the changes to families in a way that feels professional and simple, removing all the awkwardness none of us want.
The first time I increased my fees, I felt terrible. I thought about the email for ages and reworded it so many times. I felt really awkward, guilty and uncomfortable, even though I knew I needed to increase my fees. But since making it an annual change in my studio, all those horrible feelings have gone. It's just part of what I do every year in June, and my students and families know to expect it. There are no surprises, none of that fear of losing students, and no one is shocked that the fees have gone up. It's expected, and it's just part of my natural year.
I'm Victoria. I started teaching piano part-time 18 years ago, alongside a career in pharmaceutical market research, and I made pretty much every mistake you can make when it comes to running a teaching business. But today I run a thriving studio from my home on the south coast of England, with students I love and a waiting list I'm proud of. I started this podcast because I want that for you too.
If you've ever said yes to a reschedule you really didn't want to do, felt your heart sink when your phone buzzed with another last minute cancellation, or found yourself putting off increasing your fees for another year because the timing never feels quite right, this is the podcast for you. I've been there and come out the other side with a teaching business that lights me up every single day, and I'm here to help you do the same.
Why it matters
Up until four years ago, I never did an annual re-signing of my studio policy agreement. At the trial lesson, I'd give them the studio policy agreement to take home and read, and if they wanted to start lessons with me, they'd sign it and return it. And that was it. We'd never go back to it.
The problem with that is that your studio policies become something in the past, easily forgotten. It also doesn't allow you to increase your fees in a regular, predictable way, and it suggests your fees are going to stay the same forever, which isn't what we want. Even if that's where you are, it's where I was too, and it's okay. It's all right to want to stay there and feel comfortable with your rates as they are, even if they've been the same for a few years.
So here's why reviewing your studio policy annually, including your fees, matters. If you haven't raised your fees for several years, you're essentially working for less. Because of inflation, your spending power is lower than it was in each previous year. The price of everything has gone up for everyone, down to groceries and all the bills: electricity, gas, everything. If your teaching fee has stayed the same, you're effectively earning less. That's point number one, and it's a really important one.
Secondly, if your families and students don't receive a new agreement every year, that information just gets left in the past. They won't hold on to the agreement, or they'll file it away somewhere and forget where it is. That leaves you more open to all the things we don't want. If you have a policy that you don't reschedule lessons, and lessons don't carry over into the next term or month, you've got nothing to back you up when parents and students ask for reschedules, or to pause lessons during an exam period, or any of those things. So having an agreement that is updated and re-signed by each student or parent every year avoids these difficult situations later in the year. You've got the agreement, they've got their copy, and it's fresh in their memory. It just makes everything so much easier.
Sense check your wording
It's also a great opportunity to read through your studio policy wording again, as if you were a parent or student reading it for the first time, to sense check it, see if it makes sense, and see if there's any ambiguity. You could also ask a friend to read your studio policy agreement and give their honest opinion. Do they understand what each of the clauses means? Or is it so convoluted that something needs to be done about it? This is the perfect opportunity to do that.
If you have any ambiguous wording, it opens the door to disputes, because you'll read it one way, and parents or students might read it another. Then you get into really uncomfortable conversations, with misunderstanding, miscommunication and disappointment on both sides. So this is a really important way to avoid all of that.
Why now, and not September
Making these changes at this point in the academic year is really helpful for avoiding last-minute communication, where families might feel ambushed. If you change your rates and your policies at the last minute, they don't have time to absorb it and decide about continuing. It just feels a bit too pressured, and it comes across as slightly unprofessional too. So giving them a good amount of notice before the summer holidays of any changes is respectful and professional, and it makes life easier for everyone.
The summer holidays are not a time to expect parents to do admin. Speaking as a parent myself, there's always a last-minute flurry in the last couple of weeks of the summer holidays when you get round to doing all those things, like working out which days you'll be able to collect your kids from clubs, or signing them up for swimming lessons, music lessons, sports or things like that.
You don't want to be in the position, in the last two weeks before the autumn term starts, of not knowing exactly how many students will show up in that first week, or who's on board. Don't forget that we need to do our planning over the summer as well. Yes, we need a break, and yes, we get to those last couple of weeks; unless you're super organised, and I applaud you if you are, and get it all done at the beginning of the summer holidays. I don't tend to do that. I get my head back into teaching mode in the last couple of weeks of the summer holidays, and I review each student. I think about their progress and goals, and what I want to help them achieve in the next academic year, and certainly in the next term. So I'll be ordering books and preparing materials and all the rest of it.
Knowing exactly who's coming back makes that much easier, much simpler and less of a headache. We don't want all this uncertainty right before we start a new academic year. We want to go into it feeling confident and refreshed, and this annual review in June is the way to do that. This is how you get that lovely, peaceful start to the new academic year in September.
Part 2: My annual review, step by step
A routine at the same time every year
My annual studio policy review looks something like this. We get to the summer term and have half term. As I'm recording, we're just at the end of our summer half term. That's when I open up my studio policy agreement and read it through with as fresh a pair of eyes as I can, to be objective and really understand how the wording would come across to a parent or student, new or existing.
I do this review at the same time every year as a routine, so it doesn't become a big looming thing: "Oh, I know I'm supposed to increase my fees and check my wording and think through my policies again." This is where, if you're not quite established in the mindset of being a professional music teacher, those little doubts and worries can sneak in and get you to change your wording and make things more open and ambiguous. So when you're editing your studio policy agreement, be careful not to be in the frame of mind of "Oh, we'll just let things slide." That's not going to work.
By making it a regular thing at the same point in the academic year, every single year, families come to expect it, and it stops being a big deal, both inside your head and for your students. In fact, in the last couple of weeks before we stopped for half term, one of my adult students said, "You're going to be increasing your fees soon, aren't you? They'll go up in September. I'll hold off setting up my standing order."
So without me even mentioning it, she knew it was part of the process, because she's been with me for a few years now. That made me feel so good, because there was no judgement. It had nothing to do with "Oh, you're increasing your rates". It was the practicality of "I was just about to set up my standing order, but I'll wait until your new fees are in and set it up for September", which is great, because they're on board with the automation side of monthly billing. So that was quite a nice, unexpected mini conversation at the end of her lesson. It shows how beneficial it is to make this a regular annual update of your studio policies and fees, because when everyone expects it, it removes any lingering doubt or guilt you might feel about increasing your fees or tightening up your policy.
Aren't we just giving them a chance to quit?
This late May to June window is ideal for a change that comes into effect in September, because you give your families enough notice to take on board the changes (I'll talk about how that's all communicated in a bit), and to reflect and decide, "Yes, we want to continue with lessons," or "No, we'd like our child to try something else."
That might strike fear into your heart: "Hang on, are we inviting them to leave?" But we're really not. It's one of the big fears we have when we consider an annual re-signing of the studio policy agreement. It feels as if asking families to re-sign gives them a chance to quit. I'd like to reframe that. Effectively we are giving them that chance, but that doesn't mean they'll quit.
In my experience, very few do, if any. I think I've had the odd one, maybe once or twice, when I've sent out the annual update with the new fees. But it was never anything to do with the increase in fees. It was always one of my young students who had been struggling with practice for a while, and their parents had already had discussions with me, and with the child, about maybe stopping if practice didn't improve. So none of it was ever a surprise.
The annual review and re-signing gives parents the opportunity to reflect: "Is it worthwhile for my child to keep doing this?" And it gives students who aren't the right fit for you, who aren't devoted to learning the piano (or whatever your instrument is), the chance to leave. That's okay. If they leave, they're making space for your ideal students. They're not your ideal students, are they? If practice is a real struggle and they're not making progress, you know it. We can all feel it when students struggle with practice. You can see they enjoy it, but there's only so much you can do from your side, and the parents can do from theirs, especially as children get a bit older, because preteens want their autonomy. They want more control over what they do and what they like and don't like.
So it's quite a useful exercise that, I'll say it, strips out the non-ideal students. If anyone leaves, it's those. In my experience, and from everyone I've spoken to (and I speak to a lot of teachers online), it's never the case that an ideal student suddenly decides to quit off the back of an updated studio policy. There'll be something else going on: they're changing schools, going from junior school to senior school, or moving house quite far away, so it's less feasible and they'd like to find a new teacher nearer to them.
Or, with young students, they might want to explore another hobby. As we know, when young students take on too many hobbies alongside piano, there's not enough time dedicated to learning the piano, or any musical instrument, to make it worthwhile. In my opinion, you can't do a tiny bit of everything and gain any expertise. And that's okay. Children need to explore different hobbies and activities, and there's always the option of coming back to you, or joining your waiting list if you're at that point.
Families are still in planning mode
The other benefit of doing it at the end of May or beginning of June is that families are in the right headspace for back to school planning, and it's not right before the start of the autumn term. When the summer term ends, there's a huge switch-off, and a well-deserved one. Parents have got to the end of the academic year, the school run is blissfully weeks and weeks away, and they're not thinking about September. They're enjoying being able to relax a little. If you do it before the end of the summer term, they're still in engaged mode, where they can think ahead to September and say, "Yep, we want to continue. We'll sign up again," and it's all sorted. So doing it at this point in the academic year does so many good things.
Set a deadline
The deadline for returning the signed agreements really matters, because the last thing you want is to be chasing people up during the summer holidays. They may be out of the country, and the summer holidays are six, sometimes seven weeks long. That's a long time, and it's very easy for a single sheet of paper (which is what your studio policy agreement generally is) to get lost among all the end-of-term stuff. Kids often come home from school with big bundles of all the work they've done that year. Mine certainly do, and it's so easy for the agreement to get lost in that. So let's avoid all that mess by setting a deadline.
What I tend to do is give out the agreement as soon as I can after summer half term, and ask for it to be signed and returned no later than the last day of term, which I specify in several places. That gives them plenty of time, and it also gives me several weeks of face-to-face contact with students and parents, so I can remind them about the agreement and ask them to sign and return it. That way we're not into the summer holidays, when people aren't thinking about piano lessons, and we've got September set up and know how many students are returning. At least, how many existing students, because of course new student enquiries come in towards the end of the summer anyway.
What I check
When I review my studio policy agreement, I always increase the fee. I check the cancellation policy and the notice periods. I don't offer any cancellation notice periods; any cancellations are not rescheduled and not refunded. But I double check the notice period for stopping lessons, to make sure I'm happy with it. And I look at any other terms that might have changed or caused confusion during the year, so I can go back to the wording and tweak it.
There was a really important change I made after COVID. When we switched to online teaching in 2020, it saved my business. It meant I could carry on teaching without a huge gap. But it also meant I needed something in my contract in case there was another lockdown, because of course we had 2020, then people re-emerged a bit, and then there was another lockdown in 2021. So I added a clause to my studio policy agreement, which is still there at the bottom, specifying that in the event of a government-directed lockdown where face-to-face lessons aren't possible, lessons will switch to online lessons.
I had to put that in. I know it's not a very common situation, but it happened, and it could have been really detrimental to my business. If you want to switch people online and they're not on board with it, because they're frightened of it, don't know how to set it up or don't want lessons that way, then there's an expectation that because they're not having lessons, they don't need to pay. So clauses like that protect your income.
That one was reactive, because none of us could have predicted the scale of the COVID lockdowns. But it's a really good example of why reviewing your policy every year lets you reflect on what happened during the year. For example, if anyone pushed back against your policies, look at the wording and see where they got that understanding from. That's ambiguous language you need to fix, to stop the problem happening again.
Other things you might want to update: for example, I state that I teach 38 lessons a year. You might want to increase or reduce that number, depending on how you're feeling and what capacity you have. You might want to introduce a different billing option, or something like that. There are lots of things you could change, and this is a great opportunity to do it, so it's a clear-cut change for the new academic year, and not an awkward mid-year change that no one's expecting, and that no one has the bandwidth to take on board and remember part way through the year.
Increasing your fees
A small, predictable annual increase is far less disruptive than a large increase after years of holding your rate steady. I normally aim for about four to five percent each year. Families expect it; it's just part of the accepted relationship.
I see lots of questions on social media and in our teacher groups asking, "How much do you increase by?" When inflation went bonkers not very long ago (didn't it get up to nine or ten percent, when all the food got really expensive?), that wasn't a feasible increase to apply to our rates without completely terrifying our students, so no one wanted to do that. But as a general rule, it's good to increase your fees a little every year, even by a small amount, so you're not staying at the same rate.
I tend to aim for 4 to 5%, which roughly works out as an increase of £3 per month, because I do monthly billing. That's about 95p extra per 30-minute lesson.
Be transparent about the increase
When you communicate the fee increase, it's really important to be specific about what it equates to per lesson. It's a bad idea to try to mask the increase by not stating it clearly. If I just said, "Oh, the new monthly rate is this," it's not very helpful when people want to think about how much more it is per lesson. It's not very kind to make your students and families work that out. Some of them won't be bothered at all, but lots of them will want to know: "Okay, how much more am I paying per lesson?"
So be completely transparent. Tell them the increase at whatever interval you invoice. Mine is monthly, as I said, so I say how much it's increased per month, and also how much it's increased per 30-minute lesson, because the vast majority of my students have 30-minute lessons. Because it's transparent, you know you're being honest, they can clearly understand what's changing, and it's a much more manageable way of going about the change.
The calculator I use
To calculate my new rate, I use the calculation tool in the Monthly Billing Transition Toolkit, which I've talked about on here before. It's really useful, and it's what I use every year to calculate my new rates. You put in your rate (I put in my per 30-minute lesson rate) and the length of the lesson (30 minutes), and the calculator does all the calculations to get you to a nice round number for your monthly fee.
There's a little section where you can increase by a percentage. I just put in four or five percent and see what it comes out as, and it recalculates everything. You get a nice round number for your monthly fee, and it back-calculates your per lesson fee, which makes it really easy to communicate. There's no guesswork and there are no rounding errors; you just plug in your numbers and it's done.
I made this calculator because it used to take me ages of trial and error. I know how to do the calculations, but it took me such a long time to decide how much to increase by, until I got into the rhythm of it, and the calculator makes it super duper easy. So if you're doing monthly billing and want to use this calculator, which does all the work for you, it's inside the Monthly Billing Transition Toolkit, and I'll put a link in the show notes. It's a very inexpensive product, only £12, and you can use it year on year for your percentage increases.
Will you lose students?
One thing I want to address here is the fear of losing students over fee increases. I've talked about this in other episodes. We all have this fear that if we increase our fees, we'll lose our students. But a small annual increase is far less likely to cause someone to leave than a larger increase after keeping your rate steady for a long time. And I can guarantee that families who've been with you for two or three years aren't going to leave over a 95p per lesson increase. They really don't.
The ones who leave were going to leave anyway. Like I said earlier, it's the student who hasn't been practising for a long time, where it's been a real struggle at home, and they've lost enthusiasm or discovered another hobby they want to do. It's not because of the fee increase. People don't leave because of that, and the ones who do aren't your ideal students anyway. You'd already know, because teaching them would be a struggle for one reason or another.
The email
Once you've calculated your new fee, it goes in an email to all your students and families. Include the new fee at whatever frequency you invoice (monthly, termly or whatever), effective from 1st September, and what it equates to as a per lesson increase.
Also confirm what hasn't changed, like the cancellation policy. It's a perfect opportunity to reiterate the most important policies, maybe the ones people forget about, push back against or ask for reschedules about. As confirmation, say these policies haven't changed and are still in place: "Missed lessons will not be rescheduled or refunded." It's a really good opportunity to pop that in.
You also give them the deadline for returning the signed agreement, and explain that signing it means agreeing to the increase in fees and to abide by the policies in place.
Part 3: Getting your policy wording right
When wording is too confusing
So your policy wording is really important. I read a post in one of the teacher groups this week from a teacher who was really upset that a parent had refused to pay the notice period for their child. It's not unheard of. But it turned out the teacher had a very convoluted studio policy agreement, with lots of different time periods mentioned and far too much information. A lot of the responses to her post said, "Your policy wording is too confusing. I can understand why the parent didn't expect to pay." They didn't expect to have to pay for a notice period, because they'd reached the end of the academic year, and based on the wording of the different sections of her agreement, you could kind of see why.
This is a very important point I want to get across. You need to be super crisp and clear with the wording in your studio policy agreement. Don't soften it down, and don't write it the way you'd speak to a student or parent. That's not how signed agreements need to work. It doesn't need to be in high-level legalese, of course not. It needs to be easy for them to understand, but completely unambiguous. If you have a policy that's open to interpretation, it's not a policy; it's an invitation to an argument.
Ways to check your wording
So read through your policy with a fresh pair of eyes, like I said earlier, or get a friend to read it through and try to be objective about what it means. They could tell you in their own words what they think each point of your policy means, which will highlight any areas of discrepancy or ambiguity that you can correct.
You could also copy and paste your studio policy into an AI platform and ask it to pick holes in it. That's quite a useful way of using AI. It can highlight things you might not spot because you wrote them, and things that could be interpreted differently, and help you hone your wording to be as clear as possible.
Sometimes people add to their policies every year without going back and checking earlier clauses, and they end up with a studio policy with conflicting points. That's never a good place to be. You don't want your studio policy to contradict itself.
Softening words invite negotiation
There's also wording that invites interpretation, discussion or negotiation, and we don't want any of that in our studio policy. This is what I mean by softening the language: if you add things like "where possible" or "in exceptional circumstances", what does that mean? What you think are exceptional circumstances probably won't line up with what some of your families think.
I do have this in my policy, but it's clarified. It's in the missed lessons clause: "Lessons missed through the student's non-attendance will be charged for, unless the circumstances warrant a special concession at the teacher's discretion." That last bit, "at the teacher's discretion", is the clarifying point. It's not down to the student or parent to decide that the situation warrants a special concession. It makes it clear that it's based on what the teacher thinks warrants a special concession, so it can't be interpreted any other way. That allows me to apply it the way I choose, which is for bereavement. If a lesson is missed because of a bereavement, that's when I'll refund the lesson directly.
Clarity is kinder than vagueness
I think one of the places we all trip up, especially in the beginning, is that the wording of a studio policy agreement isn't the way you'd speak face to face with your student or their parents. That feels uncomfortable when you read it. You think, "Oh, does this sound too harsh?" That's one of the fears around doing this update: "I don't want to seem too business-like or formal. It feels harsh." But it's necessary, to be clear and avoid ambiguity.
Clarity is kinder than vagueness. If you're vague in your studio policy wording, you're opening the door to negotiation, interpretation, misunderstandings and miscommunication, and we don't want any of that. You can still be warm and clear at the same time.
The problem with all the chats I see online, where parents have misunderstood the studio policy agreement, is that it's always down to the wording being too vague in the first place. The way the policies were communicated was just a bit too vague. That's not a criticism of teachers; it's an acknowledgement that a policy is an unnatural way to speak. It's okay if your studio policy agreement sounds odd when you read it out loud. If it reads the way you speak, then there's something wrong with it.
Why I went back to one policy
One thing I'll point out here: at one point, I had different policy agreements for child students and adult students, because I was trying to people please and accommodate what worked for all my students. The adult agreement had an extra clause that made it more complicated. At the beginning of the academic year, adults could give me the dates of holidays they'd already booked, and those lessons wouldn't be counted as missed lessons or charged for, so I'd adjust their termly invoices, because that's what I did back then.
It was just too convoluted. "You don't have to pay when you go on holiday" isn't the same as "I'll allow holidays I'm told about at the start of the academic year", so you then have to backtrack when it comes up, because not many people book a holiday almost a year in advance. It opens the door to more awkward conversations and discomfort, and it reinforces, in a negative way, the idea that your time is expendable, because you can't fill that lesson slot for the one or two weeks they're not there, and you're not getting paid for it. But that's a story for another day.
So I didn't have separate studio policy agreements for adults and children for very long. I did away with that and went back to one single, clear, simple policy, and that's why my studio runs so smoothly.
My free studio policy template
If you're not sure where to start, you're more than welcome to use my free studio policy template. I'll include the link in the show notes. It's based on piano teaching, so there's a grid with space to fill in what kind of instrument they have at home. If you don't teach piano, you can adapt that for your own instrument or remove it entirely. I wanted it on my policy agreement so I'd know what my students were playing on at home.
It's only two sides. The first side has the main information on it, and the second has all the clauses. It's nice and clear, and it's colour-coded so you can update the relevant information to suit your own policies. You don't have to use all the policies there; everything is available for you to update as you need.
The wording is as clear as possible. You might read it and think, "I can't possibly use this. I'd never speak to my students this way." But that's exactly right. You would never speak to your students the way you write your studio policy agreement. It's got to be completely unapologetic, direct and clear, with no fluff and no softening words. So if you find it hard to write those deliberately direct statements, the studio policy template will be really helpful. I'll add the link in the show notes, or you can access it on my website at victoriaclarkpiano.com/freebie.
Part 4: Communicating the changes
The email: "response required"
Once you have your updated studio policy agreement and you're happy with the wording, you've decided on your increase, and you've used my calculator or done the calculations yourself manually, so all the right figures and information are in there, it's time to communicate it to your students and families.
The first thing I do is send an email to all my students laying out exactly what's going to change. In the subject line, I write "Studio Policy Agreement Update, Academic Year 2026 to 2027", followed by "RESPONSE REQUIRED" in capitals.
The reason for putting that in the subject line is that it's so easy for people to see an email and think, "Oh yeah, that's just information." If they see "response required", they'll open it and read it, and most of the time they'll reply. You need that reply as an acknowledgement that they've received the information. Without it, there's another gap, where families or students can honestly say they didn't know about the change, either because they didn't open the email or because they read it and forgot. We avoid all that by asking for a reply to the email.
The email gives advance notice of the change, and it needs to include all the major changes. For me, that's confirmation of the new fee effective from 1st September (2026, this year), and what it equates to as a per lesson increase. You can also state what hasn't changed, like I said earlier. It's your chance to reiterate the policies that are still in place, and the most important and helpful ones to reiterate are your cancellation policies: any lessons missed by the student for any reason will still be charged for, and lessons are not rescheduled or refunded. And the notice period for stopping lessons is [whatever it is]. It's a really useful time to put that in.
You also need to include the deadline for returning the signed agreement. I put either the last day of term or maybe the week before; basically, as soon as they can, so you're not scrambling on the last day when you won't see them again. I also say in the email that they'll receive a physical copy of the studio policy agreement at their next lesson.
Always a PDF
The email has the studio policy attached as a PDF file. Always a PDF, never a Word file. I didn't understand this years and years ago. You don't need a PDF converter; in Word you can just click "Save as PDF" and you're done. You make it a PDF so that nothing can be edited. Not that any parents or students have ever done that, but you never know. You need to send them something that isn't editable.
Sending the email also creates a paper trail, and it's sent with enough notice to give families time to think, and for parents to chat with their children about whether they're enjoying piano and want to continue. Ninety-nine out of a hundred do want to continue, and it means there's no surprise when the physical copy arrives at the next lesson. It's a gentle introduction to the change.
The paper copy
Print enough physical copies to give one per family, and hand it to the student or parent at their very next lesson. This is the formal record. If parents sit in on their child's lesson, I encourage them to sign it while I'm teaching their child, because they have time to sit and read. They've already seen the email with the changes, so they can read it through and sign, and then it's all done and dusted. They don't have to remember to bring it back at another lesson, which is just another thing to remember (or forget, in my case), and I don't have to chase it up in the last couple of weeks before the end of term. So you can get it all done straight away if you encourage them to do that.
You can also mention the new policy agreement verbally. If the parent doesn't sit in on the lesson but comes to the door to collect their child, you can mention it in passing: "By the way, I've given so-and-so the paper copy of the studio policy agreement. It'd be wonderful if you could sign it and bring it back next week." That way you've spoken face to face, and you're not relying on a six-year-old with a piece of paper to get it to their parent, and to know what they're doing with it, because little bits of paper get lost.
I always find it funny. About 50% of my students are children. The youngest is six at the moment, I think, so I've got lots of six, seven, eight, nine and ten-year-olds. The number of these students who've still got certificates from recitals two or three years ago in their music book bags, and Portsmouth Music Festival certificates, and sheet music from Christmases three years ago, living in their book bags! You don't want your studio policy agreement to end up there. You want it in the parents' hands. So if you know they come to the door, you can hand it to them directly as well.
Chasing the stragglers
As we get closer to the end of the summer term, for the few stragglers (and there will always be some), I might send a WhatsApp message or a text if I haven't heard back by email or haven't received the signed agreement. It just jogs their memory, so you can get the last ones accounted for.
That way, by the last day of term, every student who's continuing in September has signed up, or you've had the conversation that they're not continuing. Bear in mind that that would require a notice period, which is an important thing to cover as well. Making sure all your studio policy agreements are signed before the last day of the summer term goes a long way towards a nice, smooth start in September.
The ones who stay are choosing you
If you're struggling with the idea that asking families to sign up again is giving them a chance to quit, remember that if students were going to leave, they were going to leave anyway. This just makes it more formal. It stops people disappearing over the summer and never turning up again, leaving you with an empty slot at the start of September and a scramble to fill it. Even if you have a big waiting list, you'd need to contact people, wait for them to get back to you, and work out who's available on which day and all the rest of it. It avoids all that hassle.
The ones who stay and sign up again are actively choosing to stay, and that's a really good thing, because it reaffirms that these are the right students for you. I feel it helps improve the bond and connection you have with your students and their families, because you have at least this one touch point every year. We have more touch points in my studio, because we've got the festival and the summer recital, and other points along the way. I'll make videos of playing duets with students and send them to the parents, which is lovely, and we can share their progress that way. Or I'll send a message to parents to say, "So-and-so has been trying really hard lately. I just wanted to acknowledge that and give them a pat on the back."
So it's a really nice way to know that they want to be your student. It's a good confidence boost for you too, to remind you that you're providing something of value. You're providing a music education they love, they want it, and they want to stay with you. So having this annual re-signing does lots of things.
The signed agreement protects you
On the more pragmatic side, the signed agreement protects you if anything goes wrong later in the year. For example, if something suddenly happens and they want to quit without notice. It doesn't really happen any more for me, because all my families are on board with my policies. Or say you got a text out of the blue from a parent asking to pause lessons during exams.
I used that example earlier because it's been coming up a lot lately, with students in GCSE years taking exams. That's another topic for another day, but this odd situation of stopping all music lessons during the exam period seems to be becoming more commonplace. It never used to be like that. In fact, we have lots of conversations about this in our teacher groups, and we all remember continuing our music lessons all the way through whatever exams we were doing. It was a wonderful relief from revising, and from trying to memorise all the chemical names for things when I did biology and chemistry and the rest of it. Having a music lesson was a good way to let your brain rest, or engage it in a different way, and to have fun and do something enjoyable. Anyway, like I said, that's a discussion for another day.
One thing to do this week
As I like to do with most of my podcast episodes, I want to give you something small and achievable to do straight away. This week, sit down and do the fees calculation. Work out what a four or five percent increase looks like for your studio. Just that one step. Once you have the number, the rest falls into place, because you're not second-guessing yourself for three hours about what your new rate should be. You stick to a percentage increase, look at it and say, "Yep, that's okay. That equates to this much per 30-minute lesson," or 45-minute lesson, or whatever you teach. Then you're ready to start putting all the other steps we've talked about into place.
If you want to look into switching to monthly billing, the Monthly Billing Transition Toolkit is exactly right for you. This is a good opportunity to make that switch as well. You can do the whole switch at once. That's what I did in 2022: I switched from termly to monthly billing at the same time as changing the fee for the following September. It's a nice clean break. The toolkit gives you everything you need to make the change, including answers to frequently asked questions, email templates for announcing the change that you can copy and paste, and a timeline, which starts about now. It's available on my website, and I'll put a link in the show notes.
If you just want to review your current studio policy and its wording, have a look at the free studio policy template I mentioned earlier, and see if you can use any of the clauses in it to update your policy, so it's super clear and says exactly what you mean it to say. I also offer one-to-one Focus Sessions online if you'd like support working through this. There'll be a link for that too, where you can book an hour with me.
I hope this has been a helpful episode for you. If you're still on the fence about whether to increase your fees, or whether you want to do an annual update of your studio policy agreement, that's okay. Just listening to this episode and getting ideas is the first step towards making those changes. Don't feel you have to overhaul your whole studio in one go. I'd encourage you to read my blog posts, which go into more detail about how to handle all of these things, like cancellation policies, finding your ideal students and so on, because I want to help as many music teachers as possible. And if you're stuck, or paralysed by the fear of losing students (we've all been there, and lots of us hang out there a lot), I'm here to support you, so do get in touch. I hope you have a lovely day, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.
