Our cancellation policy:  Lessons canceled by the student for any reason cannot be made up, nor can tuition be refunded. A teacher may, at his or her discretion, offer to reschedule the lesson if he or she has an available time slot.

Some guidelines to be aware of:

• Our teachers are paid for scheduled lessons regardless of student attendance.
• If a teacher offers some rescheduling options and none of those work for you, there are no further options unless another student cancels, opening up another spot.

Our business model: Weekly Lessons
Our administrative structure and pricing are based on weekly appointments, month after month, year after year. Our policies, standard in our industry, follow from that business model.
Prospective clients do not call us for one lesson – they are looking for weekly lessons. For this reason, it makes little difference whether a current client cancels with an hour’s notice or a month’s notice – that time slot cannot be rebooked.

Why we cannot offer refunds for missed lessons:

As we grow, we meet increased demand by adding more teachers and more physical space in which lessons can take place. We cannot then adapt to reduced demand (lost revenue from missed lessons) without raising our prices.
The bulk of your tuition at The Music Academy is paid to your teacher as an hourly rate. We could not continue to operate if we stiffed the teachers for their scheduled appointments while giving refunds to clients. Likewise, if we were to pay the teachers while simultaneously refunding missed lessons, we would not be able to maintain our stable presence in the Lanarkshire area.  This was a hard lesson for us to learn.
Relaxing our new attendance policy would destabilize our school by reducing the incentive of students to commit to regular attendance. Weekly lessons that must be paid for regardless of attendance override any conflicts that may come up. We have been fortunate to have a very high rate of student retention and strong student attendance is a part of that. Strong attendance contributes to success on the instrument which, in turn, reinforces the commitment to lessons.

The Challenges of Rescheduling

Your teacher can reschedule lessons if he or she has space in his or her schedule and a studio is available. However, some teachers are in such high demand that they literally do not have any availability. In addition, teacher’s schedules often do not allow them much time for phone calls and email – this in itself sometimes limits a teacher’s ability to reschedule lessons.

Our new policies will allow us to continue to build a legacy of great music education. Thank you for understanding!