Berkshire Music Trust Reviews 

Dont bother, the customer sevice team will hold on to your money, like gollum holds on to the ring, even when your teacher has cancelled lessons. They dont actually care if you progress. There's no pathway, we had to sort out my sons drum exam ourselves. Waste of money in the end and refusal to give back money they are not owed is the reason we are done with them.

***update***
Thanks for the response! I still dont have my refund! Was ment to be issued in June! You actually ignored that part of my email, only confirming that my sons lessons have now been cancelled.

Absolutely dreadful. I strongly suggest you look else where for music lessons.
Im embarrassed that i had trusted the secondary school who host them, and didnt look at these reviews, in hindsight, I would never have got these lessons.
A primary, they never actually got back to me about piano, so we gave up. But at secondary, we wanted to persist and at first it seemed easier...
However. The admin is horrendous. Refunds are like getting blood out of a stone, the company seems to have a policy of gaslighted, butt covering and living. Its quite incredible how much of that they will not own up to or apologise for, even when you show them the evidence.
The teacher repeatedly didnt turn up to lessons without telling the school or pupil. They tell you they told the school, but the school say they don't know.
They say they move the lesson time around so that it doesnt disrupt the same class every week... but the moving serves only to confuse the child, it still always fell int he same lesson.
They dont lease with the school to work around exams.
If they do bother to communicate a lesson not happing, you get the email but you cant do anything with that as you cant communicate it to the child as they are not allowed thier phone! They need to tell the school!
On one occation the teacher was late and my child had left her exam to do the lesson so on seeing her teacher had not arrived, she decided to go back to her lesson to finish her exam. After MANY emails and them basically calling my child a lier, and claiming the teacher was there, it was established, that the teacher was late and due to how often she missed her lessons, my child assumed she wasnt comming AGAIN and left.
You have to give a full terms notice to leave!
And even then, they email you to tell you you have a credit on the system. Despite me making it abundantly clear we are NOT going back, this still happened. I repeatedly asked if they needed my bacs details for refund. I was never asked for it, but told a date the refund would happen. That date passed. I spoke to another parent in the same boat as us and they said they had got thier refund but only because they had phoned up, got told to send bacs details, and who to send those too! So I then did the same due to help from a parent, not due to Berkshire trust being helpful.
Also, towards the end of the year were were sent an undated time table to tell us when the make up lessons would be. It contained a mistake, so i pointed this out. We then got a further update changing the mistake...but the times didnt make sence, so after consulting with my child who had spoken with the teacher, it was evident there was something wrong. To me it looked like they were trying to make the lesson 10mins longer so that it would look like it had made up for the 2nd missed lesson. I pointed out my confusion and was sent an email saying I should have looked at the previous emails sent.... she added a third copy of the timetable. It had now been amended to remove this extra time so I attached the 2 copies of the timetable I had pinted off for my child. I had no apology for that gaslighting.
Final insult was the refund never comming and being sent an email to say there was a credit on my account... when I replied about this I was eventually told that no refund would be done before August. But I had been previously told by a more senior staff person the dates in which my refund would come and it was before August!
When I eventually got my refund, it came with zero apology until I pointed out that its disgraceful that no apology has been given.

If they put the same effort into thier lies and deception into thier lessons, the kids would probably be world class musicians in minutes!

I strongly suggest avoid.

I wish I could give 0 stars! Customer service is absolutely appalling! Unhelpful, unprofessional and their policy to leave is appalling! Not to mention the copy and pasted emails with another child’s name in it!!
Lots of missed lessons too, when I addressed it via email, it was ignored.
About the only thing they are good at is swindling money from parents! I will be looking elsewhere for music lessons for my children moving forward. Avoid if you can!

Same as other parents. They charge me for 50% of fee of next term despite I gave more than two months' notice. The teacher's performance is fair. They will use T&C’s to tie you up. Meaning you can’t leave unless you pay a substantial amount of penalty to them.

Really fun night out with friends. The band played a mixture of styles. It a much needed lively addition that the town needs. Definitely will return.

Poor music education with lessons being deferred a lot more than completed. My child was completing a Piano grade every year, but after joining BMT he hasn't been prepd for a test even after 18 months. There's lack of continuity with changing teachers and the teachers keep calling in sick but the fees never stop, with a promise to make up for lost lessons. As far as I can see the damage has already been done.
I have to see how bad leaving is going to be now.

I rate the lessons and teacher as good. But try to leave BMT ?….. omg how many times have I filled in their forms to leave? My son has reached 16 and on to further education and do I find it easy to leave this organisation?? No. Warning ⚠️ don’t join. They will use T&C’s to tie you up while ignoring all attempts to complete forms to leave. Meaning you can’t leave. They want lots of over pays to survive. How can this group survive like this in an age of review systems. Also when I was happy in the system, often teachers would leave and my child was without a teacher but still i have to pay. They just ignore ALL discussions on such subjects. Done… I’m done with BMT and will go anywhere else but this place.

Very transactional customer service from Berkshire Music Trust. My daughter booked a violin course provided by Berkshire Music Trust through daughter's primary school extracurricular activities provisions. I have never had the chance to speak with a customer service team until I withdraw the lesson due to daughter leaving school. I have been asked to pay half a term late notice fee with a lengthy T&Cs explained, or alternatively my daughter can continue with them for another term to avoid late notice fee, even if I have told them my daughter is leaving and will not be physically in that school any more. This is all because I ticked a T&Cs box when I agree to pay the fee through their provision. I sent the cancellation of notice to the violin teachers in end June / early July for cancelling lessons starting from early / mid September. They requested me to send notification on 1st June based on T&Cs, and they do not accept cancellation notification sent to the teacher. They also require me to send withdrawn notification in written. This is the very first time I receive request of late notice fee from a school extracurricular provision - It has been smooth and flexible so far with other classes offered by daughter's primary school, but not this one.

Don't take your child there, unless you can read minds and know that your child will want to study an instrument for the rest of their lives! Very disappointed. As you would expect, to receive emails asking if you would like to continue next term. No, they are making money from hard working parents.
I did contact customer services and they wanted to charge me £100 just because my daughter told me that she doesn't want to do piano lessons anymore at the end of the term. Now I have to make my daughter to take lessons for another term, even if she doesn't want to anymore and surely she will hate it in the future, just so I won't get fined. That's the way to make money from parents!

Extremely unfair policies. I tryed to withdraw with more than half a month notice, it is not enough for them, now (November 2024) I am checking more than a month before the end of the term and they still want to charge 50% of the fee for the futre term (Spring term) that I do not want my child to attend. I have informed them in written on 12 August 2024 that I will have as last term the Autumn term and do not want to continue any further with them, now they are trying to charge me for the Spring term again. (at the time of writing it is 11 Nov 2024)

My daughter started off doing violin lessons at school - initially the teacher was excellent however unfortunately he retired and a new teacher was found. All was going relatively ok (my daughter wasn't enjoying the teaching style as she said the new teacher just played on piano and expected her to play along which she struggled with), however recently she lost her violin at school (eventually found in music room). The teacher said she would ask for lessons to be paused which I was grateful for and there was one lesson the teacher cancelled in any case. However despite querying with BMT I was charged for all these lessons. Finally after locating the violin, my daughter came home to say she hadn't had a lesson - as the teacher hadn't picked her up from class. The teacher expects the primary level students to make their own way to class at the correct time. So for 20 minutes the teacher was in an empty classroom rather than fetch my daughter. Small school - all staff know where everyone else is. I've cancelled now and wholly disappointed by whole experience when initially had high hopes.

My child have an orthodontist appointment and ABRSM exam on the same day. I have contacted the Berkshire Music Trust and want to reschedule it before a month ago. Finally, they CANNOT do anything about that because the timetable is released.
I will say that I'm not a prophet, I cannot predict anything before register the piano exam. Very disappointed!

We have loved using BMT/Berkshire Maestroes over the years. My daughter is finishing her clarinet lessons now because we're moving out of area. We are sad to go and will miss them greatly. Caro and the whole team there have been great. Thoroughly recommend.

The teacher was great, very supportive and I massively improved my style and ability due to his teaching. I thoroughly enjoyed my lessons and would highly recommend BMT to other people.

Cathy is a very patient teacher Ionia really enjoyed her music lessons. We are sad to see her give them up however she wants to do so many things and we just can’t afford all of it. I’m hoping she’ll come back to music lessons in the future.