Hello All,
Can anyone recommend a good tutoring/coaching for a year 5 in preparation for the selective exam?
My kid currently goes to one institute for WEMT classes but all they do is give a lot of homework for kids to complete at home. They hire high school kids to check the work but there is no follow up on the mistakes so the kids do not really learn from it.
They also offer the selective test prep course but given their way of tutoring, I want to look elsewhere.
Thanks for the feedback. I do understand your point completely. However, given the level of education my kid receives in the school compared to the questions in the selective test, they are worlds apart. He finds school too easy and boring bec I feel like the standard is too low (I think it's the school). A kid who is not taught at that level can never answer those questions even if they have the quality and potential to thrive in a selective school. I would think that one will have to train to get better at something rather than expecting to them to be instant good at that thing.
Why did you not put them in a better school before this point? One of the schools my son went to was like this, he was in the extension classes and said it was ridiculously easy, the school was just garbage. Put him in another school that was very highly rated and he went much better.
He actually came from a better school but we moved. Didn't know how bad this school was since it shows up as rank 91 in the state overall score. The school is 6 mins walk from home and it is too late to transfer now as he has already made friends. Which is why I want to compensate with tutoring and a better high school.
@Brakus: Tutoring can't really compensate a bad school. Not only do they not get those 6-7 hours back, the social setting can actually set them back. As an extreme example, I've seen more than one home-schooled kid join a primary school loving learning only to be disillusioned that the school social system is all about pecking order and it being uncool to learn, and (for the teachers) all about behavior management or worksheets rather than engaging lessons.
Are you finding there's a big difference between public and private when it comes to catering for different levels of ability?
My kid's in public, in what everyone says is a 'great' school district.
It's literally 2 years behind what we're used to in terms of maths ability, and we've had to go totally outside the system to find stuff that doesn't bore him to distraction.
@rumblytangara: The better school I mentioned is actually a public school. It ranks 100-99 in the state overall score. https://bettereducation.com.au/CompareSchools/primary/nsw/co…
I feel like I’m judging schools this way wrong now.
But they had homework and give you a good visibility on what they are teaching. At that time, I felt that the level of education was not up to par but this private school he goes to now is a joke. It’s like play school. My kid told me that they asked the teacher for more challenging lessons and the teacher simply said no.
@Brakus: My question was actually @brendanm as his post implies he changed his kid's school. Which short of moving house, means going private.
@Brakus: These rankings are based on performance of the kids, which may not reflect the quality of the school and teachers. High ranking public schools may simply be comprised of kids with a culture of tutoring (ie: many Asian cultures).
My son has a similar experience to yours in that he doesn't finds school challenging. His class is taught at a lower academic level because it's where most of the other students are. I look at his school now as a place to learn non-academic skills and to socialise, while the academic learning happens at home/tutoring.
@rumblytangara: We found it totally depended on the school. My daughter is currently in a great primary school (out of catchment) that gets better academic results than the private schools nearby, and is a very nice location.
With our son, he started off at a public primary school, the school and teachers were great, other kids and parents not so much, so lots of the teachers time was wasted on behaviour management. We took him out of there and put him in a great private school, which was fantastic for the rest of primary school. The price jump when it went to high school was quite large, and at the time wasn't really in our budget. We put him in another private school, that was terrible. Tried him in the local public school, was also terrible. Ended up getting him into a very well regarded "different" school in Brisbane (we are on the gold coast), and it was the best thing for him, got challenging work (did an International Baccalaureate) and they also had great arts/music/etc programmes which suited his interests.
Summary is that it is very hard work to find a school that is good, and even harder to find one that suits your kid/s and can take a lot of mucking around. I'm lucky in that my wife is great at researching these things, and also great at applying for out of catchment things.
What sort of ratings academically does your school get? What sort of socio-economic area?
What sort of ratings academically does your school get? What sort of socio-economic area?
Safely and very boringly middle class. The school is about 100 on some randomly found list of public+private? I am not sure if there's even a definitive/authoritative list for schools though. I'm also not sure I'd put much credence on NAPLAN tests anyway, if that is what rankings are based on.There appears to be no 'out of catchment' flexibility around here.
We've got two kids at the school. Teacher(s) for the younger are frankly just shite, and we can tell it's just a paycheck for them. Teacher for the elder is passionate, but he doesn't have the capacity to break the class up into varying levels of capacity- maybe this is just a standard NSW public school limitation. We're new to the system here.
My previous location, the kids would be doing IB. And I much prefer that in terms of the NSW curriculum. I remember my NSW high school days when it was all about stacking certain subjects gaming the system during exams, and I suspect it's only gotten worse.
Not unpopular with me… from someone who was left behind at a 'well to do' school it affected me in life savagely for years in many ways..
affected me in life savagely for years
Sounds like classic Christian school to me.
Picked it like a dirty nose. Although I wasnt called to the bookroom alone with one of the "brothers".. I was too fat and ugly for that.
@fredblogs: Pretty much both… We had several meetings with the school, lots of promises…
most people at teh school came from well to do families (mayor, politicians, aussie nrl coach, etc) my olds were strugglers, but went without shit to send me there.
Shouldn't children be challenged at a selective school? It's the kids who aren't challenged, who coast through early education, that I worry about. If they never challenge themselves to get work done then their brain will be stuck in child mode as they get older if they never get it into gear.
It should be based on natural ability, but if your kid doesn't get tutoring then they're competing against kids who've been tutored for literally thousands of hours since Kindergarten building up to this specific test. Even if your kid has 10x the natural ability, the tutored kids will win.
It's just like performance enhancing drugs in cycling or weight cutting in boxing. If you don't do it, you lose to people who do, so then everyone has to do it.
They need to come up with entrance exams that are far more difficult to prepare for that will actually select for natural ability.
I recognise this is an unpopular opinion on this forum, but if your kid isn’t able to get into the selective school on their natural ability, they will find the work there very challenging.
Yeah, I completely disagree with this. My kid went through testing this year and went through probably fifty+ practice exams with him. And he went to tutoring. The WEMT stuff doesn't really help directly much with the exams.
I looked at the tests for my kid, and if you go into this purely on 'natural ability' you're going to get absolutely slaughtered.
There's a huge amount of tactical stuff natural ability won't compensate for- how to manage time, how to decide which questions to initially skip, when to just narrow down likely options and guess. And there are a fixed subset of question types that you can basically train for and develop heuristics to tackle.
@OP what location?
Bullseye.
Toongabbie area
I looked at Matrix and Pre-Uni. Used the latter, but TBH suspect they are much of a muchness, or more dependent on specific location/tutors.
We only recently arrived in the country, so only had about 4 months of prep time. Which was frankly okay for exam tactics, but it was supplemented hugely by work at home. If your kid isn't naturally talented in one or more of the areas, I don't think that mass tutoring is going to be of much help in those areas.
We did the exam prep, but bigger picture I can't say I'm a big fan of the way the selective schooling system seems to have gone since I've been out of country. Entry looks like it's totally geared to cram tutoring and background culture. It's not good.
Hi op,
I sent my son to edu-kingdom at Penrith. https://edu-kingdom-college-penrith.business.site/? If you are willing to drive that long. But highly recommended.
They are the best imo. Have seen lot of sons friends improve so much after going there. Speak to Joanne there. This is not an advert at all. Used Preuni before but as you said lots of homework and no follow up. He just got in to Penrith selective.
I will definitely send him there again once he starts this selective school next year.
100% agree
Kids who get in to selective schools are a combination of natural ability and extensive practice (whether that's at tutoring or at home), despite what the DOE wants you to believe.
Just because someone recommends one, doesn’t mean your kid will gel with that teacher. IMO, your best bet is to hit up a few of them and get your kid to do a trial with them and see which one they like
That’s the plan but I’m asking for recommendations in case someone had a good experience
Even within the same place, you’ll get varying experiences. My daughter goes to a tutoring place, and she hates this one teacher but absolutely loves this other one. We actually had to shuffle her activities around just so she could attend this one teachers class
Good point
"My Kid" , I thought you were all talking about the offspring of a goat. Wondering why it's going to school?
Last time I checked the dictionary it also means a human child unless that’s changed too?
Pre-Uni
Unless you are InHurstville and then it’s the one on the edge of Hurstville commercial area near the very large unit complex on forest Rd closest Hurstville public
unfortunately to succeed in high school you need to be completely overloaded with rote learning
If your kid isn’t thriving at tutoring now, they won’t thrive in a selective school
I think you are missing the point entirely. He constantly gets good to excellent grades in the tutorial quarterly tests. I feel like their method of teaching needs a lot of improvement and Il want to get opinion of other tutorial centers
the problem is that if you keep our child at tutoring you should expect that you need to keep your child at tutoring throughout their high school life should you keep them in a selective school. from nsw, i was eligible to enter james ruse, the best selective school but i turned it down
truth is, selective schools are not that good. they provide an elite environment for students but in the end majority of the time it's self learning except for maybe english and the teachers turn more into tutors. you can find everything you need online.
I recognise this is an unpopular opinion on this forum, but if your kid isn’t able to get into the selective school on their natural ability, they will find the work there very challenging.
It is a bad outcome to have a child unable to be successful at school because they cannot keep up with the other kids, and will be very disheartening to them if they are constantly failing.
One of my children was dux of their primary school, and came in the top half of the selective school Year 12. But the education provided was sub-standard in many non-academic areas.
It is very likely to me she would have scored similar results at the HSC in a local school, and had a much more rounded education.
I think selective schools are useful for the exceptionally gifted, but not very good for just run of the mill very smart kids.