Tuition Policy

Effective September 1st, 2017. Last updated on January, 2023

Privacy

Your information and content is strictly confidential and is never shared with a third party, or publicly, without your verbal or written consent.

Showcasing Student Work

To showcase student work we require a written acknowledgement from a parent or guardian.The written acknowledgement gives us permission to showcase the work publicly through the available channels (our website, social media, and other promotional sources such as magazines, blogs etc.).

Tuition Related Expenses

There are no additional costs. The tuition fee covers the tuition materials for levels 1 through 4, which are available to the student as PDF downloads. Higher program levels, level 5 and onwards, include some additional third party lesson materials. There is a small fee associated with purchasing third party tuition books and digital downloads.

Tuition Fees & Payment

Tuition is prepaid in advance for a “billing term” of two months. We use PayPal to issue invoices that are emailed to your Inbox at the end of each billing term. Fees are due upon receiving the invoice, or within 14 business days. PayPal issues automatic payment reminders in case the invoice gets overlooked. We send an additional personalised email reminder if we don’t receive payment within 14 business days. Any additional payment reminders will incur a 10% late payment processing fee.

We are an international school and receive payment in multiple currencies. For this reason we don’t accept other payment methods (other than PayPal) because PayPal is still the widely available payment gateway for most currencies and regions of the world.

Teacher Absences

If a teacher has a scheduled vacation, you will know in advance and will not be charged. If a teacher is absent due to illness or other inability to teach, you will receive a credit on the next invoice (or a refund upon request).

Credited and Non-Credited Student Absences

Upon enrolment each family is allotted six “credited absences” for the year.  The year renews on January 1st. These can be redeemed for sick days, vacations, field trips etc. If the family begins tuition after July 1st, only 3 absences are allotted until the end of the year.

Tuition will not be adjusted or prorated for absence after the allotted absences have been used up. Lessons must be attended or paid for. There are no makeup lessons and no additional credits. Only six credited absences per year per family. This policy ensures that our teachers are employed full-time and have reliable income. Unlike private teachers, Gentle Guitar instructors teach a full work-week and don’t have other jobs. When students enrol, until they cancel, they are committing to a tuition subscription service.

How to Redeem Credited Absences

You can request a credited absence before the start of the new billing term (then you won’t be invoiced for the upcoming absence). Or you can back-date and request a credit on your next invoice for an absence that already happened. This applies only to invoice adjustments outside of the busy holiday periods (see below).

Credited Absences During the Holiday Periods

Please note that during the holiday months, your vacation dates must be submitted prior to the issue of the new invoice. Sometimes vacation decisions come up spontaneously. However, to process last minute credited absences during the holiday periods we charge a small administration fee. We get many requests during the holidays and it creates a heavy administration load. There’s an administration fee of $15 (USD) for any invoice adjustment or correction for a last minute vacation absence on an invoice that has already been issued for the billing term (This applies to carry-over credits as well). To avoid charges for credit adjustments during the busy times, please submit holiday absences by the deadlines below.

Holiday Periods

Vacation absences are submitted to your teacher. Please follow the bellow timelines:

December/January absences — Submit by the end of November.
June/July absences — Submit by the end of May.
August/September absences — Submit by the end of July.

Public Holidays

Our students and teachers are based in different parts of the world. We honour major public holidays in every country. It’s up to the teacher and each individual family to communicate about upcoming public holidays. We respect that you (or your teacher) may wish to reschedule or take the day off. If the lesson falls on a public holiday in your country, you may request an additional credited absence (on top of the six allotted). Or, you may request a makeup lesson if your teacher has the availability.

Family Member Absences

Multiple students from the same family are not entitled to lesson swap or time extension for one child when the other is absent.

When students from the same family take lessons, an absence by one does not automatically entitle the other to the absent child’s lesson time. We schedule back-to-back lesson times as a convenience for the family. Teachers plan for 30-minute lessons, longer lessons sometimes could be counterproductive and might tire out the child in attendance. Extended lessons, if a sibling or family member is absent, is up to the teacher’s discretion.

Pausing the Tuition

Sometimes families need to go away for extended holidays, or pause lessons for health reason. For example, due to a child’s broken wrist. We can reserve your lesson slot for up to 10 weeks. To reserve the lesson slot we require a prepayment for the next billing term to secure your lesson time. If a student is absent for more than 10 weeks, we automatically cancel the tuition and the family must enrol again. When enrolling for the second time, we charge an administrative (registration) fee of $55 (USD). (For first time enrolments the administration fee is waived.) Also, usually we don’t raise tuition prices for our students. But if you stop tuition and restart, you may be restarting at the updated tuition price that adjusts for global inflation rates. (See inflation info below).

Tuition Cancellation

Lessons can be canceled anytime, but it’s best to cancel at the end of the billing cycle with a curtesy two week notice. If a student must cancel lessons within the billing period, no refunds are issued for the remaining lessons.

Inflation & Tuition Increases

Our students and teachers live in different parts of the world and are affected by different rates of inflation. As the cost of living increases for our teachers, students, and supporting team, we adjust accordingly. We take multiple factors into account when adjusting our tuition fees. We honour our families’ commitment to lessons and are not likely to raise tuition fees for students that are already enrolled. Our price increases affect incoming students, and families that stop tuition and restart again.

Thank you for working with our policy and for choosing Gentle Guitar™

This policy allows us to keep full-time professional music educators and offer internationally competitive prices for high quality programs and tuition.