Last week one of my piano pupils (about G2 standard and age 11) had not practised very much. He admitted it in the lesson and was rather laid back about my suggestion that he needed to practise 4 or 5 times a week.

As it happened his father collected him and he's the adult pianist in the family having learnt in his youth. I felt a bit guilty because father was looking a bit stressed, but I had a little groan about son's lack of practice. To his credit, father looked very guilty and confessed they'd taken their eyes off the ball so to speak.

That set me thinking about how I could impress on pupils the need for more practising. I use school rewards as much as I can (house points, and a word in the ear of the head of music), but for private/teenage pupils I don't really have any "carrots".

Just now, everyone's waiting for the end of the summer term, so I'm getting ready for action in September. Does anyone have any ideas that work on recalcitrant pupils?

In extreme cases, where pupils have failed to practise for weeks on end despite experiencing my complete range of sticks and carrots, I give them a practise chart, detailing what has to be practised and for how long, to be signed every day by a parent. My CT ABRSM mentor (who is strict but gets fantastic results) gets her pupils to record their practise and drop it off to her during the week so that she can see where they are going wrong (and of course ensure that enough practise is done!)

If a young student is not practising despite various methods of, ahem, bribery and the usual tricks, then I would make the parent personally responsible for supervising the practice. I ask them to read the notebook, go through each requirement and then log it in a practice chart. The note book I use has a little built in practice chart so I don't need to give them an extra bit of paper. If there aren't many ticks in the chart, I have a word with the parent to find out why. Of course we all have busy weeks, but if it's an on-going situation that the student never practises and/or the parent never supervises the practice, then I do have the conversation that maybe the time is not right for lessons just yet.