Tuition Agency & its relevance in Singapore

In our society, a very common way to identify success and whether a child has the potential to be successful to to look at his or her academic results. More often than not, one would hear parents talking about their children’s progress in school, especially after a major term test or semestral exam. Students being chided or even punished for not performing well in such tests is a common sight. In order to remedy the situation, most will turn to external tuition for help. This phenomenon results in the emergence of tuition centres and tuition agencies.

While tuition centres provide classes outside school hours for students to get improve their weaker subjects, tuition agencies go the other way. Instead of getting students to attend classes in a specified location, tuition agencies usually provide the service of matching tutors to students’ requirements for a one-to-one home tuition.

The advantage of having a private one-to-one tuition is that attention of the tutor is solely focused on a student, rather than a divided one over the entire class. Furthermore, the tutor has the flexibility to tailor-make the lesson to suit the pace of the student. The down side of this is of course the premium that has to be paid. In order to get the undivided attention from the tutor for the student so that at each and every step the student’s progress will be closely monitored and changes can be quickly implemented for the student to remain focused, the cost will no doubt be much higher when compared to that of tuition centres. This often has deterred many parents from engaging such tutors due to financial constraints.

On the other hand, tuition centres may offer a much lower price but students have to settle with a fixed pace that has been pre-determined to cater to the entire class. As a result, some students may not find the environment and the syllabus suitable. Their schools may have adopted a different approach such that the order of topics taught is not quite conformed to the norm. Due to this abnormality, students from such schools are unable to follow the pace of lessons in tuition centres.

In addition, the hassle of travelling from school or home to tuition centres has been eliminated as tutors from tuition agencies tend to provide tuition right at the doorstep so students may be able to save their precious remaining free time on travelling. As the competition for success in this society intensifies, students spend increasingly longer periods of time in school pursuing greater academic performance. This has eroded much of the rest of their available time for other interests and thus having tuition at home may alleviate, to a certain extent, their woes.

All in all, the practice of having tuition outside curriculum time in Singapore is so common that the phenomenon is no longer a choice but more of a necessity. As such, tuition services have become more relevant and important as time goes by, more so for agencies that provide one-to-one tuition. Without a doubt, tuition agencies will be here to stay, as long as the pursuit for academic success continues.

Related to: For Parents  For Students  Opinion