Why selective school kids need tutors?

[LobbSACS]

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i dont see the point of tutors, if your not smart enough to understand something through school and study, then you shouldent be doing that class.

the HSC is ment to asses you, not your tutor.

[phosphorescent]

Originally Posted by LobbSACS

i dont see the point of tutors, if your not smart enough to understand something through school and study, then you shouldent be doing that class.

the HSC is ment to asses you, not your tutor.

Right. What if you are simply incompatible with your teacher's method of teaching? What if your teacher is just a BAD teacher (and trust, there are plenty).

If the teacher is no good, it will give you no basis to understand the subject or anything you're meant to be learning.

Sometimes, tutors are necessary, and even more so necessary to 'keep up' in competitive environments where everyone is about 6 months ahead of what is being taught in class - i.e. selective schools.

[studentcheese]

Originally Posted by oasfree

Another thing is 1/2 of the students come from OC classes. These are the better group. They are highest performers since grade 4. The other half is a mix of the OC rejects and those who did not bother going for OC classes. This second group is generally lower ability. The entrance score is between 195 - 280. There is a big correlation between the entry score and actually performance at selective schools. Most of the students who only scrape in (through waiting lists) struggle badly to get high marks.

That's not entirely true. At my school, there are reserve A's who get higher marks than the ones who got in easily. (Have you considered the fact that some reserves may have bombed out in tests? 'Reserves' are for the kids who didn't get the entry mark but have the potential to succeed well in a selective school) In addition, there are even students who don't get into either OC or selective, but they still manage to get higher UAI's then selective + OC students.

Originally Posted by oasfree

Still the fact that so many kids get coaching to enter selective schools disturb me. And they seem to lose steam if they stop going to coaching. It's an unclear area. As I said atthe beginning that we should not count the really smart kids. These kids are too smart even for their teachers so they would do well without coaching. The question remained why the majority of the kids still need tutoring or coaching to stay competitive.

Nope... There are some kids who get 3 years + of coaching, but they don't get into selective schools. By just going coaching, it does not guarantee you entry into a selective school. For students to get coached for entry into selective school, it is to train them to be more familiar with the types of questions that are going to be asked and to realise the potential that they have. You have to also realise that the questions for Maths in coaching school was also year 8 work in year 6. The kids who can cope with these questions, are actually quite talented.

I was coached to get into a selective school, and after entrance, I have never started tutoring again... but then, I still do very well in my exams.

[studentcheese]

Originally Posted by oasfree

Some selective schools are at the bottom of the league and could not even compare with good non-selective schools. So it depends. My nieces are in Sydney Girls where they say the low marks are about 70% and the average is about 80% for tests and essays. The top 5 selective schools in Sydney are very good. And you don't have to be extremely smart to enter a 5th ranked selective school.

So I do believe that some kids in selective schools outside the top 5 are dumb arses.

You have to be quite smart to enter the top 5... otherwise, everyone would be able to get into Ruse with perseverance and hardwork!

How would kids outside the top 5 be dumb? There are kids from schools ranked as low as 300 who can get 98+. And what if someone rejected Ruse to go to a partially selective school because of the travel? You can't point something out like that without evidence!

[Timothy.Siu]

Originally Posted by LobbSACS

i dont see the point of tutors, if your not smart enough to understand something through school and study, then you shouldent be doing that class.

the HSC is ment to asses you, not your tutor.

then what do u do?

on another note, about the james ruse comment about getting the cream of the crop, yes i do think they do but thats not the only reason why they do so well,
the competition there is probably pretty intense and helps motivate everyone to study,

e.g. i may be 30th in my school for something but if i was in ruse i might be 120th...and i'd probably work harder if i was.

[oasfree]

Originally Posted by Timothy.Siu

then what do u do?
e.g. i may be 30th in my school for something but if i was in ruse i might be 120th...and i'd probably work harder if i was.

It's a complex thing. It's what they call "rise to the challenge". Some smart kids are always near the top of every school that they move to. If you put the kid in a poor school, the kid will be at the top. If you move the kid to a top school, the kid will try to rise to the top. Kids also their friends too.

I have heard many times that kids in selective schools are 6 months ahead of topics discussed by teachers because they learn ahead in coaching places. This could be a ploy by coaching places. The idea is to give the kids a chance to be ahead and get the best marks to get higher ranks. This gives ultra-competitive parents a sense of value for their money when their kids seem to be ahead of others. It has nothing to do with result in the HSC later. So the coaching places play with "the fear of falling behind". Kids and their parents fear falling behind the rest. At the current state, most kids in selective schools go to coaching places. So it's saturated.

Schools like Sydney Girls organise remedial classes for their weaker students (especially those who scrape in through the reserve list). I heard that these classes were not popular. The time isn't convenient and kids fear losing face if they turn up in a remedial class.

My relatives are spending a fortune on coaching fees and the kids suffer so much stress and lose time for play. This is what makes me wonder if tutoring/coaching is necessary at all. They all seem to religiously beleive that coaching is the only way for the kids to survive (or do well) because every one else is doing it. And if every one else beleive in coaching then coaching must given some positive result. And this is what some parents condemn as the only thing that get so many Asian kids into selective schools and keep them there.

I am not not sold on coaching for gifted kids to do well in selective schools. I beleive coaching is useful for weak kids and would also be useful for talented kids who want to become geniuses.

[I Study Hard]

If Hurlstone had remedial classes i would so go every chance i got x_x;
I haven't gone to tutoring since i got into a selective school and i'm now in year 12..i was doing fine with marks above 80% (which to me is an acheivement, i'm not one of those people who throw a fit because they get less than 99%) but i got sick about a year ago and i have a terrible immunity problem now, so i keep getting sick and missing school. That is why i'm going to find private tutoring for my weak subjects, not because i want to be ahead, but because while i'm still managing to pass, i know if i got a tutor and caught up then i would be doing much better. I want tutoring because i want to rise to what i think is my potential =)

[swathard]

can I just say that I have never had a tutor (and never intend on getting one) and I am in a selective high school.

virtually everyone around me has a tutor for at least one subject, and it is quite annoying. i put in the extra work knowing I have noone to rely on if I dont udnerstand something. i have been doing extremely well even in the selective environment without a tutor/coaching college, and I am proud of myself for it.

i'd like to come out of year 12 and say that you dont need a tutor to gain a good UAI. in my opinion, i think that people in selective high schools are tutored because they were tutored to get into the school in the first place and they dont have an ability to work independently and find strength within themselves to actually do the work!

to be honest, I think that attending a coaching school/having a tutor shows that you are unmotivated/unwilling to strive to achieve your personal best, and will do anything to look better and achieve better marks, even if it means relying on others to push you over the line.

but dont get me wrong - if you are totally atrocious at a subject, and ARE putting in everything you possibly can, THEN a tutor may be an option. but if you just get a tutor for the sake of it, to improve your marks when you are not putting in the effort, then I find that ridiculous. (please note, I am mainly talking about students from selective high schools).

[tku336]

i find it interesting that selective school kids have tutoring too. in most private schools, they dont.

in grammar i think only about six or so of the top 20 kids have tutoring. BUT we still do on average as well in our top 20 students as any other top 10 school (bar james ruse). does that suggest - that the tutoring isnt that effective? or that if we at grammar did tutoring, we'd do better? or that if the selective schools didnt have tutoring, they'd do worse?

[InSummoOtio]

I didn't know that SGHS offered remedial classes. Help maybe.

I've never had tutoring (though I tried it once) and hate it with a passion. I don't think that its fair for other people who don't do tutoring and I really do feel for people who sacrifice going out and having fun but instead going to hours of tutoring.

I see that many people do tutoring and I try to keep up by teaching myself, which is a cheaper and for me, more efficient option.

When I tried tutoring, I realised how slow and didn't focus on what we were doing in school. But they hadn't actually done the topic that I was doing in school yet. Its not that they were learning 6 months ahead, they just did it in a different order. I didn't like the quality of the teachers either, they didn't seem to know the topic and at times, I had finished before the teacher had started, and the teacher proceeded to get the answer wrong before I corrected them.

Though the person who did come first in Year 11 had already done the Year 12 course before we had started Year 12 and I felt that maybe that was a little unfair. She devotes her whole life to tutoring, every afternoon and barely doing any other activities. Its a high standard to live up to and everyone wants to be the top of the crop. Thats probably the reason why people go tutoring, because there's such an unfair advantage for those who don't.

The teachers at the selective schools are much much better than any coaching place because they are essentially the ones who are going to mark the internal exams, and who have the vast educational knowledge. I think sometimes students underestimate the value of their teachers, but the teachers have gone to university and studied those topics more in depth and are constantly learning for years, whereas these tutors are only part time teachers at best, and of a much lower standard to these selective school teachers.

OC students don't necessarily do better. I didn't go to OC. Some OC students aren't doing all that well in comparison to non-OC students. When you say that there is a big correlation between entry score and performance at selective schools, I ABSOLUTELY disagree with you. There are at schools, value-added scores, which shows how schools can raise the performance of the student. I scraped into SGHS, because my friend with a slightly lower score didn't. I never realised what the difference was. For me, in Year 6, SGHS was just a school close to me, which happened to be selective, which was 'a school you need to do an exam to get into' but now I realise the value of selective schools and wonder where I would be if I didn't get it. It was my only choice. Turns out that I didn't really struggle, I flourished, been a high-achiever came 2nd in Year 11. Thus disproving everyone's theories. (I could've been 1st if not for tutoring :P). What correlation between Selective School result and performance in High School? I really do believe in the power of the selective school, of its teachers, of its structures.

Selective Schools =)

[studentcheese]

1) Just an Asian thing to go tutoring
2) to remain competitive. Some kids get into selective and then slack off. Parents attempt to make their kids do more work by pushing them into tutoring.
3) To get into the top classes
4) To learn ahead

[2S1D3]

Originally Posted by swathard

can I just say that I have never had a tutor (and never intend on getting one) and I am in a selective high school.

virtually everyone around me has a tutor for at least one subject, and it is quite annoying. i put in the extra work knowing I have noone to rely on if I dont udnerstand something. i have been doing extremely well even in the selective environment without a tutor/coaching college, and I am proud of myself for it.

i'd like to come out of year 12 and say that you dont need a tutor to gain a good UAI. in my opinion, i think that people in selective high schools are tutored because they were tutored to get into the school in the first place and they dont have an ability to work independently and find strength within themselves to actually do the work!

to be honest, I think that attending a coaching school/having a tutor shows that you are unmotivated/unwilling to strive to achieve your personal best, and will do anything to look better and achieve better marks, even if it means relying on others to push you over the line.

but dont get me wrong - if you are totally atrocious at a subject, and ARE putting in everything you possibly can, THEN a tutor may be an option. but if you just get a tutor for the sake of it, to improve your marks when you are not putting in the effort, then I find that ridiculous. (please note, I am mainly talking about students from selective high schools).

good on you mate i was in the same situation as you but i didnt go to a selective school and ended up with a good uai...basically its great that you dont need extra help on your studies

[redbread]

lol, firstly, some teachers at school arent that great, sometimes the information they teach can be very shallow or even incorrect. anyone disagree?
so, tutoring provides students with a second opinion, and something they can compare learnt information to, otherwise you would just assume everything yur teacher teaches is correct.
as for self learning, just reading from the textbook does not work, as the textbook is not interactive. eg. you cant ask a textbook for clarification or ask it to solve a particularly hard problem.

secondly, going to tutoring in the first place is a discipline thing, while other kids are out playing footy (no offence to footy players) other kids might spend their time looking at math examples at a tutoring centre, improving their maths.

thirdly, a kid who goes to tutoring would effectively be learning the HSC course twice. who thinks thats not advantageous?
+ they would be also doing twice the amount of homework (if not more) than students who dont go to a tutoring centre.

fourth-ly? people seem to think that the only FAIR way to learn is through school teachers. so what happens if a school teacher spoonfeeds his/her class? (eg. teaching them how to best answer a particular style of question) would this be unfair to students who have a 'better teacher' who DOESNT spoonfeed them? if not, then whats wrong with hiring an extra teacher?

i doubt that anyone who has been to tutoring will tell you that it had been a waste of time, most people who tutor-bash sound frustrated that it is actualli quite efficient at allowing kids to produce higher results than non-tutored kids

ok, so maybe memorising a pre written response that someone else has come up with should be frowned upon, but that applies mostli just for humanities subjects.
wat.. are you going to memorise a pre-written math equation?

even if nobody went to a tutor and everything was 'fair', i doubt that it would stay that way for long, just human nature to get ahead of everyone, the systems never fair

but anyway, no kids never 'need' tutoring, but it sure helps those who do it get into a course they want.

[Paradox1345]

Originally Posted by redbread

lol, firstly, some teachers at school arent that great, sometimes the information they teach can be very shallow or even incorrect. anyone disagree?
so, tutoring provides students with a second opinion, and something they can compare learnt information to, otherwise you would just assume everything yur teacher teaches is correct.
as for self learning, just reading from the textbook does not work, as the textbook is not interactive. eg. you cant ask a textbook for clarification or ask it to solve a particularly hard problem.

secondly, going to tutoring in the first place is a discipline thing, while other kids are out playing footy (no offence to footy players) other kids might spend their time looking at math examples at a tutoring centre, improving their maths.

thirdly, a kid who goes to tutoring would effectively be learning the HSC course twice. who thinks thats not advantageous?
+ they would be also doing twice the amount of homework (if not more) than students who dont go to a tutoring centre.

fourth-ly? people seem to think that the only FAIR way to learn is through school teachers. so what happens if a school teacher spoonfeeds his/her class? (eg. teaching them how to best answer a particular style of question) would this be unfair to students who have a 'better teacher' who DOESNT spoonfeed them? if not, then whats wrong with hiring an extra teacher?

i doubt that anyone who has been to tutoring will tell you that it had been a waste of time, most people who tutor-bash sound frustrated that it is actualli quite efficient at allowing kids to produce higher results than non-tutored kids

ok, so maybe memorising a pre written response that someone else has come up with should be frowned upon, but that applies mostli just for humanities subjects.
wat.. are you going to memorise a pre-written math equation?

even if nobody went to a tutor and everything was 'fair', i doubt that it would stay that way for long, just human nature to get ahead of everyone, the systems never fair

but anyway, no kids never 'need' tutoring, but it sure helps those who do it get into a course they want.

Agreed

[midnightpen]

I agree with redbread, most students go to tutoring for the advantage of learning the course twice, deepening their understanding.