I was just interested to know how much everyone pays for their piano lessons as when I have taken my grade 8 I want to be able to teach privately & don't really know what the average rate is per hour. If you only have half an hour then just double the amount you pay (sounds pretty obvious but thought I would just say it!).

I pay £25 for an hour once a week. It used to be £10 but it went up. I don't mind though as I get on really well with my piano teacher & don't think I could find anyone better. I clicked with her straight away & have had her for 6 years now. I think it's important for a student to feel totally comfortable with their teacher so I think it's worth the money if you find someone you really click with providing you can afford it of course.

Lisa xxx

P.S. I didn't put an option for anything under £10 as I doubted anyone would charge any lower than that.

I can't really vote in this poll because my piano lessons are only half an hour long. My lessons are £10 every week, though.

I'm sorry I should have put, 'how much do you spend a week on piano lessons?' I did write in my post though that if you only had half an hour then you could just double your amount.

I wish I could change it now but I don't think I can

Lisa xxx

I expect more people than you might imagine pay less than £10/hour due to school subsidies, music awards and some less experienced teachers who don't charge so much. I pay £8.30 per hour (£4.15 per week) for sons private lessons (but teacher only teaches up to grade 4). Next term he will move to free school lessons instead (music award); I hope he gets on as well with the new teacher as the old. The school lessons are around £30/hour (£15 per week) if you pay.

Wow, I didn't really think that anyone would charge less than £10 per hour but I was obviously wrong! Even though your son's teacher only teaches up to grade 4 that is still excellent value! I thought you had to have grade 8 to teach privately so I didn't realise there would be less experienced teachers out there but at least I know that I can teach before I take my grade 8 now How does your son get free school lessons? I've never heard of music awards before. I wish I'd been able to have free school lessons when I was at school as I went without a teacher for a year because the lessons there were too expensive & I couldn't find a suitable private teacher.

Lisa xxx

In my experience it depends on the schools- in one school I've taught at, everyone doing GCSE music got free instrumental lessons. It gave a great opportunity to people who otherwise would never have learnt. In another school they have to pay the full amount for lessons.

All those learning piano at my school have 'free' lessons. Well they pay £4 a term ish I think so they are basically free! They only pay to use the actual instrument in case it needs tuning or repairing etc

Fairly sure sons teacher only went as far as grade 6 herself, so you don't need to have grade 8, though I'm sure some would argue that you should. It is excellent value; I strongly suspect that she is one of those people who doesn't like to put her charges up and has been teaching so long that her rates are now lower than they should be. She has also told me that she does it more for love than money. She is a lovely lady who has really fostered sons love of music (we kind of expected that it would be something he did for a year or two and then gave up, but instead after a year or two he decided he wanted to learn cello as well. Cello rapidly became his first instrument, but he tends to practise more on piano. The school music award is at a private school, so arguably it is subsidised by the fees. Each year they run music auditions for the new intake and usually award 1 or 2 scholarships (which give free lessons and discounted fees) and around half a dozen bursaries which give free lessons on a specified instrument. Son was aiming for a cello bursary, knowing that there were several candidates aroung grade 6/7 standard (at age 11!) who were sure to get the scholarships. Surprisingly, he was awarded a piano bursary as well, which was most welcome. I think a lot of private schools run similar schemes; not sure if any such things exist in state schools - rarely I suspect.

it's £18 for me and my sister to have half an hour each. I think we get a sort of special offer because we're sisters.

The cost of lessons is also very dependent on where you live. I live near Birmingham and you won't find many teachers charging over £15-20 per hour here, and theat's the experienced ones. However, go 10miles down the road and the cost will nearly double.

Lisa87 - look around at how much other teachers in your area charge, and then charge less as you will start off with very little experience.

As a teacher I charge £10 an hour, but may increase in September. My piano teacher charges £16 per hour, but has a lot more experience than me.

I live in Belfast and charge £25 /hr for piano and organ tuition.

How much do you think half an hour per week piano lesson in London should cost, folks? Thanks!

It's going to depend on experience and qualifications.
I'm on the edge of London (central is likely to be more) and I charge the same as Dangermouse. Doesn't vary with grade or subject.

Where I live the rates vary enormously. Our music services are more expensive than many of our private teachers but parents still use them because the children get lessons in school, which means less demands on time after it. Parents pay pretty much the full costs.

On average, private teachers around here are charging £20-25/hour and getting it, with many having extensive waiting lists (myself included). Most of my pupils take half hour lesson slots or 45 minutes. I only have a handful who like the full hour and they are mostly Grade 7+ pupils.

That said, you can still find inexperienced teachers who charge half that. ISM rates can be a useful guideline but, in the end, you can only charge what your local market will accept and what you think you're worth. If you can make the two match up, you've got the right price.

I did hear the other day of a college professor teaching in London who asks in excess of £60 per hour and has a full list of advanced pupils. Wow!

Don't think I'd get very far if I started charging even half that round here.

£34 for 1 hour.

Yikes! Where do you have lessons!? Wish I could charge that....

i pay £9 a week for a half hour lesson
most teachers in the area charge between £10 and £12 though some charge more

I pay £10 for about an hour and a quarter. Have to travel 100 mile round trip to get there once a fortnight though.

£34 for one hour!!! Are you charging or paying?

I pay £20 per hour for piano lessons with a music graduate, although we nearly always exceed the time by five or ten minutes and there's no extra charge.

I have heard of teachers using an alarm clock so they don't run over - does this still happen?

Anne

Good grief!

My piano teacher charges £10 for 3/4 hour for my lesson, although since I am her last lesson of the evening on a wednesday, we usually go over to an hour or, before an exam (very rarely happens though) we went over by half an hour!

She's the best teacher ever, shes so nice and really helpful. She'll rearrange my lesson if I have a concert (she knows the conductor though so understand that we get very short notice). She just goes out of her way to help, shes fantastic and well worth it. I'll be sorry to leave her when I go to university.

When I was looking for a new teacher when my old one moved out of the area we found an old lady who used to have a big alarm clock on top of the piano & then as soon as you had reached the end of your half an hour she would ring a little bell, tell you to go & shout "next" to the next pupil who was waiting outside the room for their lesson even if you were in the middle of a piece!!! Fortunately I didn't have her but I'd heard what she was like from people at my school who had been to see her. I think if you're going to teach a lot of people then you should space them out & have at least half an hour between each one so that you can wrap things up with one pupil & then prepare for the next one.

Lisa xxx

In an ideal world we'd do that, but who is going to pay for all those half-hours? I can fit four 45 minute lessons in the 3 hours between 3.30 and 6.30, which is when most people want to come. If I had 15 minutes between each, I would only get three lessons in, and I would end up charging an hour's rate for 45 minutes.

I don't like the alarm clock idea at all. I keep a careful eye on the time, and make sure we wind up with a minute or so to go so that the ending of the lesson doesn't seem rushed. Ususally the ring on the doorbell of the next student arriving is a good alarm if I need a reminder.

I agree this old lady did not seem to have the right idea!
However it really is not practicable to leave a complete half-hour slot between lessons. I personally would be able to teach only just over half the number I currently do teach if I were to do that - and I'd be out of business I'm afraid. Either that, or I'd need to increase fees out of all proportion to make up for the extra time between lessons.

The trick is to keep track of the time and use the last 3-4 minutes to review and clarify aims for next time, rather than running right up against the start of the next lesson. It sounds easy, and isn't always - for various reasons it sometimes goes slightly pear-shaped. I try to keep something for the end of the lesson that should be an easy play-through and will finish on a good note. If I've miscalculated and it ends up being something that we get bogged down in for some unexpected reason - I mentally kick myself for having got it wrong!

I do like to have a small gap between lessons so I can keep up records as I go along and refresh memory (preparation done earlier) for the next one. It's not always possible but it does help when it is.

Sorry if I sounded unrealistic but what I meant was if you were a mobile teacher & had to travel to your pupils houses (like my teacher does) then you could leave at least half-an-hour (depending on how far you have to travel) between each lesson so you could finish one lesson & prepare for the next one. Also I didn't mean that you would spend an extra half-an-hour with each pupil as that would obviously not be practical but make just save a bit of time between lessons so that if you ran over time with one pupil (which is bound to happen sometimes) then you would not be using up someone else's time which they are paying you for. But as you have mentioned, this would not be practical for teachers whose pupils come to their house.

Lisa xxx

But who is paying for your teacher's travel time and expenses? That time is even less usable than teaching at home, where at least you can do paperwork, lesson plan etc.

I don't know but she only lives around the corner & mainly teaches people around the area so she hasn't got far to travel. I think she just prefers to travel to her pupil's houses as she has young children & perhaps maybe doesn't feel comfortable working at home in case of interruptions. But as I said I don't really know as I've never discussed expenses with her.

Sorry if I've rattled anyone's cage

Lisa xxx

I used to pay £8 which was supposed to be a "half hour" lesson but ended up being 45 minutes or an hour.

My teacher charges £10.50 per half hour lesson, although half hour lessons tend to last 45 minutes on average! She puts the rate up slightly each September, after a warning the previous term. I'm in the South Eastish, and she's well qualified (music graduate plus various TCL diplomas) with years of experience.

No, you haven't rattled my cage. I'd love to be able to take time between lessons to talk to parents etc., but it just doesn't work out. If I lose 45 minutes each day then I will have to put fees up to compensate, and turn down 5 prospective students. The majority of my parents wait outside in the car when they come to pick up their offspring, so I'd just end up losing potential students for no good reason.

I am slightly sore at myself for agreeing to travel 7 miles to teach one student (done when I was still trying to build up my studio in the early days) and losing out financially by doing so. Especailly as they rarely pay me on time, and I'm now having to chase them for accompanist fees as well. So if I came over as slightly shirty it's because of that.

Apologies if my tone was a bit off.

No it's fine, I was just worried I'd annoyed people by my suggestions. As I have said, I am not a teacher myself but would love to teach privately in the future but as I have had no experience I can only draw from how my piano teachers have done things. I just thought it might have been a good idea (if you do have to travel between lessons) if you save enough time to wrap things up with one pupil, arrive on time for the next one & then sort yourself out but I suppose I shouldn't really comment on things I haven't actually experienced.

Lisa xxx

No not mine either - I agree that if you travel between students you do need to allow adequate time for travelling between lessons. I hadn't realised that was the arrangement you were describing - I was just thinking of my own situation.

I don't do any visiting at the moment, I usually maintain that I can't justify travelling time between lessons at the most popular times. I've sometimes visited during the day when lessons are much less booked up.

Sorry you have an inconvenient set-up with your student, andante_in_c - isn't it odd that the students you put yourself out for sometimes turn out to be the ones that take advantage! I have one family that always delays over paying, and they are the only one. I've been too flexible with them; they wouldn't get away with it in a school situation, and I'm trying to decide whether to tighten up or go on ignoring it.

I should have known this one would be trouble right from the start. The mother's first question to me on the 'phone was, 'How much would you charge for a one hour lesson?'.

I pay £35 an hour but see a very experienced and much sought after teacher. He should really be playing in the likes of the Festival Hall but has a damaged tendon in his finger so has given up concerts and recitals in order to teach. Goodness only knows what he thinks about my dismal pianistic skills but at least we have a laugh!

mines £10 a lesson, which is anything from 45 mins to an hour and a half sometimes

It's weird isn't it?

I worked at a Saturday music school for a year, and it was always the richest parents (ie combined income of the best part of half a million pounds a year!) who would be the last to pay and the first to complain about fee increases... insane!

"isn't it odd that the students you put yourself out for sometimes turn out to be the ones that take advantage!"

Indeeed it is.Especially when you have specified red wine and they bring white....leftover from a party???? I refused it.

I still wonder why I do this.I'm too soft.

Currently giving theory lessons to sample the delights of various red wines.Big mistake! Don't do it...

well...
I only know that I used to pay $210 per lesson. But I don't know how many £ do I need to pay.

According to my dad, each pound equals 4 Australian dollars. So my lesson (in pounds) would be around 9.50 for an hour.
But my teacher always makes them longer. Once my lesson went for an hour and 45 minutes.

No , one pound is about 2.33 Australian dollars, at today's rate. And for our hong kong friend, today the pound is worth about 13.63 hong kong dollars, so your $210 works out at about £15.40

Liz

I currently pay 26 pounds per hour for my daughters piano tuition. This goes up every January. The tutor has a waiting list and my daughter was on it for 18 months. The tutor is excellent and regularly performs herself. We are in Central London and my daughter goes to her house. Occasionally she has had two lessons a week if there was a performance or exam. I would pay up to 35 pounds per hour if required as I feel the tutor is worth it.

My'n are £4

I teach piano, and its 12 euro for half an hour .. Which is probably like maybe 9 pounds or something?

I pay £10.50 for a half an hour lesson a week so thats like £21 pound for an hour lesson, quite dear

I pay £30 a month and that is for 4 half an hour lessons. So thats £7.50/half hour and £15/hour.

But my teacher has been teaching for over 10 years and is very qualified etc. I have a friend who had lessons with a person in the sixth form who had passed grade 8 and he charged 2.50 / half hour.

I have always thought that my lessons really expensive, but they obviously aren't as expensive as other peoples.

NM

No, actually I think that's very reasonable.

soz i said that i paid £34 per hour and left the topic! oopsie!


Basically because my teacher used to be a concert pianist, and still plays all over. And shes an excellent teacher, good with technical stuff. She started a few years ago at about £25 and put it up each year. Its well worth the money, shes a fab teacher.

I don't pay for my music lessons because I got a music scholarship but I have to pay for the books, etc. But if I miss a lesson (because of my clumsy mind) i have to pay £12 and my lessons are half an hour exactly.

I pay about £10 for half hour but my teacher is so nice so sometimes he gives me an extra halfhour free or just an extra free lesson...

It's lovely being taught by a friend... my piano teacher accompanied me for my last flute exam, we took the 2nd half of a couple of piano lessons (but went over evry time we did that), played in a thingy at chapel, did a couple of other rehearsals, and he took me to my exam because I've no independent transport, and he refused to let me pay him a PENNY! needless to say I was extremely grateful!

Anybody from Ireland there - and how much do you charge/pay?