Mum told me on the day of tutoring that there is no more tutoring

[Thatyachtmusicsong]

Can anyone help please?

I do private tutoring and have tutored one student twice per week for three years.
She has had some health issues and we changed from tutoring at her home to online 6 or so months ago.
We tutored over summer until the last few weeks of August when she said she was taking a breaj for summer and would tutor again as always in September.
Today I messaged in the morning checking that all was okay for tutoring in the evening and the mum told me that they decided to take her out of school and have signed up to an online school.
The mum said she doesn't know about the future and how things will go and she would take a pause for our tutoring as it may be too much for her.
I feel sad for her and understand the situation, but this has come as a real shock to me as we rely on those lessons financially. I had done tje planning for September and feel shocked they only let me know on the day of tutoring, which leaves me no time to find something else.

Stupidly, I don't have a contract.

What would you do about this situation?

Would it be fair to ask for a months payment since I had no notice etc?

Feel like I've really been left in the lurch

I think you could ask for payment for today's lesson as it was such short notice. But don't hold your breath.

In future I think you really need to lay out some expectations, including a notice period. This is very much the nature of tutoring though, rightly or wrongly.

Presumably having no contract suited you well, until now. Whenever I've paid for music lessons, swimming lessons, driving lessons I've paid in advance for a block. There will have been a reason why you decided not to have a similar arrangement.

It’s a bit rubbish to not be given any notice, however, you should be aware that tutoring never lasts forever. It’s usually for a defined period of time. 11 plus prep, GCSE’s etc. You need to be advertising your services every year before school
begins and making sure you have a full diary of students, if this is your source of income. Relying on one student long term is very short sighted.

Always have a contract.

Do you think they will come back? Is online school not great?

There’s nothing you can do.

Course they will, people like that always think they can get something cheaper elsewhere, and it usually bites them on the arse. Are they going to sit with the child while she foes the online school to make sure she does it

Why didn't you create a contract .....?

Seems silly to have overlooked this,.

TBH if I was a client, I would probably have thought it wasn't that important to you if you'd never brought it up in a formal agreement/contract etc. Every tutor I've dealt with has always set out their terms and conditions straight off, so by not doing so you might give the impression people can do as they like!

They definitely won't be sitting with her, they also won't be able to help her as the mum has said this numerous times in the past. They both work and travel a lot.

I messaged the dad half an hour ago (he pays the wage and I message him each month with amount due) I put it very nicely, explaining the situation. It's up to him now. The payment would help temporarily, but i'm still gutted. I have been stupid to rely on it, I just didn't expect it to change so suddenly, I've been with her for so long, I shouldn't have relied on it.

If the client family were decent people, they would offer payment of some kind in recognition of the short notice. They haven't done, which suggests they aren't decent. In your position, I would ask for payment, based on whatever standard notice is for a tutor and noting how many hours you have spent on preparation. The fact that they didn't ask you for a contract as you didn't offer one is not a good sign.

Having been stung once, you would be wise to sort out contracts for your other clients now, to coincide with the new term. Make sure they sign before you do any work!

As I said up thread, 'pause' means the arrangement is at an end. They won't be back. You would be much better off spending the evening polishing your on line adverts and actively looking for new students.

You can ask, I doubt she will respond or give you the money, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

I think you are getitng a lot of responses from fellow tutors OP. From a parent's perspective, I had tutors for five years. I never signed a contract and never would.

From a parent's perspective, I would never re-connect with a previous tutor once the agreement ceased regardless of how good the tutor was. There will always be other tutors, just as there will always be other students for you.

That said when I cancelled classes at the last minute, I did pay for the lesson. If I cancelled a week in advance, I expected the class to be made up another time.

I think pause in this situation is a little different though? Tbf she did sound genuine in this

I do online tutoring but all my students book and pay in advance. No payment, no lessons. Its a business not a friendship club.

Dear Mrs X, I am very sorry to hear that Y has not been able to return to school and I completely understand that you wish to allow the new situation to settle before deciding whether to continue with tutoring. It has been a pleasure to tutor her for the past 3 years and if you think it might be beneficial in the future, it will be a pleasure to continue. In the meantime, here is my invoice for today's session which was cancelled with less than 2 hours notice.

However.. your previous back and forth might make this an unsuitable message.

I think you need to look on this witn gratitude for 3 years of steady income, rather than the disappointment / annoyance that it is no longer.

Cam you ask her for a reference you can use and ask here to recommend your services.. maybe say, I find word of mouth to be the most effective and I would love if you could think of three people who might consider booking my services and have a face to face conversation with them... bearing in mind, you said she is not very organised and this decision to enroll in online school will be a huge one for her and her child and she may have very little bandwidth to think about anything else ...

Please leave them alone. They have made the difficult decision to withdraw their child from school and opt for online education.

I have done this for two of my children and it has been a horrific decision to make.

The fact that to choose this run your business without a contract is absolutely nothing to do with them.

Leave them alone.

As others have mentioned the arrangement was currently paused, so if you wanted to start it back then I would have expected more notice from you to check whether the time / date was suited. “First day back” is a bit vague and when something is paused it needs to be clarified and committed to before either side relies on it

unfortunate for you, but I really wouldn’t be sending any messages like someone suggested on the first page asking for a months worth of fees, that’s mad and could get you looking quite bad if it got spread around?! As it seems like they were a good client and you liked working with them, I would prefer to leave the door open for the future if I was in your shoes and sending messages like that could be quite off putting.

Best thing to do will be advertise and bring in some new students for the new year.

Maybe see if they’ll write you a nice reference - good luck
maybe better to replace them with someone more reliable

So how long are you thinking of waiting for them? Even if they did come back, it would be very hard after 3 years to impose conditions about no shows etc.

So much easier for you to pick up new students now and lay out your chosen conditions from the start.

I've been a tutor for a long time and I love it, but honestly, I promise that pause really.does mean it's over.

I wouldn't push it, not if you didn't have a contract. All the tutors we use have a contract with notice periods.
Hopefully they might recommend you to others

And then what? Get yourself a heart attack and 5K? Who is going to pay for enforcement?

OP said "she said she was taking a breaj for summer and would tutor again as always in September."

Would you honestly interpret that as the arrangement ceasing, your services are not required in Sept?