Ask an owner what a make-up class costs and you will usually get a pause. It feels free - the teacher is there anyway, the room is there anyway.
Then count them. In a lot of schools, make-up sessions consume between five and ten per cent of teaching capacity, at peak, for revenue that was already collected. It is the single largest unpriced cost most small schools carry.
Why the generous version fails
"Miss a class, take it another time" sounds like good service and creates four problems at once:
- Peak slots fill with make-ups, so you cannot sell them to new students.
- Classes get an extra body who is a level out of step, which is worse teaching for everybody in the room.
- Attendance data stops meaning anything, because absence has no consequence.
- Families learn that your schedule is negotiable, and treat it that way.
The last one compounds. A school where absence is free gets more absence.
A policy that is fair and survivable
Fairness here is not "always yes". It is a rule that applies to everybody and is written down before anybody needs it.
A fixed allowance. Two per term, per student. Enough for illness and a family event, not enough to treat the timetable as a menu.
Notice required. Told in advance, it is a make-up. Not turning up is an absence. This single distinction changes behaviour more than anything else in the policy, because it asks for one message rather than nothing.
Into a designated slot, not into whichever class is convenient. One off-peak session a week that exists for this. It protects your peak capacity and it protects the teaching in your other classes.
Expiring within the term. Credits that roll over become a liability you are still paying off a year later.
Say it at enrolment, not at the first absence
A policy first explained when a parent asks for something is a refusal. The same policy in the enrolment pack is just how the school works.
Every rule you have not written down will eventually be decided under pressure, in favour of whoever argues best.
Then look at the number occasionally
Make-up sessions delivered per month, and which classes they come from. A single class generating most of them is telling you something about its time slot - see building a timetable that fills rooms.