If earlier tuition did not move your child’s marks, the first step is to find out why, not to decide that tuition cannot work. The cause is usually one of four things, and each one is checkable.
What are the four common reasons tuition does not help?
Write down which of these fits your memory of the last arrangement.
- The lessons followed the book, not the student. The class moved through chapters in order, whatever the student was getting wrong.
- The student watched instead of doing. The teacher solved questions on screen or board, and the student nodded.
- Nothing connected to the school test. The content did not match what school was currently teaching or assessing.
- No one looked at the mistakes. Marked papers were not opened after the lesson, so the same errors returned.
Notice that none of these says “the student is hopeless”. They describe how the hour was used.
What does the difference look like in a lesson?
Here is a worked example from Form 4 Chemistry. The student loses marks on balancing equations.
In the first kind of lesson, the teacher reads through the chapter on chemical equations and shows three balanced examples. The student copies them. A week later, the student still cannot balance a new equation.
In the second kind, the teacher hands over an equation the student has not seen, such as Mg + HCl → MgCl₂ + H₂, and watches. The student stops at the chlorine atoms. The teacher asks one question, “how many Cl are on each side?”, and the student finds the missing 2 in front of HCl. The lesson then repeats the same move on two fresh equations until the student makes it alone.
Only the second lesson gave the student something to do with the error.
What should you check this time?
You do not need to trust anyone’s promise. You can check a few things in the first lesson.
- Did the student attempt questions with the teacher watching?
- Did the teacher ask what the student was thinking before correcting?
- Did the lesson end with something the student can now do alone?
- Was the lesson tied to a chapter or test the student actually faces?
The after-trial reflection and discussion checklist turns these into a short list you can tick through together, and how to judge whether a trial lesson was useful explains each point.
How can a paid trial lower the risk?
The first class with us is a paid one-hour trial, from RM50 depending on the teacher. It is a real lesson, taught by an experienced teacher assigned for that subject.
That means the cost of testing the fit is one lesson, not a term. After the trial, you can use what to review yourself after a paid trial before deciding whether to continue. If the teacher is not the right fit, you can ask for another teacher.
What if the problem was not tuition?
Sometimes lessons were fine and the student did little between them. In that case, when more tuition may not be the next useful step may help more than another teacher. Being honest about this saves money for any family.