A teacher who listens to the show asked me whether a studio policy is legally binding, after I'd said in an earlier episode that it isn't. So I sent my own studio policy to the ISM's legal team to be checked. This is what they confirmed, what they picked up and what I've changed, and how to review your own policy so it keeps protecting you. I'm not a lawyer: this is what I learnt about my own agreement, not legal advice for yours.
In this episode:
Putting right what I said in Episode 15 about studio policies not being legally binding
Why binding, enforceable and worth enforcing are three different things
The stories behind my late payment fee, notice period and lockdown clauses
The clause I borrowed from my own teacher's template, and why it didn't say what I meant
The policies I'd never written down: illness, arriving early and where to wait, and practice and progress
What the legal review picked up, what I've changed, and how to review your own policy
Links mentioned:
Episode 15: Not Every Enquiry Is Your Next Student (show notes now updated)
Episode 16: You're Allowed to Stop Teaching a Student
Episode 13: When a Student Quits, It's Rarely About You
Episode 6: Stop Chasing Payments: My Monthly Billing System
Episode 5: How to Raise Your Fees and Secure Your Studio for September Without the Guilt
Episode 10: You Are a Professional Music Teacher
Free Studio Policy Template updated after the legal review of my own agreement
Monthly Billing Transition Toolkit (£12), with the calculator I use for final invoices
ISM membership If you join, you're welcome to use my refer-a-friend code, ISM-8941-CLA-RAF. I receive a discount on my membership renewal if you do, and once you're a member you'll have your own code to share for discounts on yours.
New rules for rolling subscription contracts, expected from January 2027
Know a teacher whose policy hasn't been looked at in years? Please share this episode with them. And if you've enjoyed it, a rating or review helps other teachers find the show.
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Part 1: The question, the correction and why policies need reviewing
A question from a listener
Last week, a teacher who listens to this podcast sent me a question. In an earlier episode, I'd said that a studio policy isn't a legally binding contract. And she asked me, is that really true? Because if it isn't, can I even enforce it?
It was a really good question and I wanted to be sure of the answer. So on Thursday I sent my own studio policy to the ISM's legal team and asked them to check it out. On Friday morning, the reply landed in my inbox.
I have been a member of the ISM, the Independent Society of Musicians, since I switched to full-time teaching back in 2019. And legal advice is one of the many membership benefits that they provide. So getting them to check out my policy seemed like the obvious next step.
I have to admit though, it was a little unnerving before I sent it to them. I know that they're there to support us as music teachers, but there was still a bit of uncertainty in my mind as to what are they going to find? Are they going to come back and tell me that it's a load of junk and I've been operating with a terrible policy? I'm happy to say that some of their response confirmed that what I'm already doing is good. But some of what they picked up, it's things I hadn't realised. And the upshot of it all is it's left me far more confident in my policy than I ever was before.
Putting something right
Before anything else though, I need to put something right. In Episode 15, I said that a studio policy isn't a legally binding contract. Thank you so much to the teacher who contacted me asking me this question.
The correction to this is that a studio policy agreement can be a legally binding contract. Calling it a policy does not stop it being one. What matters is whether you and the family have agreed the terms, including the lessons and the payments. It doesn't need a solicitor to draw it up, and a contract can even be formed by email. A signed copy is useful evidence that the terms were agreed.
So the feedback I got from the ISM legal team was that studio policies and teaching agreements can be legally binding contracts when their terms have been properly agreed. However, individual terms must comply with consumer law, and a signature does not make an unfair term enforceable.
This idea of being binding, enforceable and worth enforcing are three different things. The families of the students that we teach are consumers, so consumer law applies. An unfair term isn't binding on them even if they've signed it, but one unfair clause doesn't usually undo the rest of the agreement.
Now, this is something that I've heard a lot online, that our policies are not enforceable. And this comes from the idea that most of us would never take a family to the small claims court over a few unpaid lessons. The ISM membership offers an unpaid fee recovery service which they promote, so that's always something that you can go and investigate if it's worth it for you.
For child students, the agreement that you make is with the parent or guardian, not the child. I'll come back to this in more detail later on in this episode.
And so with this information, I've updated the Episode 15 show notes to reflect it, and that this is what the ISM has told me about my own agreement. Please remember I'm not a lawyer, I'm not giving legal advice, I'm just sharing the experience I've had and the information I've received based on the ISM legal team reviewing my own studio policy agreement.
Welcome to the show
Welcome to The Victoria Clark Show for Music Teachers. I'm Victoria. I started teaching piano part-time nearly 20 years ago, alongside a career in pharmaceutical market research, and I made pretty much every mistake there is when it comes to running a teaching business. Today I run a full studio from my home on the south coast of England with a waiting list, students I love, and a teaching week that fits around my family.
If you've ever felt your heart sink when your phone buzzed with another last-minute cancellation, put off raising your fees for another year, or heard yourself say, "Oh, I just do a bit of teaching," when someone asked what you do, this is the podcast for you. I've been where you are. Let's build you a studio that lets you be the teacher you want to be and live the life you deserve.
Welcome to today's podcast episode, Reviewing Your Studio Policy Agreement. We're going to cover what to check, what to update, and how often you need to come back to it. We'll cover why a policy needs reviewing in the first place. I'll be sharing some of the stories behind my own clauses and where they have come from, what wasn't in writing that I needed to put in writing, and what the ISM legal review picked up, and then how you can go ahead and review your own policies.
The reason I've timed this episode for this point, which is currently our autumn half-term break if you're in the UK, is because it's a good time to spend not ages, but a little bit of time looking at your studio policies with a clear head, so that you can be prepared for the next term ahead and go into it with confidence. That way we can avoid all of these things that take up so much headspace, when we are battling requests for reschedules and refunds and no notice periods and all those things. Wouldn't it be lovely if they just all disappeared? Well, the way you do that is with a robust policy that you can stand behind, and that's what this episode is going to help you do.
Why a policy needs reviewing
I think it's safe to say that for all of us, every year our teaching studios change. Something changes about the way we run our studio, about our own lives, about what's happening outside of us. I'm talking about COVID here. So we are in new situations every year, which means our policies need to change with them to continue providing the support and protection we need to run our teaching businesses effectively.
Now, I count myself in this bucket here. So many of us wrote our policies years ago, or we copied it from somebody else's template. I have mentioned it many times here on this podcast that my own piano teacher gave me her studio policy agreement to use as a template, and it was wonderful because it was a great starting point. But in the beginning, you don't know what you don't know. You haven't had the experiences of things going wrong, or coming up against this or that with different students. So having a template as a starting point is a really useful thing, as long as you read through it and you know exactly what each term means and that you agree with it. And if you don't agree with it, change it, reword it for what you want your policies to say.
So something I did when I first got the policy from my piano teacher is I did read through it, and I tried to understand all of it and work out why some of the clauses were in place, because it wasn't totally obvious. One of them was that she had a requirement that, given prior warning, if sufficient progress isn't made, notice will be given to end lessons. As in, if you don't practise and make some progress, lessons are going to be stopped. And I took that one out because I was afraid it was going to scare my student families away, but I'll come back to that later.
Our studio policies need reviewing, and I'll be honest, it is a bit of a boring job. It does feel a bit boring, but also sometimes a bit uncomfortable. But here's something I would like you to consider. If you've ever felt held hostage by student families who ghost you or pay late or expect reschedules, multiple reschedules on the same missed lesson, or they want lessons carried over, and you've had to keep reasserting yourself, which is really quite exhausting and draining, and for me, speaking personally, quite anxiety-provoking. If you have to keep putting yourself in that position, your policy is where all that is going to change.
Your studio policy, that you create to support the way you want to run your business and to protect your time and your income, that's what it's there for. It's there to take away all of those drains on your time and energy, so you can spend more of your time enjoying teaching and focusing on the bit you got into this for in the first place.
For me personally, since I switched to monthly billing, I run on a 12-month cycle based on the academic year. So I go from the 1st of September through to the 31st of August. I review my own studio policies every year around May or June, because that's when I send them out to all of my student families for signature before the end of the summer term. Nobody wants to be chasing unsigned agreements during the summer holidays, when everybody's gone off on holiday or they're uncontactable, and then you get to the point in September where you're not sure who's coming back. So that is why I time mine in that way.
What I do is I read through all the policy clauses again and ask myself, does it still match how I work? Is anything missing? Has anything happened during this academic year that warrants an update in the policy wording? When you know your policy is valid and fair, it's so much easier to stand behind it in the moment. So when people push the boundaries, you can be secure and confident in upholding your studio policy boundaries and protecting yourself, so that your business can continue to run smoothly.
Part 2: The stories behind my clauses
The late payment fee
As I mentioned earlier, every clause in your studio policy agreement is there because something has happened in the past. So I'm going to share with you some of the stories behind some of my clauses.
The first time I heard of music teachers using late payment fees was, of course, on one of these big Facebook teacher groups. And I read about it and I thought, oh my goodness, that's really scary. How can you put a late payment fee in there? And this came from a person, me at the time, who was probably not upholding my studio policies properly to begin with. So the idea of tacking on a late payment fee just sounded so far outside the realm of possibility for me, because I was still grappling with valuing my worth, valuing my time, and protecting that time by asserting the no reschedule rule.
So you may be surprised to hear that I do have a late payment fee. I introduced it after switching to monthly billing, because although that improved how punctually my students and families paid, because it was once a month, it was regular, it tied in with payday and all the rest of it that I've talked about in my monthly billing episode, there were still a few families and individuals that paid late every single month.
My deadline is by the 1st of the month, every month. Really nice and easy to remember. It's after most people have been paid, and they get their invoices a week before that point, so they go out on the 24th of every month. So it was a little bit frustrating that there were always a few who would pay on the 3rd or the 4th or the 5th, and it was always after I'd sent out a reminder. Just an extra prompt, which doesn't take a lot of time, but when you're doing it every month, it is an additional thing to remember. It's another burden on your time. And so I thought, I wonder if I can slim this down even more, make it even more streamlined, because time is precious and we don't have a lot of it.
So that's when I decided to add the automatic late payment fee. I decided to pick a small enough figure, but not so small as to be inconsequential. I chose five pounds, which would be added to invoices that remained unpaid by the fourth day of the month. So it gave them the whole week to pay, and then another three days beyond the deadline. And straight away it tidied up almost all the late payers.
I don't think anyone is intentional about paying late, it's just the way different people operate, and not everyone does everything with loads of time in advance. Some people leave it to the last minute, whether you're talking about bills or tasks or whatever. So it's just part of dealing with a normal human population. But I was really surprised, but pleased, at how well it worked, and I have never had to enforce it. Just having that in my policies has tidied things up, and I suppose it has increased the respect for my payment deadlines by saying, I am serious about this, you need to pay me by the deadline, you have plenty of time, you know when it's coming every single month, I shouldn't have to remind you. Without having to say all of that to my students, because no one wants to have to say all of that, the late payment fee says it for you.
Now, the ISM legal team, when they came back, mentioned that any late payment fee needs to be proportionate to the real cost of late payment, such as your time chasing it. So if you take your hourly rate, and then the amount of time it takes you to log on to your computer, log into your invoicing software, log into your bank, check that they haven't paid, go back and send a reminder, five pounds is about right for me. But they did point out that having it in the contract doesn't automatically make it recoverable. So the advice was to keep it modest and say what it covers.
The notice period
Now, the notice period. This is quite an important one. When I was billing termly, I had a term's notice as part of my policy. The vast majority of families who stopped just didn't come back, and only a handful of them gave proper notice and talked to me about it. So it was a bit of a joke, this "give a term's notice for stopping lessons".
Now, it's just reminding me that we've given a term's notice for my son, who was doing an after-school club for, I think, over a year. And I fully respect it as a notice period. You give a full term's notice to finish at the end of the very next term, but you are obligated to pay for that entire term. And that's fine, because it's in the policy and I understood it.
So it can be difficult to appreciate from a family's perspective, or an adult student's perspective, if they're not familiar with those kinds of terms and conditions. It can feel like a really long notice period, because a term is 12 weeks here in the UK. It could be 12 weeks or longer, 14 weeks. The autumn term is always the longest term.
When I switched to monthly billing, I figured I would make it match. So I changed my notice period to be one month's notice. And to be honest, families find that far easier to get their head around, and far easier to honour. It equates to three or four lessons' worth. And so it's been much more successful when students have chosen to stop. I've had much more success with them giving the notice period. I don't have to tell them there's a notice period; they remember. So this has been really helpful.
And a small pedantic point. A student gave notice to stop lessons with me recently and quoted it as four weeks' notice. Now, four weeks is not the same as a month, because the difference can be another lesson. So it's very pedantic, but stick with your notice period. If you have a month's notice period and a student comes back and says, "Oh, here's our four weeks' notice, we're going to finish on this date," you can gently remind them that, well, it's a month's notice, so it will be on this date, one month from when the notice was given.
Part of the ISM legal review added that I should explain how the final bill is worked out, including scheduled lessons, missed lessons, notice period lessons, and payments already made. I think that's a really important part, because previously I had listed it as families only pay for lessons provided. And in my mind, that was: you have been provided with lessons up until the end of the notice period. But this is why it's so important to get an external opinion, ideally from a legal team, because they can see the gaps and loopholes that could be there that may not be obvious to us as teachers.
The lockdown clause
Now, I've mentioned this in previous episodes, but when the COVID lockdown happened, and it probably had a similar impact for you, I lost half my students overnight when lessons were restricted to online only. That was something I had never done before. I'd never taught online, as many of us had never taught online before.
But I had an adult student who wanted to stop immediately during lockdown and asked for a full refund, because she felt that COVID made the policy invalid. And I did push back and explain that my notice period covers all the planning that I had done for her lessons, that I do for all of my students' lessons, but it's bespoke planning for them, and materials I'd bought because we'd been preparing for exams and so on. In the end, I decided to agree a partial refund and a shorter notice period than was stated in the policy agreement.
And then straight away after that, I added a clause to my studio policy agreement that if government restrictions stop face-to-face lessons, lessons move online and the agreement, including the notice period, still applies.
The only additional bit of feedback from the ISM legal team regarding this was that I did need to include something to allow for whether online lessons would be suitable and accessible for that particular student. Which makes sense, because if you have a student who, I don't know, doesn't have the capabilities to have an online lesson at home, then it would be a bit unfair to have this clause, because they wouldn't be able to access lessons. So you have to be able to account for all of your students in this sense.
The clause I'd borrowed
When you're reviewing your studio policies, there may be clauses in there that you've never had to defend, and that may not say what you mean. For me, one of them is a clause that I took from my own piano teacher's template, which was that students were not allowed to enter themselves for exams or competitions, or perform in public, without my permission.
I understood where this was coming from. But the first time this boundary was breached, I suppose, was when I had a few child students come to their lesson and say, "Oh, I was playing in assembly this week." And of course I wasn't cross at all. I was so glad they'd had the chance to have some performance experience, and that they'd been asked because the teachers had become aware that they were having private piano lessons. And all that told me was that the clause, as it was written, was not what I meant.
For me personally, the time this clause would matter is if a parent decided to enter their child, my student, into a music festival with a piece that was far too difficult for them. And the reason it matters for me is not just about my reputation, as in, this student was put forward, who's their teacher, oh, it's so-and-so, why did they enter with that piece, they clearly can't play it. Aside from that, it's about protecting the child from humiliation on a stage, which could potentially damage their whole experience of performance. And that is so important, because these early experiences can have such a profound effect on their own sense of self-confidence and self-esteem. So that's quite an important one.
There's also, for example, an adult student who's determined to enter themselves for an exam regardless of being advised against it because they're not ready. So that is what this clause is designed to protect against.
I got some feedback from the ISM legal team, which said that this clause reached too far into activities outside of my teaching. So the narrower version asks families to discuss entries and performances where they'd like your preparation, accompaniment or involvement.
But the bigger point I'm making about this is that boundaries you're not used to defending can catch you out when they're finally tested. So do check that every clause you have in your studio policy agreement says what you mean it to say. And that goes for any template you've used, including mine.
Part 3: What wasn't in writing
Illness
There are some things I have recognised that I treat as policies, but I don't have written down in my studio policy agreement. And I am happy to admit that, because this whole process is about reflecting on what you've got, what works for you, and what needs to be added. And this is always changing, as I mentioned before.
So illness is one of them. It comes up time and time again, especially at this time of year, when everybody's getting coughs and colds and kids come into lessons sneezing. And they can't help it, it's not their fault. We all catch colds. But if you have a policy in your head about illness, it needs to go in the studio policy agreement.
I have talked about this before. I include it in termly emails, but it's in my studio policies now, which is the request to not bring children to lessons when they're unwell. The reason I had previously left it out of my studio policy agreement is that I didn't want to just pack in hundreds of clauses and make it this unreadable document that would just get glossed over, even more so than terms and conditions do these days.
But I have had, and I'm sure you have too, several occasions where students have appeared for their lessons and you can just tell by looking at them. I'm mainly talking about children, because adult students are pretty good about recognising when they're not well and have the consideration not to come and spread their germs all over you, which is great. But for children, I've had children turn up and they just look grey and you know they're not right. And I have had lessons where I haven't sent them away; they sit at the piano and zone out a bit, totally unfocused, so obviously unwell they shouldn't be there.
And then I've had previous times where students have come in coughing and sneezing, and despite my best attempts at sanitising the piano keys and door handles before and after lessons, I then came down with the cold exactly in that five to seven day window following that event. Which meant loads of cancelled lessons, hundreds of pounds of lost income, all from one lesson that shouldn't have happened. So this is a pretty important part of my policies, and that's why it's now in there, and I'm not afraid to include it.
So I would recommend, if this is something that you feel strongly about, or even if you don't feel strongly about it, it's okay to put this in your policies. I know there is always the fear of losing students because you're putting boundaries in place, but really the bigger picture is that you're cultivating a level of respect for your business and what you're doing in order to keep it going. In order to not disadvantage you as a teacher, or any of your other students who miss out on lessons because you were sick, because someone came to their lesson sick. It's the bigger picture that's important.
And just on this note, I have seen so many conversations, and they will probably start popping up again now because they do every year, from teachers asking what you do when a student is ill. Most of them fall on the line of, well, I'll just refund the lesson, or I'll reschedule them and won't charge them anything, because I'd rather do that than have them come to the lesson unwell. But you don't have to do that. You can have this as a policy and have it be respected, because it goes the other way. If you're really sick, you're not going to teach them, or you could offer them online lessons so that you can keep your germs to yourself. Or if you're just unwell, you cancel the lessons and you take the hit, because that's what happens when you are a one-man or one-woman show. It's just part of being a music teacher.
But this idea that you then start refunding or rescheduling lessons every time a student is ill, in order to avoid them bringing their germs to your house if you teach at home, or into your vicinity, is just a slippery slope to giving away so much income unnecessarily, because you can't account for every child that's going to get sick. Children get sick, they miss school, they miss other activities, and those activities don't give them refunds, so it shouldn't be that way for us either. This is something I do feel quite strongly about, because in so many circumstances music teachers fall on the side of, "But I don't want to get sick, so it's just easier if I refund them." But it doesn't have to be that way, I promise you.
Arriving early and where to wait
Okay, arriving early for lessons and waiting. This is a topic that frequently makes an appearance in the conversations. A few years ago, I had a fairly new student, and I ended their lesson a couple of minutes early when the next student arrived a little bit earlier than usual. I got really flustered and I hadn't checked the clock. It was my mistake, and I did apologise. But the parent emailed me afterwards asking about the changes I'd made to her daughter's lesson structure, and this was the lesson that I had ended a few minutes early. She was asking why the next student was even in the room at all, and whether they could wait in the hall until her daughter's lesson had finished.
Now, this is a set-up that I have done deliberately. I teach back to back, no more than four lessons in a row, partly because I can't really do more than two hours of teaching without a short break. But the back-to-back teaching allows students to arrive up to five minutes early for their lesson. It allows the next student to hear what another student is playing or practising, and it allows the student who's having the lesson to get a bit of experience in the most remote form of performance: playing in front of a stranger and starting to become okay with that. It's not right for everyone, I appreciate that. But for the most part, getting used to playing in front of somebody is a very useful skill to have.
And for the student who's waiting, they can hear something interesting, something to aspire to if they're a more elementary learner and they have an intermediate student before them. They get to listen to some of the amazing things that student is playing. It can be inspiring, it can be motivating. But unless you've said that to the parents, it's absolutely right that they could come back and say, "Hey, why is this child coming into my daughter's lesson before it's finished? She feels very uncomfortable." And that's fair enough.
So this is in my policy now as well, because it needs to be clear what the purpose is, and it avoids having these emails that you then need to go back to with a long-winded explanation. If that's what your set-up is, pop it in your studio policy so there are no surprises.
Another part of it is quite important, from what I mentioned a few episodes ago, with an adult student who didn't want to come into the room before another student's lesson had finished, and was waiting on the stairs. I don't have a waiting area in my house, and my teaching room is where I am, with the door closed. So, for the safety and the comfort of the rest of my family, students need to know that they need to wait inside the teaching room. I have had students in the past, when they have been very new to me, wander off and go and sit in the kitchen, even though there's a nice big sign on the door that says, "Piano lessons this way, please come in and take a seat on the sofa." Not everyone reads signs, so if it's important to you, put it in the policy. It just needs to be a one-liner.
And on the arriving early note, if it's the first student of the day, or the first student after a break, students arriving five minutes early is absolutely fine. But your break is something to be protected. It's structured so that you can have that downtime, even if it's only 15 minutes. If they arrive five minutes early, that's a third of your break gone. You need to be able to switch off.
So what I do is I physically leave the teaching room, so I'm not in there. When a student arrives, if they're early, I'll just pop my head round the corner and say, "Oh hi, you're a little bit early, but feel free to go in and practise." Which makes the point without turning it into a big confrontation, and everybody's happy with that.
Now, the one exception is children, because you don't want to leave children unattended in any part of your house. So if they're arriving early, you need to go and be with them. It's a safeguarding issue. But for adults, if they arrive a little bit early, most of them appreciate having a couple of minutes to warm up on your piano, because lots of adult students carry anxiety with them, and the need to prove that they have made progress and done their practice and so on. So it can work that way.
But I have seen some examples of advice in the comments from teachers in these big groups about what happens when students arrive too early. Obviously, if it's 15 minutes early, it's something that you should raise with the student. The lesson start time is there for a reason; it's not a free come-and-go situation. But some of the least helpful advice I've read, and you've probably read it too if you've ever been on these teacher groups, is keep your doors locked, or put a sign up. Or one of the worst ones was someone who said, answer the door and tell them to come back when their lesson time is starting. Which I just thought, who is doing this? Who has the gall to do that with a straight face? I don't know. I don't think it was real advice. Or if it was, they would be a pretty uncomfortable individual to be around. So whatever advice you see, if it makes your stomach churn, or you think, goodness me, who are these people, just take it with a pinch of salt.
So the gentler way of dealing with it is, if you are on a break, just don't be in the teaching room. And if it's a child that appears, I don't know, ten minutes too early, then you have a conversation with the parents afterwards, because it's not in the child's control when they come in. Most children don't know what the time is most of the time. So you have a conversation with the parent if you have time after the lesson, or you can send a message when you've finished your teaching block, just to reassert the lesson start time and that they should arrive at their lesson start time.
I did have a parent once suggest, with respect to the overlapping lessons, "Oh, well, we can just start five minutes earlier." And I was quite proud of myself in the moment. I did say, "Oh, well, no, we'll start at 4pm, because that's when the lesson starts." And it's one of those times when I've said exactly what I wanted to say at the moment I wanted to say it. The right thing came out of my mouth, which doesn't happen very often. I do what I've mentioned before, which is I have the thought, I have the answer inside my head, and then the people-pleaser answers for me, which is, "Sure, fine, no problem." And then you've got a bigger problem to undo later on. But that is always a valid response: well, no, the lesson starts at this point, so we'll go with this point.
And something to remember is that the vast majority of our students and families have no idea what it's like being a music teacher. Teaching in blocks of whatever you teach in, if you've got very short break times or however your day is structured, they don't know what it's like, they don't experience it. And so, yes, our time is precious and we are allowed to protect it, but you can protect it and be kind. You can still be professional, and it doesn't have to be confrontational.
And it's one of these areas that can be quite triggering for some people, and that's probably why you get these conversations in the big teacher groups with these extreme responses, because those are clearly individuals who've been triggered by having to deal with this assault on their bubble of time that is so precious to us all. But it can be done with kindness and with professionalism.
Practice and progress
I mentioned earlier the clause that was in my piano teacher's studio policy agreement: with sufficient warning, if progress isn't made, lessons will be terminated. I mentioned that I took that out in the beginning. It's one that I have added back in, because of my experiences in the past year, and I think it's a valid one to have in there, because it brings to the surface the point that progress is expected in some form.
Now, it used to frighten me, this clause. I just thought someone's going to read that and think, oh, I don't think I want to have lessons with a teacher who's going to fire me if I'm not good enough. That's not what it's about. And that's why the trial lesson is so useful.
So that is one that you can then bring up and just say, this clause is in here because making progress at learning to play the piano, or whatever instrument you teach, is what you're paying for. You're paying for lessons to have an education in music at the instrument that you're learning. And if progress isn't being made, I don't want you, the parent or the adult student, to be wasting your money. Because that situation, when no progress is happening, is demoralising for the student, whether they're a child or an adult. And it's demoralising for the teacher as well. It can become this situation that is uncomfortable for both sides.
So having that clause in there is just shining a light on what could happen, and the fact that it is something to be aware of. It's not a punishment for lack of progress or lack of trying.
Part 4: The legal review, reviewing your own policy and the objections
What the ISM legal review picked up
The ISM legal review picked up a number of things in my studio policy agreement that were so useful to be made aware of, because we want our studio policies to be fair and to be professional and to say what we mean. And this is where this legal proofreading is so useful, because it might be totally obvious to us. Maybe you've even been proactive enough to get a family member or a friend to read your studio policies, and they understand it in the same way, but someone else might understand it in a different way, and that's where the problems occur.
So even though it was a little bit unnerving sending my studio policy for them to review, I thought this is the best thing that I can do. None of the feedback was undermining or frightening in any way. It's all there to support you as a teacher, and it has left me with so much more confidence in my studio policies.
So, first things first: who is the agreement with? I have a signature box at the bottom, and it said "the student". But for under-18s, the parent or the guardian is the one who should sign their own name there and accept responsibility for paying.
The cooling-off period. If the agreement is made by email or online, or away from your premises, families generally have 14 days to cancel. And so what the review picked up is that you need to give them proper cancellation information and a cancellation form. And if the lessons start within those 14 days, they need to have asked for that. So for me, a 14-day cancellation period applies for every family, in whatever form they sign, and they receive a cancellation form and a tick box if they want the lessons to start sooner.
They picked up a point about the fees. I hadn't stated the start and end dates, the number of lessons, and the total of lessons for the year, and then how it would work if someone joins partway through the academic year, and whether there's a new agreement each September. So that all needs to be in the studio policy, so that it's completely clear for someone coming new to it to understand how it works.
Then putting a note in the studio policies about fee increases, saying when the fees are likely to change, and giving enough notice for a family to stop lessons before the new fee applies. Because I send mine out in June, it gives them nearly three months' notice before the changes would take place, so that was all fine.
I have a clause that says music, exam fees and extra lessons would be invoiced separately, but one tiny tweak to that is that these should be agreed with the family beforehand. In my head it was a given, but it needs to be written out, so that a new student signing on doesn't think that I'm just going to surprise them by entering them for a festival or an exam, or buying them six enormous music books and charging them without their permission or consent.
I do have a clause in there about safety, about students looking after their belongings and themselves while on my premises, but this doesn't exclude any liability for injury caused by my own negligence. So that needs to be clear in there as well.
The point they made about online lessons being provided in the event of government legislation prohibiting face-to-face lessons: that has been added now as well, to also account for whether online lessons suit that particular student.
Ending lessons. This one was an interesting one. I talked in last week's episode about the story of ending lessons with an adult student without notice. Now, I offer both one month's notice, or the option to terminate lessons without notice. And the ISM legal team pointed out that an unlimited right for me to end lessons immediately, while the families have to give a month's notice, does risk being unfair. So their suggestion was that reasonable notice is given as standard, fine, with immediate termination kept for specified serious situations. Which totally makes sense, but it hadn't been laid out. So that's what's in there now. The way I have worded it, for me particularly, is as follows:
"I may end lessons with immediate effect if a student or client behaves in a way that is abusive, threatening, intimidating or persistently disrespectful, repeatedly disregards this agreement after a warning, or if I reasonably consider that the teaching relationship has broken down, so that lessons can no longer continue in a respectful and professional way."
And this last point covers those intangible times when it just doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel comfortable, and this was the situation with my adult student. So it doesn't have to be a situation where you feel like your life is being threatened or you're at risk of physical violence. Of course, those situations are clear-cut, but it's those less obvious situations that I wanted to ensure I have clarity on in my studio policy agreement.
Now you might think, oh my goodness, if a student reads this, they're going to run a mile. But no, this is the way legal documents work. These are policies to account for all eventualities, and even though it feels uncomfortable to say out loud, it's similar to signs you may have seen in hospitals saying that verbal abuse towards staff is not tolerated, that kind of thing. And 95% of us would think, well, of course, we're not going to shout and swear at the lady behind the desk, she's just doing her job. But those signs are there to account for the 5% who lose their rag for whatever reason and behave inappropriately. That is why these policies need to exist for us as well, because you never know when a situation is going to come up, and you need to be protected, because this is your business. This isn't just a hobby, as we all know, and we're not just little old grannies supplementing our pensions.
The ISM legal team did alert me to something that doesn't apply to me specifically, but is coming in January 2027 if it goes through, which is some new rules for rolling, subscription-style contracts. So it may affect you if your lessons continue until notice is given. If this changes, I will update you once the details are confirmed. Or you can look into it yourself, and I will put a link in the show notes to cover that.
Other changes I have made to my studio policy agreement are including clauses on illness, as well as practice and progress: having a conversation first, and then a month's notice if nothing changes. Arriving and waiting times and where to wait. And specifying what the late payment fee covers. I've made these changes, and I'm sending a revised version back to the ISM legal team to double check, because they offered to review it. They really have been so helpful. If you are an ISM member, this is something I advise you to make use of. It doesn't cause any harm, and it will give you that added bit of confidence to support your studio policy agreement.
How to review your own studio policy
So, enough about my own studio policy agreement. How do you go about reviewing your own studio policy? If you're starting from the point of just having a verbal agreement with your students and families, I would urge you to create a physical document. I've put a link to my studio policy template in the show notes. That can be a good starting point for you. You don't have to use all the clauses that I use. It has to fit your studio and the way you operate and what you are comfortable with. So use it as a starting point if you don't have one already.
If you do have a policy, well done. That's the first stage done. Once a year is a really good timeline for updating your agreements. For me, as I said, I do this in about May or June, so that I can get new academic year sign-ups sorted out before we finish for the summer holidays, at the start to middle of July.
You can also make updates to your studio policy agreement at any point during the year, if something comes up that your policy doesn't cover. But I would advise rolling it out to any new students you take on from that point, and for the rest of your students and families from your next rollover point, which may be the start of the academic year, like I do in September, or if you run from January to December, whatever suits you.
Important things to ask yourself about your studio policy agreement. Does this still match how I work? What happened this year that it didn't cover? Think about any times when you were sent emails or messages, or challenged in any way, or asked questions that you had to then give a big long explanation about. Those are the kinds of things that should probably be in your studio policies.
Think about which clauses did I borrow from a template, and do they say what I mean them to say? This is where the legal review can be really helpful. Like I said, they can pick up on discrepancies or any ambiguous wording that could be taken a different way. Other things to think about: is it clear who pays for the lessons, and how the final bill is worked out if they choose to stop? Is it fair both ways? Is my notice period in months or weeks or terms, or some other variation?
The way I share my changes and updates to my studio policies is in June. I email every family with the new agreement attached, and any updates written out in the email body text itself. It's normally a new fee, because I increase my fees every year. Hint: you need to be increasing your fees every year. I will put a link in the show notes to the episode that talks about that. It's very important that we're all aware. I put in a reminder about needing two contact numbers for students who are under 18, which is a safeguarding issue, and when I introduced the late payment fee. In fact, I include that every year, so that people are aware that the studio policy agreement includes a late payment fee for late paid invoices.
So they've had the email, then I hand out a physical paper copy in lessons, and I mention it in person during the lesson, or at the door if the parent drops them off and picks them up. Ideally, if the parents are sitting in on the lesson, they can use that time to sign the agreement during the lesson and just leave it with me. Or they can sign it at home and bring it to the next lesson, or they can send me a photo or a scan by the end of term. But I'm really strict on that date.
And the way you get people to get on with signing and making a decision, which more often than not isn't making a decision, it's just "yes, we want to keep our slot, what do we have to do?", is to word it as such: "In order to keep your lesson slot for September, I need to have your new signed agreement returned by," and put the deadline in. That prompts people to get these things done, because as you approach the second half of the summer term, things get busier and busier, and people are thinking about tidying up and going away on holiday. But this is one of those things that needs to have importance in their minds, because when they get to September, they want to still have that lesson slot with you.
And I should say, in all my years of doing this, nobody has ever pushed back on an updated policy. Nobody has ever stopped lessons because of one. They have all wanted to keep their slot.
So, like I said, if you're an ISM member, do go and get your policy checked by their legal team. It's completely free; it comes as part of your membership fees. If you belong to another professional body, like the Musicians' Union, I'm not sure if they do that too, but see what legal support yours includes and make use of it. You're paying for this professional membership for a reason. Make the most of it.
And as I said, my free studio policy template is linked in the show notes. Use it as a checklist. It's been updated based on the feedback I've had from the legal team at the ISM, so what I've learnt is in there. And if you've already downloaded the older one, you'll get the new version by email.
The objections
Okay, if you've made it this far in the episode, well done, because an episode about reviewing your studio policy agreement isn't the most exciting. I am aware of that. But there may be some objections running through your head, so that's what we're going to cover now. And I have felt some of these myself, so you're not alone.
Number one: my policy's fine. I wrote it years ago and nothing's gone wrong. Nothing has gone wrong yet. The gap that I had in my policy about illness cost me hundreds of pounds in income before I realised it wasn't really in writing, before I'd really respected the fact that it needs to be in writing. So just because something hasn't gone wrong yet, or you may not have noticed, it doesn't mean that your policy is doing what it should be doing.
Objection number two: if I add more clauses, I'll scare families away. This is absolutely one that I was worried about, and that's why I took the practice clause out of my policy in the early days. But nobody has ever pushed back on an update. A clear, fair policy reassures the families you want to keep. And if someone doesn't agree with your policies once you've updated them, all it's done is highlight a student or family who is no longer your ideal student, and it makes space for those who are. But like I said, no one has ever left when I've updated my studio policies. And you are aware of my policies. I am strict about no rescheduling and no refunds. No one's ever left.
Objection number three: it's only a policy, nobody's going to court over a few lessons. I totally get this. Nobody is taking a family to the small claims court for the cost of a couple of lessons. That's right. But your studio policy is a contract. Whether or not you ever enforce it in court, the real power of your studio policy is being clear and fair enough that you never get anywhere near that point. It gives you the stability you need to run your business as a professional music teacher.
Even if you don't believe that you're a professional, you are a professional. If you are offering music lessons and people are paying you for them, you are a professional. It also adds to the perception of you by your students and families that you are a professional teacher, which goes a long way to building that trust, and them having faith in you that you can provide what you say you can provide. Which reminds me of another episode that I'll link in the show notes: You Are a Professional Music Teacher. It's a good one, I promise.
Number four: I used a reputable template, so it must be right. I'm totally guilty of this one. That's exactly what I did. I regard my piano teacher as a very professional person, and so I took her template, I cut out a couple of things I wasn't comfortable with, but left everything else as it was. My exam clause came from my teacher's template, but it didn't say what I meant. It didn't say what I wanted it to mean. So the template is just that: it's the starting point. It's not a finished policy.
Number five: I'm nervous about what a legal check might find. Sure, it felt really unnerving to me too, but you're asking for support from experts who know what they're talking about, and the advice they're going to give you is going to provide you with a more secure studio policy, one that you can stand behind more easily because you know it's fair and you know it will support you. Nothing that came back from them was frightening for me. And finding out from the ISM, rather than from a family in the middle of a dispute, is far better, because you are prepared, you're proactive, and you're not in the middle of some kind of anxiety-triggering dispute.
Number six: if I have to give notice to end lessons, I'm stuck teaching someone who makes me uncomfortable. Well, you name the serious situations where you'll end lessons straight away. You have the right to end lessons straight away in those circumstances. For everything else, the notice period is what you ask of families too, so it's a fair thing to do.
And number seven: reviewing a policy is boring. I get it, there are other things you want to be doing, like playing your instrument or learning a new piece. But every clause in my policy, every clause in every policy, has a story behind it. It's there because something happened that needed to be dealt with, and having all of these clauses in place means you don't have to deal with things one at a time, with all the draining thought that goes with it. Reviewing your policy is remembering what each one is there to protect.
Bringing it all together
So, bringing this all together at the end of this episode: your studio policy is a contract. Every clause in it has a story, every year brings a new one, and a regular review keeps it fair, clear and protecting you.
One thing I would love for you to do: if you're an ISM member, go ahead and send your studio policy agreement to the legal team for review. They got back to me within a day, even though they allow for 10 days, so it was a very quick turnaround and it was really, really helpful. If you're not, read through your studio policy this half term if you're on half-term break, or at the weekend if you get a chance, and think about everything that has happened in the past year. Use my free studio policy template as a checklist to see what might be missing, or what could be reworded to be totally clear as to what you want it to mean.
If you are not yet an ISM member but you were thinking about joining, I have a refer-a-friend code that I can include in the show notes. If you quote that when you sign up for membership, they will give me a discount on my own membership, which would be lovely. But it's a really, really good place to get the reassurance you need as a professional working in this industry. And when you are a member, you can get your own refer-a-friend code, so then you can start getting discounts off your own membership.
When you know your policy is valid and fair, it's so much easier to stand behind it. Families who ask to reschedule again and again because you're on friendly terms are testing a boundary that a clear policy will hold for you. So don't underestimate the value of a good studio policy.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope it has been helpful. I hope it gives you the reassurance you need to look at your own studio policies and make them as clear as they can be, and make them work for you, so that you can get on with the wonderful business of teaching your instrument, and let your studio policy protect you and worry about all those things so you don't have to. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Bye bye.
