When to Give an Instructor a Pay Rise, and How Much

Why does waiting for a resignation cost more than a rise?

A rise decided after a resignation letter is a rise decided under pressure. You are bargaining against an offer you have not seen, with classes already sold for the term, and whatever you agree becomes the new reference point for every other instructor who hears about it.

If you let them go instead, the bill is concrete. There is the time spent hiring, the trial lessons, the classes you cover yourself while you look, and the families who chose that teacher and may follow them. An instructor resigning mid-term is a problem you can manage, but it is rarely cheaper than the rise would have been.

Waiting also teaches your team the wrong lesson. If the only way to get a rise is to bring in an offer from elsewhere, the instructors you most want to keep learn to go looking.

Set the review date before anyone asks

Pick one review date a year for every instructor, and make an instructor's first anniversary with you their first review. Put the dates in your calendar now, so that a review happens whether or not anyone raises it.

A fixed date changes both sides of the conversation. The instructor knows when pay will be looked at and does not have to ask, and you get to prepare, with the term's numbers in front of you rather than a resignation letter.

A review does not have to end in a rise. It has to end in a decision you can explain, which is either a rise, a clear no with a reason, or a not yet with a date.

What should trigger a rise?

Decide in advance which things earn a rise, and tell your instructors what they are. Pick reasons you can see in your own records rather than how loudly someone asks.

Good triggers are concrete. An instructor took on more classes or a harder level, kept a class full term after term, brought students back for the next term, covered at short notice when others could not, or now trains new instructors. Each of these either earns the centre more or saves it work you would otherwise pay for.

Time served counts too, but on its own it should earn a smaller step than added responsibility. An outside offer is not a trigger by itself. It tells you the market has moved, which is a reason to bring the review forward, not to skip it.

Between scheduled reviews, only a real change in the job, such as a new level, a lead role or a move to more of your timetable, should reopen pay. Everything else waits for the review date.

How much of a rise can the classes carry?

Size the rise from the classes, not from what the instructor asks for or what you guess others pay. Take each class the instructor teaches, multiply the students enrolled by the fee each pays per session, and you have what that class earns.

From that, take off the share of rent the hour uses, the materials and the margin you need. What remains is the most the instructor line can take for that class, the same ceiling that a first-term class price is built from. The gap between that ceiling and what you pay now is the room you have for a rise.

If the gap is wide, the instructor has been carrying more value than they are paid for, and a rise that closes part of it is affordable. If the gap is already narrow, a rise has to come from somewhere, which means a fuller class, an extra class, or a fee change at the start of the next term.

Keep the steps consistent. Decide a small step for another year of service and a larger one for added responsibility, and use the same steps for everyone, so two instructors doing the same job are not paid differently because one of them asked first.

Writing the steps into a wage scale

Those steps are close to what Indonesian wage rules already expect. Under PP 36/2021 on wages, as last amended by PP 49/2025, an employer must draw up and apply a wage structure and scale (struktur dan skala upah) built on the business's ability to pay and productivity, and on grade, position, length of service, education and competence, and must tell each worker their part of it individually.

The regulation also makes the first anniversary matter. The minimum wage applies to workers with less than a year of service, and pay for anyone who has served a year or more is to follow the structure and scale. Micro and small businesses are exempt from that block of minimum-wage rules and set wages by agreement with their workers instead.

Whether your centre counts as a micro or small business, and whether a part-time instructor is your employee at all, are questions for a labour consultant. Either way, a written scale with your review steps on it is the document a fair review needs, so write it once and give each instructor their line.

What do you tell an instructor when you cannot afford a rise?

Tell them plainly at the review, and say what stands in the way. If their classes do not leave room for a rise this term, say that, and say what would change it, such as a class reaching a set number of students or a fee change next term.

Then give a date. A no with a review date in three months is a decision, while a vague later is a promise nobody can hold you to, and the instructor will treat it that way.

Offer only what you can keep in the meantime. That might be a better slot, a paid setup time, a rule that a class the centre cancels is paid in full, first choice of a new class, or a lead title that comes with real responsibility. Do not offer a percentage of future growth you cannot measure, or a rise you hope to afford.

If an instructor leaves after an honest no, you have still kept your scale fair for everyone who stays. Matching an outside offer on the spot only moves the problem to the next review.

The record the review starts from

A fair review needs the same evidence for every instructor, which is how many classes they taught, how full those classes were, and whether students stayed into the next term. In Happy Kamper the timetable for every class lives in scheduling and enrollment, and staff take attendance in each session with a timestamp, so the classes an instructor taught and the children who came are already recorded.

The decision itself, and the pay that follows it, stay with you. That holds for a tutoring centre, a music or dance studio or a swim school alike.

This is general information, not legal or tax advice. Take your own wage scale and instructor arrangements to a labour consultant before you change them.