All About Finding & Evaluating Tuition Centres/Agencies

[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.

[pojo]

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!

If your target is the underachievers as defined, then my point is that these are likely to come from poor or disadvantaged families. This leads to the way to reach out to these families.

One way, of course, is to go the charitable route as pointed out by Tankee.

From my reading, it appears that you are going into this to get some income for you and your colleagues. If so, then my earlier point about making the tuition fee inexpensive and having a larger class size are relevant. Hence you need to find a location with low rent. This business model may work if you locate the centre near where low income families are, charge low fees, and build up a track record.

[elishatan]

Just curious, how do you shortlist a tuition center for your child? Is group tuition better than private? I always thought private is better.

[Classroom Delivery]

Dear parents/fellow forumers,



I have been following several forums related to private tuition and home tutors myself (I am from a tuition agency), I would say that there is a significant increase in number of negative feedbacks on home tuition agencies as compared to years ago.

If possible, we would really appreciate if the parents, students and tutors can offer your invaluable feedback/concern on whether to engage a tuition agency to find a tutor/student, and how we can serve you better. Any comments, feedback are welcome.

We thought it would be a good reference for other agencies as well.

Thank you very much for your time.

Gerald

[JasminNg]

I personally think that group tutition is as good the kid can do peer learning.

[christineng1981]

I put my Child in Group tuition as it will be a good help for them to practice learning and feeling like a school environment


when my eldest was just a primary student i do home 1 to 1 tuition i noticed my child is beggining to depend on the tutor always and was worried how she can be competitive in school so i put her in a tuition centre at first she was really scared as there are other children in there I can still remember she was crying and so shy she was only P3. She did improve on her social interaction and being dependent.

But my problem with that centre is that there are too many students i think 12 to 15 students. So i transfered her to a less crowded tuition centre. Where she really do improve a lot Not too many student and tutor are really good teaching in a group but catering to each individual.

I think the way to determine a Good centre is what are the qualifications of the tutors and what are their teaching method. I think its important that they are NIE trained and I prefer to have someone who only teach one subject so they can have focus.
A good centre must have balance on how many students they have.
A good centre must also have a lesson plan prepared.