Delta English Tutoring Review/Opinions Please (1 Viewer)

doggossigh

Member
Joined
Aug 28, 2017
Messages
53
Gender
Female
HSC
2019
Did anyone go to Delta and find it good? I went to the 2 week trial and I thought it was pretty meh. I'm pretty decent at English and I'm doing extension 1 and looking to do extension 2. The consultation was good but the lessons were meh. I'm looking just to consolidate my knowledge and polish off my skills, rather than just doing the basics. Any reviews/experience with Delta, or any private tutoring recommendations? Thanks!
 

Chos

New Member
Joined
Aug 6, 2013
Messages
26
Location
Chatswood
Gender
Male
HSC
2014
I would definitely recommend getting in touch with Evolutionary Tutors. They offer more personalised one-on-one tuition so that you don't have to waste time understanding content that you already know. If you send me an email at nathan_reidy@hotmail.com I would be happy to set you up with a free 1 one trial lesson from one of their tutors that placed 8th in NSW in Ext I English last year and also scored well in Ext II English :)
 

Afluria

New Member
Joined
Apr 18, 2019
Messages
1
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
N/A
I would like to warn anyone about going to Delta English tuition. A family member recently went there for a term. It promised UNLIMITED one on one tuition by specialist tutor who by the way is a recent high school graduate in 2018, English state ranked. However, when the student contacted requesting for one on one tutorial the requested was denied. Very expensive tuition, costing $1950 for a 10 week term and $220 unrefundable admin fee. Our family membered ended up just getting class tuition for the term which consists of 2 hour weekly lesson in a class of 15 to 20 students so that is almost $100 an hour in a GROUP CLASS!. Do your maths and see how much Delta earn an hour. Wouldn't mind so much if they delivered what they promised. They also promised essay marking but when the essay was sent to the specialist tutor, it was not marked at all so just had to hand in as is. Could have got private english coaching for that money paid.

Certainly not worth the money!
 

iSplicer

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 11, 2008
Messages
1,806
Location
Merrylands, NSW
Gender
Male
HSC
2010
Uni Grad
2017
I would like to warn anyone about going to Delta English tuition. A family member recently went there for a term. It promised UNLIMITED one on one tuition by specialist tutor who by the way is a recent high school graduate in 2018, English state ranked. However, when the student contacted requesting for one on one tutorial the requested was denied. Very expensive tuition, costing $1950 for a 10 week term and $220 unrefundable admin fee. Our family membered ended up just getting class tuition for the term which consists of 2 hour weekly lesson in a class of 15 to 20 students so that is almost $100 an hour in a GROUP CLASS!. Do your maths and see how much Delta earn an hour. Wouldn't mind so much if they delivered what they promised. They also promised essay marking but when the essay was sent to the specialist tutor, it was not marked at all so just had to hand in as is. Could have got private english coaching for that money paid.

Certainly not worth the money!
Hi everyone!

I'm the director at Delta Specialist English Tuition and wanted to respectfully take the opportunity to respond to this review. I'm thankful for this opportunity to respond as Delta is very comfortable maintaining full transparency in our workings with the student community.

Has Delta ever 'denied' tutorial requests or 'ignored' submitted scripts for marking?

Absolutely not, ever. If such an occurrence were to happen outside the bounds of a rare genuine error, the academic in question would be thoroughly investigated and most likely have their employment with us terminated. This has never happened in the history of Delta's operation; especially given the extensive oversight we have towards our staff members' ongoing correspondence with students and more importantly - the fact that we interview and select the most conscientious and dedicated staff members to work for us.

Some people are disgruntled because they misinterpret what 'Unlimited' Essay Marking and Tutorials mean. It doesn't mean students can send us their work at the very last minute or demand lessons with tutors with short notice, narrow flexibilities and no evidence of work or improvement from previous lessons. 'Unlimited' means that for students who are hard working, engaged and start working on their essays well in advance, we will mark your work and see you as many times as required to get you the furthest we can. If you're not willing to make such a commitment, Delta is not for you.

We present Delta as a highly boutique and premium service (where all academics have a NSW State Rank in English) and we simply would not make it through a single day in business if we were to simply ignore our students' requests. This should - respectfully - be consistent with common sense. In addition from 2019, Delta commenced a refund policy where any student can choose to end their enrolment at any stage and receive a full refund of any remaining weeks in the term.

I also note that the reviewing account was freshly created shortly before the review was posted with a single post history. There is a possibility of a rival tuition firm or other disgruntled party seeking to simply slander and defame our reputation. This is common in the tuition industry - but Delta is more than comfortable with letting our underlying tuition do the talking.

Why is Delta so expensive?

There is no doubt that Delta is a significant investment for many families. However, the key point to consider is that price and value are different concepts. Below are a few points to help the reader understand the reasons underlying Delta's tuition fees.

Reason 1: Extensive Inclusions. All students at Delta have access to (1) weekly classes, (2) full sets of text-specific course material, direct and ongoing access to a tutor who provides them with all the support they require in the form of unlimited ('unlimited' to the extent that the student improves upon previously marked work) (3) Individual Lessons, (4) Essay Marking Submissions and (5) general support wherever required.

Our staff members work extremely hard and take great pride in their responding to every students' enquiry (both in terms of promptness and thoroughness), an example from just a few hours ago is below:



The amount of academic contact Delta provides to each student is comfortably multiples of what they'd receive from tuition elsewhere for other subjects. This is because English is a ridiculously difficult subject and necessitates a tuition structure concomitant with the rather complex trajectory of improvement it tends to demand. This is especially true for the vast majority of our students from high performing selective schools who tend to excel at Maths and Science, but struggle to intuitively understand rubric outcomes for English due to factors such as a poor history of reading and underinvestment in studying time during the early years of high school.

Reason 2: Text-Specificity. This is a factor non-existent in tuition for all other subjects and astronomically increases our costs. All Year 12 classes at Delta have different sets of course material written for every single text that we teach. The vast majority of our course material is written by those with postgraduate qualifications in English and each course is very thorough. I have thus far spent in excess of $100k in re-writing our course material for the new syllabus and the many new texts and textual combinations involved. Finding high-quality writers and editors is difficult and extremely expensive especially given the time pressures involved where material needs to be ready for our students well in advance.

I really, really miss my days of tutoring STEM subjects where there's a single set of material for an entire cohort - that really was the dream.

Our aim is to provide our students with tertiary-grade analysis to make the collation of key information relevant to syllabus outcomes as easy and painless as possible. This makes writing your essay so much easier. For example, a Module A course at Delta lasts for 8 weeks. As an example, here's a link to the first lesson of our The Tempest/Hag-Seed course material, just one lesson module out of 8: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VZXI6pXk8ndPYvqbnj0a0QkJPjbfjOS4/view.

Reason 3: Staff Qualifications. This is perhaps the most significant point in increasing our costs. All academic staff members at Delta hold compulsorily, a NSW State Rank in English. In addition, we can only hire the most personable and dedicated in the interests of our students' progress and company reputation. The huge problem here is that it massively reduces the number of candidates that are available (only a minority of English state rankers are interviewed as many move interstate and overseas and of this minority, most are not hired due to poor communication skills or misaligned objectives in terms of student interests).

What the above means is that our staff members are very difficult to replace, are in enormously high demand and thus, Delta needs to pay them very lucratively (multiples of an equivalently qualified person teaching Maths or Science elsewhere) to keep them working for us and prevent them from working privately or elsewhere (or more likely, simply decide that they're making enough money from their four scholarships that they don't really need a job).

There are so, so few such tutors available of the caliber we require at Delta it's not even funny (compare this to the comparatively huge number of people who are excellent at teaching Maths and Science). Every one of my colleagues at Delta is incredible, amazing and deserving of every dollar of pay; but the fact remains that a huge portion of your tuition fees acts as insurance in keeping the very best people in the state teaching you. This not only applies to your class teachers at Delta but also your tutors who're paid a very lucrative salary (again, for the reasons mentioned) to help you with your work.

Indeed, we stopped the intake of Year 12 enrolments in March this year (at a massive cost to our financial performance) simply because there aren't enough tutors available with the qualifications and willingness of dedication towards student progress we require. Sure, we could relax our standards (even slightly) and take on hundreds more students; but then we'd turn into your regular mediocre tutoring company which is not what I want for Delta.

I really am very sorry that Delta is unaffordable for some families (we currently charge $1950 and $2450 per term for Years 11 and 12 respectively) but the fact remains that even with the mentioned prices, our profit margins are much lower than most other tuition companies simply because of our astronomical expenses. I should also mention that the majority of the parents I speak to consider our prices cheap from a value perspective after adjusting for the thoroughness, structure and rarity of the service they're given access to.

You can do very well in English without coming to Delta but the fact remains that we make things much easier for you, especially for English where private tutors are a huge hit and miss. If you have any concerns please feel free to get in touch with us via our website (not allowed to link here as it violates BoS advertising rules) and we'd be delighted to help.

All the very best guys! (And I miss being part of this community - almost 10 years ago now!)
 
Last edited:

k14usmukh

New Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2014
Messages
13
Gender
Undisclosed
HSC
2019
Hi everyone!

I'm the director at Delta Specialist English Tuition and wanted to respectfully take the opportunity to respond to this review. I'm thankful for this opportunity to respond as Delta is very comfortable maintaining full transparency in our workings with the student community.

Has Delta ever 'denied' tutorial requests or 'ignored' submitted scripts for marking?

Absolutely not, ever. If such an occurrence were to happen outside the bounds of a rare genuine error, the academic in question would be thoroughly investigated and most likely have their employment with us terminated. This has never happened in the history of Delta's operation; especially given the extensive oversight we have towards our staff members' ongoing correspondence with students and more importantly - the fact that we interview and select the most conscientious and dedicated staff members to work for us.

Some people are disgruntled because they misinterpret what 'Unlimited' Essay Marking and Tutorials mean. It doesn't mean students can send us their work at the very last minute or demand lessons with tutors with short notice, narrow flexibilities and no evidence of work or improvement from previous lessons. 'Unlimited' means that for students who are hard working, engaged and start working on their essays well in advance, we will mark your work and see you as many times as required to get you the furthest we can. If you're not willing to make such a commitment, Delta is not for you.

We present Delta as a highly boutique and premium service (where all academics have a NSW State Rank in English) and we simply would not make it through a single day in business if we were to simply ignore our students' requests. This should - respectfully - be consistent with common sense. In addition from 2019, Delta commenced a refund policy where any student can choose to end their enrolment at any stage and receive a full refund of any remaining weeks in the term.

I also note that the reviewing account was freshly created shortly before the review was posted with a single post history. There is a possibility of a rival tuition firm or other disgruntled party seeking to simply slander and defame our reputation. This is common in the tuition industry - but Delta is more than comfortable with letting our underlying tuition do the talking.

Why is Delta so expensive?

There is no doubt that Delta is a significant investment for many families. However, the key point to consider is that price and value are different concepts. Below are a few points to help the reader understand the reasons underlying Delta's tuition fees.

Reason 1: Extensive Inclusions. All students at Delta have access to (1) weekly classes, (2) full sets of text-specific course material, direct and ongoing access to a tutor who provides them with all the support they require in the form of unlimited ('unlimited' to the extent that the student improves upon previously marked work) (3) Individual Lessons, (4) Essay Marking Submissions and (5) general support wherever required.

Our staff members work extremely hard and take great pride in their responding to every students' enquiry (both in terms of promptness and thoroughness), an example from just a few hours ago is below:



The amount of academic contact Delta provides to each student is comfortably multiples of what they'd receive from tuition elsewhere for other subjects. This is because English is a ridiculously difficult subject and necessitates a tuition structure concomitant with the rather complex trajectory of improvement it tends to demand. This is especially true for the vast majority of our students from high performing selective schools who tend to excel at Maths and Science, but struggle to intuitively understand rubric outcomes for English due to factors such as a poor history of reading and underinvestment in studying time during the early years of high school.

Reason 2: Text-Specificity. This is a factor non-existent in tuition for all other subjects and astronomically increases our costs. All Year 12 classes at Delta have different sets of course material written for every single text that we teach. The vast majority of our course material is written by those with postgraduate qualifications in English and each course is very thorough. I have thus far spent in excess of $100k in re-writing our course material for the new syllabus and the many new texts and textual combinations involved. Finding high-quality writers and editors is difficult and extremely expensive especially given the time pressures involved where material needs to be ready for our students well in advance.

I really, really miss my days of tutoring STEM subjects where there's a single set of material for an entire cohort - that really was the dream.

Our aim is to provide our students with tertiary-grade analysis to make the collation of key information relevant to syllabus outcomes as easy and painless as possible. This makes writing your essay so much easier. For example, a Module A course at Delta lasts for 8 weeks. As an example, here's a link to the first lesson of our The Tempest/Hag-Seed course material, just one lesson module out of 8: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VZXI6pXk8ndPYvqbnj0a0QkJPjbfjOS4/view.

Reason 3: Staff Qualifications. This is perhaps the most significant point in increasing our costs. All academic staff members at Delta hold compulsorily, a NSW State Rank in English. In addition, we can only hire the most personable and dedicated in the interests of our students' progress and company reputation. The huge problem here is that it massively reduces the number of candidates that are available (only a minority of English state rankers are interviewed as many move interstate and overseas and of this minority, most are not hired due to poor communication skills or misaligned objectives in terms of student interests).

What the above means is that our staff members are very difficult to replace, are in enormously high demand and thus, Delta needs to pay them very lucratively (multiples of an equivalently qualified person teaching Maths or Science elsewhere) to keep them working for us and prevent them from working privately or elsewhere (or more likely, simply decide that they're making enough money from their four scholarships that they don't really need a job).

There are so, so few such tutors available of the caliber we require at Delta it's not even funny (compare this to the comparatively huge number of people who are excellent at teaching Maths and Science). Every one of my colleagues at Delta is incredible, amazing and deserving of every dollar of pay; but the fact remains that a huge portion of your tuition fees acts as insurance in keeping the very best people in the state teaching you. This not only applies to your class teachers at Delta but also your tutors who're paid a very lucrative salary (again, for the reasons mentioned) to help you with your work.

Indeed, we stopped the intake of Year 12 enrolments in March this year (at a massive cost to our financial performance) simply because there aren't enough tutors available with the qualifications and willingness of dedication towards student progress we require. Sure, we could relax our standards (even slightly) and take on hundreds more students; but then we'd turn into your regular mediocre tutoring company which is not what I want for Delta.

I really am very sorry that Delta is unaffordable for some families (we currently charge $1950 and $2450 per term for Years 11 and 12 respectively) but the fact remains that even with the mentioned prices, our profit margins are much lower than most other tuition companies simply because of our astronomical expenses. I should also mention that the majority of the parents I speak to consider our prices cheap from a value perspective after adjusting for the thoroughness, structure and rarity of the service they're given access to.

You can do very well in English without coming to Delta but the fact remains that we make things much easier for you, especially for English where private tutors are a huge hit and miss. If you have any concerns please feel free to get in touch with us via our website (not allowed to link here as it violates BoS advertising rules) and we'd be delighted to help.

All the very best guys! (And I miss being part of this community - almost 10 years ago now!)
Hello to the Director of Delta education - I chanced upon your response and wanted to share the following. I am a parent btw. A year ago I called and put my daughter's name in your waitlist for Year 10. Yes.. Yes I called 12 months before the actual start date My daughter is a scholarship scholar at one of Sydney top private schools. Before the start of the term when I called I was told that Delta only teaches students from selective schools based on your assessment criterion and that you could not accommodate her as the school in not in your preferred list. While of-course we were disappointed and amazed - we understood that who to teach is your prerogative and choice - but I have one suggestion PLS. MENTION IT VERY CLEARLY IN YOUR ADS FOR E.G AT CHATSWOOD STATION - that way people don't waste your time and their own.
 

Shin Min-a

New Member
Joined
Jul 16, 2019
Messages
2
Gender
Female
HSC
2020
I would like to warn anyone about going to Delta English tuition. A family member recently went there for a term. It promised UNLIMITED one on one tuition by specialist tutor who by the way is a recent high school graduate in 2018, English state ranked. However, when the student contacted requesting for one on one tutorial the requested was denied. Very expensive tuition, costing $1950 for a 10 week term and $220 unrefundable admin fee. Our family membered ended up just getting class tuition for the term which consists of 2 hour weekly lesson in a class of 15 to 20 students so that is almost $100 an hour in a GROUP CLASS!. Do your maths and see how much Delta earn an hour. Wouldn't mind so much if they delivered what they promised. They also promised essay marking but when the essay was sent to the specialist tutor, it was not marked at all so just had to hand in as is. Could have got private english coaching for that money paid.

Certainly not worth the money!
I was told by a friend that Delta will force parents to sign a contract on interview, which parents cannot keep a copy, and students have to pay full term fee nearly 2K with $220 non refundable enrolment fee.
They can cancel the class anytime if the teacher is busy and students have to attend the makeup lesson during school holidays.
Most tutors are 1st year Uni students so they either have no time to help or no experience in teaching.
They only allowed students to contact tutors to book time for tutoring, as it is easy to manipulate the students.
If parents come in to complain/request for tutoring as promised, they will terminate the contracr and refund only a few hundred dollars after deducting various fees. And of course they will keep $220 enrolment fee even they are the one to terminate the contract.
A few tutors had cancelled their allocated classes and one tutor actually left Delta in the middle of the term so many students didn't have one on one tutoring most of the term!
Once they terminate the contract, parents and students are not allowed to enter the Center.

Certainly not worth the money!
 
Last edited:

Drdusk

Moderator
Moderator
Joined
Feb 24, 2017
Messages
2,025
Location
a VM
Gender
Male
HSC
2018
Uni Grad
2023
looks rather suspicious that you make a BoS account yesterday and immediately go ahead to present negative opinions on a thread huh?
Spelling errors and the 3 posts reiterate your anger.
How does that look suspicious?
 

andrew12678

Active Member
Joined
Sep 8, 2013
Messages
261
Gender
Male
HSC
2016
I was told by a friend that Delta will force parents to sign a contract on interview, which parents cannot keep a copy, and students have to pay full term fee nearly 2K with $220 non refundable enrolment fee.
They can cancel the class anytime if the teacher is busy and students have to attend the makeup lesson during school holidays.
Most tutors are 1st year Uni students so they either have no time to help or no experience in teaching.
They only allowed students to contact tutors to book time for tutoring, as it is easy to manipulate the students.
If parents come in to complain/request for tutoring as promised, they will terminate the contracr and refund only a few hundred dollars after deducting various fees. And of course they will keep $220 enrolment fee even they are the one to terminate the contract.
A few tutors had cancelled their allocated classes and one tutor actually left Delta in the middle of the term so many students didn't have one on one tutoring most of the term!
Once they terminate the contract, parents and students are not allowed to enter the Center.

Certainly not worth the money!
It's unfortunate to hear that you didn't have as great of an experience as I did at Delta-I truly believe what they did for that Year 10 version of myself who could barely string an essay together was nothing short of a revelation (as would many of my peers). However, regardless of how I feel about Delta, I am highly skeptical about the validity of the points you have raised and feel like some of your concerns would have probably been better resolved by effectively communicating with management instead of creating a new account here and just ranting about it.

The Delta admin and teaching team are some of the friendliest and most helpful people I have ever met and I am sure they would have gone out their way to address any concern that you may have had if you had raised it with them nicely. As a student there from 2014-2016, I've known plenty of people who have come into Delta for a trial and none of them have reacted in any way similar to yourself even if they did not continue beyond the trial.

I really didn't want to do this but I honestly don't think that your friend told you the entire truth with regards to some of the accusations you brought up. I still have a copy of my contract sitting in my drawer from all those years ago and it's definitely provided to parents (I've seen this with my own 2 eyes) so there is no way they would have forgotten it just for your friend. Even if this was a remote possibility a simple reminder and they would've sent it in 2 seconds. Speaking from experience, I have never had a single class cancelled ever, if on a rare occasion any of my tutors/teachers were sick, a more than capable replacement was always there (in some cases even the owner-who is truly one of my favourite teachers-would step in, talk about dedication).

I hope you find what you are looking for elsewhere. Best of luck for your HSC
 

Shin Min-a

New Member
Joined
Jul 16, 2019
Messages
2
Gender
Female
HSC
2020
Delta has changed the way they did in previous years. It takes students from a few top selective schools only to keep the high standard and has increased the tuition fees dramatically, costing $1950 for a 10 week term and $220 nonrefundable admin fee, which is $200 per class of 20 students.
I don't know why you think my friend didn't tell the truth, and how the other member was suspicious about my post.
I just wanted to share my friend's bad experience with Delta, so people can avoid the trap. My friend couldn't discuss with Admin team since once they terminate the contract, parents & students are not allowed to enter the building for whatever reason.
Like the other member said, "Our family membered ended up just getting class tuition for the term which consists of 2 hour weekly lesson in a class of 15 to 20 students so that is almost $100 an hour in a GROUP CLASS!. Do your maths and see how much Delta earn an hour. Wouldn't mind so much if they delivered what they promised. They also promised essay marking but when the essay was sent to the specialist tutor, it was not marked at all so just had to hand in as is. Could have got private english coaching for that money paid."
It is exactly the same to what my friend told me so i believe they are honest and we should be thankful to them for sharing their bad experience with Delta.
I like this comment from Afluria "Do your maths and see how much Delta earn an hour. Wouldn't mind so much if they delivered what they promised."
It's nearly $2000 per hour that they earn, and they can reallocate the class official time to any other day which is suitable for the teacher. I heard for my friend's case, the teacher was unavailable in the second or third week of the term. When she informed students about it durimg the previous class, many students complained they couldn't attend due to school functions, the teacher said she couldn't do anything about it! Worse enough there will be no credit given even students have good reason for not being able to attend these makeup lessons.
I accidentally found this post and in order to share my friend's experience with you all, I have to create my own account. There is no other reason behind this, what will be the benefit except for saving you time to investigate the warning from other truthful member Afluria?
 
Last edited:

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 0, Guests: 1)

Top