All About Finding & Evaluating Tuition Centres/Agencies

[tantan777]

Hi,


We are a team of graduates who have been giving private tuition during for the past 4 years. During the course of our studies, we chose to render our services to mostly underachieving students and successfully brought their results up to par.(From F9 to B3 and above)

Why did we choose underachieving students?

We understood firstly, that these students were very often intelligent, but lacked the motivation and drive due to peer influence. I personally used to have a kid whose results would drop from a B3 to C6 every time he found himself a girlfriend. As such, they truly deserved more.

Secondly, as tutors to underachieving students, we found ourselves serving both the role of counsellors, as well as teachers. This was especially rewarding because its easy to teach a smart kid to score in his exams Really. The joy of teaching comes when you successful teach an underachieving student how to set goals for himself, gain confidence, learn to ask questions and more importantly, look beyond the grades and truly enjoy learning.

My team of fresh graduates are keen to setup a private tuition centre to carry on our vision of helping underachieving students to improve their academic lives through scientifically researched goal-setting management.

The truth of the matter is that while we understand students as much, we do not really understand parents. Hence,we have to take the first step to understand you guys before we embark on our dream. As such, we are curious to:

1) understand the problems that you face as parents when searching for a tuition agency

2) what do you wish that our tuition agency can provide that would be beneficial to you and your child.

Any other feedback would also be greatly appreciated and you can PM me if you wish. By lending your voice, we hope to one day be able to start our centre and continue our passion for helping underachieving students.Thank you!

[tantan777]

Ps…as we are a young startup, venue is by far our biggest worry. So we were also wondering if having a good location i.e. rented up scale central area is an important factor in making your decision to select a tuition agency?

[Flowermonaster]

What I will be looking for when selecting a tuition centre.

1. Know MOE syllabus well
2. Good materials
3. Location no need to be central but accessibility via MRT is important, eg void deck of HDB flat within walking distance from MRT station.
4. Able to motivate student.
5. Able to understand the student’s weakness & strength. To improve the weakness & strengthen their strength.
6. To provide parents with progress report/feedback. Can be via email or any form of communication tool.
7. Teacher-students ratio. Not more than 10 per class is the ideal.
8. Friendly environment

[tantan777]

Thanks flowermonaster,


Can I check if your requirements are ranked according to importance? i.e. knowledge of MOE syllabus being the most important? Thanks!

[Flowermonaster]

tantan777:

Thanks flowermonaster,


Can I check if your requirements are ranked according to importance? i.e. knowledge of MOE syllabus being the most important? Thanks!

No, they aren't. Just happened that it came to my mind first, so FIFO.

[kitty2]

I’ve PM you

[tantan777]

Dear Everyone,


Thanks for the ideas and support, We are glad to meet with such a supportive community and have replied the pm.We look forward to hearing more.

We are heartened though, that parents are concerned more about real quality i.e. small class interaction, syllabus, than branding itself =). This is because quality is something we can provide. However, to rent a nice place with a good logo is tough as a young startup.

Flowermonster: FIFO…haha. Still its a top of the mind recall…so we will bear that in

[pojo]

tantan777:

Hi,


We are a team of graduates who have been giving private tuition during for the past 4 years. During the course of our studies, we chose to render our services to mostly underachieving students and successfully brought their results up to par.(From F9 to B3 and above)

Why did we choose underachieving students?

We understood firstly, that these students were very often intelligent, but lacked the motivation and drive due to peer influence. I personally used to have a kid whose results would drop from a B3 to C6 every time he found himself a girlfriend. As such, they truly deserved more.

Secondly, as tutors to underachieving students, we found ourselves serving both the role of counsellors, as well as teachers. This was especially rewarding because its easy to teach a smart kid to score in his exams Really. The joy of teaching comes when you successful teach an underachieving student how to set goals for himself, gain confidence, learn to ask questions and more importantly, look beyond the grades and truly enjoy learning.

My team of fresh graduates are keen to setup a private tuition centre to carry on our vision of helping underachieving students to improve their academic lives through scientifically researched goal-setting management.

The truth of the matter is that while we understand students as much, we do not really understand parents. Hence,we have to take the first step to understand you guys before we embark on our dream. As such, we are curious to:

1) understand the problems that you face as parents when searching for a tuition agency

2) what do you wish that our tuition agency can provide that would be beneficial to you and your child.

Any other feedback would also be greatly appreciated and you can PM me if you wish. By lending your voice, we hope to one day be able to start our centre and continue our passion for helping underachieving students.Thank you!

Your opening post is very interesting. However as I proceed to read the later postings, I started to get a bit confused.

Firstly, kiasu parents are unlikely to allow their children to become underachievers. In other words, the parents whose opinions you seek here are probably not the parents of underachievers whom you are targeting.

Secondly, you asked about locations for the tuition centre you are thinking of setting up. Having a central or desirable location means having to pay a higher rent. This in turn requires you to charge a higher fee. Kiasu parents may not object to paying higher fees for their children to get them to achieve even better results. However it is extremely unlikely that parents of underachieving students would be willing to pay those high fees. The expensive private schools always charge high fees to attract capable students to become even higher achievers. I have never heard of an expensive private school who charges a high fee to attract underachievers.

Thirdly the parents of underachievers are likely to be poor or disadvantaged in some respects. Therefore to attract them, you have to charge low fees. To charge low fees, you have to increase the class size to be viable.

Having said all that, perhaps when you mention underachievers, you do not mean the underachievers that I wrote about above. What you meant are reasonably capable students who may be weak in one or two particular subjects. For those subjects, they are underachievers. These students could then have perhaps parents who are kiasu. If so, then the tuition centre that you intend to set up would be targeted at these students. Perhaps a clarification from you would help clear the air.

[tantan777]

Dear Pojo,


I agree with what you have stated as well as the definition you have crafted.

Till date, I cannot seem to find a proper term to define underachievers in psychological terms and I fully agree that it has a very negative label. If I can find a less derogatory meaning to the word, I would definitely replace it.

1)You made a strong point because I understand that nobody is going to want to send their child to a school to be labelled as an underachiever. I wouldn’t as well

2) Also, thank you for clarifying that branded centres with central venues is not on your important list. Quality seems till date the top call from our feedback and not branding. (sigh of relief)

I guess what we were trying to highlight was the philosophy our team stood for and craft it in as much honesty as we can.

We define underachieving students as students who have the cognitive ability but are not able to achieve their full potential due to reasons such as lack of direction, lack of motivation, self confidence, wrong strategy etc. i.e. They have immense potential, just that there is certain hindrance in their path, that’s why they are not getting the grades that they deserve.

Thanks for clarifying this issue pojo!

[tankee]

Are you doing this for profit?


If not, you could try offering your service to Beyond Social Service, a charity organization targeted to help children of lower income families.