It felt more like... buying lottery.
The tuition industry is huge. The options are so many. Every year, billions of dollars are plunged into this monstrously big industry. Every time you look for tuition services for your children to improve their grades, you felt like buying lottery tickets in the hopes of getting good tutors. If you are lucky, you will get one that will really understand your child and truly help them. If not, you might just get irresponsible tutors who vanish and become uncontactable in the final crucial moments.
You start looking around for 'reputable' centres. Or you may search for agencies that boasts 'good' tutors. But at the end of the day, you will never know what kind of tutors are you really getting, until the final moment the tuition starts and your child sit through the classes for the next 3, 6 months or even a year.
You might also ask around for referrals from your friends and family, giving yourself the extra layer of assurance and tag your personal relationships with them on the line. But still, the final experience and results will still vary among different people. It's a black box. And it's a hefty bet.
Actually what you want is really simple. A trustable and dependable teacher that can help your child score better grades. If you can really find one, any amount of money will be worth it. But why does it seem so hard?
Tuition centres are not manufacturing plants.
We expect and hope for the same tuition experience and results that others have onto our children, but we forgot about the this one universal truth. We are humans. Everyone are humans, you, your child, the teachers, everyone. And when we bring the human factors into the picture, there will always be dimensions of uncertainties that we ought to consider. Emotions, circumstances, expectations, self-regulation, habits, beliefs, morals, values, mindsets, all come into play to orchestrate the eventual success of any venture. The only situation where we can fully replicate a process and expect success every single time without fail, is when human factors are out of the picture. Say a manufacturing plant.
In a manufacturing plant, strict standardized protocols are being wired into machines of all kinds, and each machine work together with seamless ways in order to produce the exact same product every single time, with little to no variance. And all of these can only happen after the procedures are so carefully crafted, painstakingly tested umpteen times, leaving no details unturned and every single potential loophole covered, no matter how seemingly small or insignificant it is.
Yes, we can't expect tuitions to be like that, but let's face it - somewhere inside us, we know that we are humans, but for that teeny weeny moment, we selfishly still want that success experiences to befall upon our kids, the same way like how the manufacturing plant worked. We try to fit our children into some form of an "Ace Student Manufacturing Plant" and hope for the best. But we very well know it's not going to ideally happen, but we cannot stop themselves from doing so, because there's seem to be no better way out.
Back in 2023 ago, I conducted a PSLE Exam Sprint Program in the June holidays to expose students to stimulate exam conditions. It was something on top of the regular weekly home tuition classes that I’m having with them. During one of the Sprint Sessions, as the parents walked their daughter in, a casual comment from the mother came like this. “My daughter come to this program - will get 100 marks ah.” It was not a question, it was a statement. And this statement underlies the presumption that this program is going to make anyone achieve A1 - like a machine. Like a formula that is fail-proof. As much as I want to say that it will work for her daughter (because she had been performing decently well already prior), I can’t promise anything at that instance to the other students. That was also the reason why I never liked sharing results of students on social media, but still did because that is still what parents want to see and match my credentials to, hopefully only for now.
At this point, we ought to understand that different children are seeking tuition for different reasons. Some to catch up on school content, others just because their parents said so. Everyone is different. Ineffectiveness of tuition comes in when the students of different objectives come together in the same seating - everyone just crashes into one another. People get distracted, and pulled out of focus. And when the teachers don’t tackle each type of students separately, it makes them no difference from any other mainstream school teachers. The whole point of tuition goes down the drain.
All in all, is there a way that you can allow for your child to,
truly learn and get the help they need,
enjoy the learning process,
be confident about asking questions and clarifying doubts,
looking forward to tuition every class,
and get rock-solid consistent good grades?
The answer is a resounding yes, but it starts from the students themselves.
“To know the enemy and the self, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” - Art of War.
By “knowing the enemy”, we need to face the fact that tuition are not universally the same. And by “knowing the self”, we need to understand what issues are our children really facing, and to find the solutions that can solve those underlying issues. Tuition now becomes one of the many solutions and not the only all-in-one cure pill.
In my perspective, there are 4 types of tutees that I group my students under.
Each of them have their own strengths and weaknesses, and they require different approaches into their tutoring in order to maximise the effectiveness. I'll cover them in the next few blog posts.
Stay tuned!
~ MathSifu Moses