Tutoring Make-Up Lesson Policy: Rules That Hold

A make-up lesson is a session rescheduled after a cancellation, on a date agreed with the student. On paper it is a simple courtesy. In a schedule of 20 or 30 students, make-ups quickly become the most time-consuming task of the week: messages to find a slot, sessions forgotten, families who believe they have a credit you never wrote down.

Why make-ups get out of hand

The trouble is not the cancellations themselves. It comes from three habits:

• every make-up is negotiated case by case, by message, whenever the student happens to be free;
• there is no time limit, so a make-up from September can resurface in December;
• nobody keeps count of the lessons owed, neither you nor the family.

The result: you squeeze lessons into 45-minute gaps that were never meant for them, and you are never sure what is still owed. Preventing cancellations in the first place is covered in our guide to stopping no-shows and last-minute cancellations. This one starts after the cancellation has happened.

A four-point make-up policy

A make-up policy that holds fits in a few lines the family reads before the first lesson.

1. Who cancels. If you cancel, the lesson is made up or not billed, no conditions. If the student cancels within the notice period (24 or 48 hours ahead), they get a make-up.
2. Late cancellation. Below the notice period, the lesson is due and does not earn a make-up. You can allow one exception per term, at your discretion.
3. Time limit. Make-ups must be taken within four weeks, or before the package ends. After that, they lapse.
4. Where they go. Make-ups happen in a dedicated slot, not in your regular schedule.

A make-up policy does not need to be strict. It needs to be written down, known before the first lesson and applied to everyone.

One fixed make-up slot

This is the change that does the most for your week. Instead of hunting for a gap for each student, you open a single slot, for example Saturday 10am to noon every other week, or Wednesday late afternoon. Students with a lesson to make up book into it.

The benefits are concrete:

• your regular slots stay put, and steady families see nothing move;
• one message every two weeks replaces ten back-and-forths;
• an empty make-up slot becomes free time for you, not a hole in the week.

For online lessons, the same idea works with one or two short evening slots.

Keep count of lessons owed

A make-up nobody wrote down is a debt with no known amount. For each student, keep three things: the date of the cancelled lesson, the deadline to make it up, and the date it was made up. Mark the lesson as cancelled rather than deleting it: at month end you know what was taught, what is owed and what is left to bill.

For packages, add the balance: "10 lessons bought, 7 done, 1 make-up pending, 2 left". Send it to the family at the end of each month. Lesson scheduling software that keeps the history of every session, cancelled ones included, saves you from redoing that sum by hand.

Put it in writing

Your policy only counts if the family received it before signing up. In France, when the client is a private individual, general terms of sale must be provided before the contract is concluded. Include your notice period, the make-up rule and what happens to unused lessons in a package. If you sell a package remotely, by phone or online, the family also has a 14-day right of withdrawal, which you must tell them about before they order.

If a dispute comes up, a French business selling services to consumers must also have appointed a consumer mediator, free for the client. Our free lesson contract generator includes a cancellation clause and the mediator details.

Sources

• General terms of sale (CGV), Service Public Entreprendre
• Consumer mediation, Service Public Entreprendre
• Distance purchases: the consumer's right of withdrawal, service-public.gouv.fr