We receive a very high volume of emails every day from students and whilst we would like to be able to respond to all emails, this is simply not possible for a small business as we do not have a full-time administrator.
Your teacher is the first point of contact for all queries and we encourage you to speak to them at the start of the lesson with any questions.
If you do not drop-off then feel free to send a note and your questions can be answered in the homework diary/email.
Many of the emails we receive are asking information that is readily available from your teacher or from our web site. One of the most common question is “Is there a lesson in half-term” and “When does term end”. The term dates can be found on every invoice or on the homepage of our web site. We do not offer lessons in the holidays although you can choose to have a Zoom lesson with your teacher. Do note that all our teachers live over an hour commute each way from the studio so for that reason it is not financially viable for them to travel over 2 hours to teach just one or two students in the holidays. However Zoom works very well for most students and this option is always available subject to your teacher being around to teach online during the holidays. Do ensure you request a holiday lesson well in advance of the invoicing date so that our bookkeeper can add this on to your invoice before the invoice is issued.
To streamline our admin process, we are unable to respond to emails requesting information that has already been sent such as term dates, holidays and how to sign up for recitals (for example). We have to prioritise answering emails requesting information that is urgent such as a request from a student that wants a Zoom lesson as they have been off school sick and are unable to attend in-person.
Please ensure you speak to your teacher at the start of your lesson. Do not wait until the end of the lesson to discuss any issues with your teacher as the next student will have arrived and it would unfairly shorten their lesson time if you are chatting to the teacher. Do remember that the lesson time includes speaking to the teacher as well as the taught music lesson. We always encourage parents that drop-off their children to take a minute or two to discuss progress and any queries. For all exam-related queries, please speak directly to your teacher. Our administrators mainly focus on invoicing and chasing late payments so they would not necessarily be able to answer music-specific queries.
If your teacher cannot answer the question they will refer you to our administrator.
Many parents drop off their children and say nothing to the teacher in the lesson but then send an email straight after the lesson to discuss something that could have easily been said at drop-off. We have recently had many questions asking whether a student should sign up for the upcoming recital, what should they play, when do they decide what to play etc. These are all questions your teacher is more than happy to answer. The Eventbrite page has already answered these questions too so do have a read of the Event information.
And finally – your teacher will send you your lesson notes from a Gmail account solely used for teachers to contact parents. We do not use this inbox for general enquiries and the Out of Office message states it is an unmonitored inbox but we still receive a high number of replies to this email. The only way to contact the school is via se22pianoschool at gmail.com.
We thank you for reading this far and we look forward to your cooperation in the smooth running of the piano school.