Piano Teacher problems

[Anu75]

My children go to weekly piano over the last year . Last term my son who was 6 at the time said he called him and idiot. Both kids said they didn't want to to go back at start of the term. Yesterday the piano teacher hit my son across the back of the head and told me he was being dopey and saying things like ' for gods sake read the music', stop reading the bloody words. When I confronted him he said no we don't hit children I just caught him by accident when I moved near him. I feel so uncomfortable now doing any more lessons and mindful I don't want my children to see it is ok for a grow up to lie.

How do I go about cancelling the lesson as clearly the teacher is denial. If I ring him I may just blow my top with him if he lies and denies it again. Shall I email him and explain I'm not happy with what has gone on and want to cancel. He usually wants a terms notice so do I offer to pay until the end of the term or leave it and wait for him to come back to me. Is a term until Christmas. It is £46 a week and I 'm already in debt by £23K plus we have to do a balloon payment for the car in Nov which will mean another loan of £5.5K.

Please help!

He hit your child and called him names?
I'd be reporting him and cancelling with immediate effect. I wouldn't pay him anything.

I'd just cancel and not pay any more money.
Let him take you to court. He's unlikely to do that as he won't want accusations of hitting coming out in court.

Is he registered in any way? Contact his registered body.

Cancel and report him to the regulatory body, assuming there is one/he is registered which I'm pretty sure should be if he's teaching children one to one. If he demands money just say you are contacting the police re assaul charges.
Please don't send your children back. As a child I had piano lessons with a middle aged spinster teacher who was horrible and used to lift up my hand and bang it down on the keyboard if I made a mistake.
I was terrified of her and too scared to tell my parents. This was back in the days when children weren't believed

Are you sitting in during the lessons? I do for my DD's private music lessons. You should complain about him and leave immediately. Music should be enjoyable. If you are in debt, don't pay for private lessons. You can do them at school for a much cheaper price. Also, piano is quite easy to pick up and I am teaching DC2 at home myself for just over a year. (DC1 did it with school but DC2 wants to learn a different instrument with school). You don't need to waste £46 a week unless you can afford it.

I don't mean piano is easy! I just mean it's easy to pick up and hard to master. They can start making music that sounds decent very quickly, in comparison to the violin.

I'm not aware there is a regulatory body , it is a piano school though.

I was looking at school lessons but I am unsure for son as he missed a lot of school over covid pandemic and they say they will still be charged if he is ill and not in school whilst on the one or two occasions with this teacher he did not charge us so I prefer out of school lessons. The lessons are a similar price £18 plus vat for 30 minutes.

No I'm not in the room with the DC when they have their lesson they go one at a time into another room and the door is shut. My daughter reported no issue yet she also says she is uncomfortable too.

I have sent an email and await his reply. I don't recall signing any agreement but he does know our home address. I will see what he says , and then update on here.

Is this a joke!

Remove your children immediately. Cancel the direct debit. Send a letter explaining why you have done this.

Ask about on FB for teacher recommendations - find a new nice teacher who charges £14 for half an hour (going rate round here)

And WTF is someone who is in £23k worth of debt doing paying out £46 a week on bloody piano lessons??!

I am a private music teacher and am appalled at this. Cancel your direct debit immediately and don't make your children go to this person ever again. Let him try and take you to court, I doubt he will.

There is no regulatory body for piano teachers. Some may choose to be a member of an organisation but it is not mandatory.

Obviously you can't keep sending your child to someone who hit them.
I'd terminate without notice and report to the local authority if I genuinely thought a music teacher had hit my child.

You're in £23k debt and paying for piano lessons? Obviously stop paying, stop sending your kids

@Anu75 your school lessons are very expensive. Is it a private school or the county music service? We pay just under £200 a year for the county one at school. They are group lessons with 2-3 kids and not one to one.

DC has lessons at school and in primary they are at the same time every week. So you miss the same class. In secondary, the day is fixed but the time moves so you miss a different class. I believe the benefit with a private teacher is faster progress. But to take advantage of the progress, the child has to practice than 5-10min a day so they outpace their peers in the same group. The 5-10min a day is the expectation they got from the school lessons.

However, with you in debt, I don't understand why you are willing to pay £18+VAT per 30min? (That's actually slightly less than what I pay for DC1's private lesson).

If you are still keen on private, then I agree with a PP saying you should ask on facebook local group for a local teacher recommendation.

At £23k in debt, I'd be inclined to teach myself, which I have suggested in my original post. I'm guessing you can play yourself to pay for private lessons at 6? Get one of the method books and follow it. I'm using Faber piano adventures with DC2. She's completed the primer level in year 2 and now doing level 1. I don't put pressure on practice and she does maybe a couple of minutes a day only.

If he's part of a piano school, report. Also, I'm passionate about music lessons but please, it's not worth getting further into debt for. The organisation CAP can help get you back on track with your finances. If they enjoy music, send them to a free school choir or a local brass band who does free lessons if you have them nearby.

your school lessons are very expensive. Is it a private school or the county music service? We pay just under £200 a year for the county one at school. They are group lessons with 2-3 kids and not one to one.

Some individual schools will choose to subsidise the cost of piano lessons. (how on earth does a group piano lesson work anyway they have multiple pianos in one room????) But many schools only offer lessons if the parent pays the full cost which depending on area can be between £18-£25 per half hour.

If you genuinely think the teacher hit the child, you should contact the police.
Do bear in mind, though, that an accidental blow from behind could be difficult for a child to interpret correctly, particularly if it gave them a bit of a fright. The swearing is bad if it's accurately reported - he shouldn't be using ''bloody', 'idiot', 'for God's sake', and this alone is reason to withdraw them although not reason for a police report. 'Dopey' I think is a grey area depending on context and tone.

Ignore the nonsense about contacting his regulatory body! There are organisations he might belong to, but none of them fulfil the function of a regulatory body and none of them have any powers to take complaints/investigate individuals - effectively, they are mostly trade unions. Your route for redress if an assault is committed is via the police. This has the added benefit that it will show up on his DBS check in future.
If he's part of a piano school you can of course complain to the school.

Two other things stand out from your post. One is that, if your children are genuinely significantly uncomfortable, or if you are getting bad feelings about a teacher, you need to be a lot tougher about how you step in to protect them - you shouldn't be needing to ask 'how do I go about cancelling' because you are the adult, and in a worrying situation, it's your job to step in to protect your children, and I say this as a music teacher.

The second is the information about the debt. Don't mention this if you refuse to pay your notice period, because it isn't relevant and does muddy the waters. If a teacher is swearing at and even hitting pupils, you have good reason to withdraw them immediately and breach the contract in regards the notice period. He is unlikely to challenge it if his conduct has been questionable, and if he does challenge it, you can quite reasonably say you had no choice but to withdraw the children immediately and you can't be held to the notice clause under the circumstances.

However, if the situation has been exaggerated, you would probably still be liable for the notice period and the fact that you're in too much debt to be able to really afford these lessons is neither here nor there. If you mention the debt, you risk people suspecting you're inventing allegations to get out of paying for lessons you can't afford and shouldn't have signed up for in the first place. If your children are actually being mistreated, you don't want to muddy the waters this way.

Whether an agreement was signed or not is irrelevant. If he sent you the T&Cs - which he must have done, as you're aware of the notice period clause - and you continued with the lessons, you've accepted them by default. The time to challenge them was when you got informed of them. Your only grounds for defaulting on notice will be if he is mistreating your children.

@Comefromaway not sure if the school subsidise but it's the same price at DC1 secondary and DC2 primary for different instruments. I suspect it's the county music service that sets it at £200 a year.

The school has multiple pianos in a room. No different from teaching multiple children on guitars or violins. I did say you get you can get better progress in 1:1 private lessons but the child has to practice enough to take advantage of that. If they are doing only 5-10min a day, then I don't think they will progress fast anyway.

Not many primary schools have multiple pianos full stop!

I can't remember how much I paid for ds but he did progress at a phenomenal rate. A few false starts after a year of violin (Grade 1 merit) , 2 years of guitar (was about to take Grade 2) he took up piano in when he started secondary and went from nought to Grade 8 in 4 and a half years.

Thank you for your responses.

I have heard nothing back on email.

There next lesson is on Monday. If he rings or texts me ( i.e did not get the email) should I answer? I'm conscious unlike email the call is not recorded and he could then say I said something wrong and say I still need to pay.

My husband said answer the phone and pay him the term. He has no clue what a term is and the cost implication.

I found a church piano teacher who charges half the amount is fully booked.i am still looking, the rest including school lessons is double the amount. I cannot play.

I am on a payment plan for my loan and wanted the children to have a go and something different rather than be on the computer / you tube. They enjoy the music and my daughter said the piano teacher raised her voice only when she got things wrong so I 'm glad I stopped. My little boy keeps asking me if we are going back so I keep reassuring no. I feel so bad now!