[Matthew Rusk]

Hi Richard,

Great question, often organisations are required undertake their own DBS checks meaning that as you rightly point out the process is duplicated multiple times. This is unfortunately par for the course in the sense that a DBS check is only a historical profiling of an individual, so School B could encounter problems if they relied on School A’s DBS certification, or indeed the teacher’s, if an issue arose between that certification and a new that School B should have carried out.

That said gaining your own Enhanced DBS certificate is no bad thing, you can find out more about doing this here:

https://musicteacher.kinsta.cloud/dbs-checks-music-teachers/

Interested in getting thoughts from other teachers about this as well – how have other people found this problem of needing multiple DBS Checks each school?

[Matthew Rusk]

Unfortunately, the two situations are not really comparable as they are different instruments – so enquiry numbers are very different. With on average 4.14 enquiries per month coming in for Jake during 2017, compared 18.00 enquiries per month for Eliza so Eliza has so much more scope to increase prices and retain her teaching capacity – even a slight overshoot in prices for Jake could see his enquiry numbers drop below a level that makes his teaching viable as a full time income.

A carefully considered approach for Jake is really important to keep the enquiries at a level that makes the teaching viable – lets explore the locational ideas, is there a possibility to get more students to travel to you?:)

[Matthew Rusk]

Hi Jake,

Great post – absolutely, it sounds like a sensible and justified move. My broad advice would be (a) tell your students well in advance of a price change, giving a set date when prices change – the new year is always a good time to change the price, though that might be a bit far off at the moment (b) when informing student provide a good reason for the change, blaming it on third party factors is a good idea… (c) be prepared for a few students to leave – this is natural in a price change (d) know that the change of price might effect new enquiry numbers coming through, but those students who do take up future lessons won’t bat an eyelid at the price as they have never known it to be cheaper.

It is always worth focusing on the target output, which is for you to be 100% book up for all the hours you want to teach at the highest possible value price for those hours. Having a blank price increase might not necessarily help achieve that – however, when combined with perhaps a discounted daytime rate with your new higher peak time rate that might really help achieve that aim.

In addition, keeping a flexible approach to pricing is a really sensible way to go – if you find that enquiries dry up or throughout the summer it gets particularly quiet then having discounted rates during those times makes a lot of sense as holding out for a higher price if people aren’t coming to lessons doesn’t help. Alternatively, if enquiry numbers and student attendance stay roughly the same it suggests that you are entirely justified in the price increase as the market can take it – my feeling is that Bath is likely to be able to take a slightly higher price point as a location, whereas a location like Middlesborough might not be able to.

Last thing to consider is whether you want the change to apply to all students, or only all new students – some teachers decide to apply a change to all new enquiries, while others implement it across the board. There are pros and cons to both – my thoughts are if handled in the right way your students will be very understanding of a reasonable price increase.

So it is a balance of analysing the marketplace in terms of new student enquiries, implementing a challenging political change for current students and reviewing these changes over time to see if they were the correct ones to make – all while keeping the single focus in mind of having 100% lesson time booked out at the highest possible price.

Some teachers who have higher prices actually earn less overall income than teachers with a slightly lower price point who can attract enough of the marketplace to have consistent student numbers each week. I have seen this a lot in the UK with teachers who go past the £30+ mark, where sometimes – depending on the location and instrument – their overall teaching income can decrease by passing that threshold.

In terms of how to introduce it there is a great post in the MGR Music Tuition forum that might help explore that more (you will need to be logged in to view) – https://musicteacher.kinsta.cloud/community/groups/music-teachers/forum/topic/price-increase-tips/ – hope this helps. If you would like to explore it more then I am more than happy to Skype sometime as it is something that I have helped a lot of teachers implement.

On another note, exploring the possibilities of getting all students travelling to a single location might be a really interesting one to explore – this will allow you to increase your potential teaching capacity as you reduce your travelling time, as well as justify a price increase if the location is a genuinely nice location to teach from (though this might also be an additional expense as well). Would you be interested in having all students travel to you in the long run?

Kind regards,

Matthew

[Matthew Rusk]

Eliza is going to love this…I also have one for you as well called MailTrack.io that is a Google Mail plugin to see when someone has read an email. Super useful if you are wondering whether your email has gone into spam or is a student has read it but hasn’t replied as yet:)

[Matthew Rusk]

Haha, can we Skype about this something next week…sounds like something I should know about it:) thanks for sharing it!