What to ask on a music lesson or tutoring enquiry form

This reference from AR Labs is for the owner of a music school or tutoring business who wants an enquiry form that gives them everything a teacher match needs, so that fewer enquiries need a follow-up message before a trial lesson can be offered. It lists the fields to ask, how to ask them, and what each one does in the match. It draws on our design work for a regional in-home music school, described in the case study, and on public intake forms from music and tutoring operators.

The rule behind the list: ask for a field if your matching decision filters on it or needs to see it, and store each answer in its own field. Anything else can wait for the first conversation.

Student and family fields

Field	How to ask	Why the match needs it
Parent or adult student's name, email and phone	Separate fields; mark which one is best for replies	Families write by email, text and phone. Matching on email or phone keeps one record per family instead of two
New or returning student	A choice at the top of the form	A returning student may want their current teacher or slot; a new one starts from scratch
Instrument or subject	A list, with "other"	The first filter on every teacher
Age or school year	A number or a list of years	Sets the level and which slots suit the student; in the school we designed for, older students could take later evening slots
Level or experience	Beginner, some experience, advanced, or grade or exam level	Teachers specialise; a teacher for advanced students may not suit a beginner
Goals	Choices such as enjoyment, exams, a band or audition, plus a short text box	Separates a fit on paper from a good match
Musical style or repertoire	Choices such as classical, contemporary, jazz	A second axis of fit. In the school we designed for, a transfer request was driven by the style of music a student wanted, not by location
Area or postcode	Postcode or a list of your areas	The travel filter for in-home lessons and the centre filter for centre-based ones
Lesson format	In-home, studio or centre, online	Decides whether travel matters at all
Weekly availability	A grid of days with start and end times; see below	The field most likely to cause back-and-forth if asked badly
First and second choice of day	Two lists	Lets the person matching choose between workable options
Preferred start date	A date	Separates "as soon as possible" from "next term"
Preferred or previous teacher	Optional list or text	Keeps continuity for returning students and siblings
Anything else we should know	Optional short text	Learning needs or practical constraints, which the first call can explore

Extra fields for tutoring

Field	How to ask	Why the match needs it
Exam board or curriculum	A list relevant to your country	Tutors know particular specifications
Exam dates	A date or term	Sets urgency and the schedule's end point
School reports or previous assessments	Optional upload, with consent	Gives the assessment a starting point
Learning needs	Optional, with a note on how it will be used	Narrows the tutors who should be considered

How to ask for availability

Ask for every window the student could do, not one preferred time. A family that writes "Tuesdays after 4" gives one slot to match against; a family that marks every window across the week gives the person matching room to fit them into a teacher's day. The form the school's owner built for himself did this well: it asked for the student's available times on each day of the week, plus a first and second choice of day and a start date. Its weakness was where the answers went: they arrived in a spreadsheet as one block of text, and someone had to read and re-type them.

Store availability as days and times that software can compare with a teacher's open time. If it is saved as a sentence or pasted into one cell, a person has to read it and re-type it before any match can be made.

What to leave out of the first form

• The full home address. For a first match, the postcode or area is enough. Ask for the address once the family has chosen a trial, and store it once.
• Personality and learning style in depth. Many schools learn this in a phone call, and that call is often what families value. Record the notes from the call on the same record as the form.
• Questions you do not use. Every extra field is one more thing a family has to answer before you hear from them.

The teacher side

A match compares two records, so collect the same kind of facts from teachers.

Field	Why the match needs it
Weekly availability, as days and times	The other half of the overlap
Instruments or subjects, levels and styles taught	The fit filter
Areas covered, and the furthest they will travel	The travel filter for in-home lessons
Number of new students they can take	Stops the shortlist offering a full teacher
Day constraints and preferences	Facts that otherwise live in the owner's memory
Safeguarding check and renewal date	Eligibility; operators in the UK, Australia and the US refer to these checks publicly

Where the answers go

Check what your software does with each answer before you change the form. Teachworks offers an inquiry form that delivers enquiries into Teachworks and by email, and custom enrolment forms that create new profiles (add-ons). TutorCruncher's website enquiry form creates a client profile and can include your own custom fields (help article). My Music Staff's sign-up form takes custom fields, and the vendor's announcement says the answers are saved to the Notes section of the student's profile (vendor post). If answers land as notes or free text, you can read them but you may not be able to filter on them. The quickest test: fill in your own form as a pretend family, then try to find that family by filtering on one of your answers.

The music school scheduling guide shows how these fields feed a shortlist of teachers and a booked trial, and the tutor matching guide adds what changes when an assessment comes first. The client delivery framework sets out the phases we use to take work like this from discovery to a running system.