BY EUGENE TOH

Just finished JC1 Orientation? Or starting to prepare for your first upcoming block / common test as a JC2 student? Many students start looking for a JC Economics tutor or an A Level Economics tuition programme at this juncture. To save your time researching, here are some common searches on Google which we will attempt to address in this article:

“What is the best Economics tuition in Singapore?”
“How to decide on an Economics tuition centre / Economics tutor?”
“Should you go for a private Economics tutor OR take Economics group classes?”

Having been an Economics tutor since 2007 and tutored more than 3000 students to-date, I run a successful Economics tuition programme and have managed / am currently managing multiple education centre brands with multiple centres. I’m writing this blogpost to help students make a better decision. For most of the article, it will involve no marketing / promoting of our Economics tuition centre / programme so that students can make an unbiased, informed decision based on their needs and requirements. I’ll share a link for students to find out more information about our programme at the end of the article.

The A Level examination is considered to be the most critical examination for most Singaporean students as it determines their options for university admissions. Yet, students usually have less than 1 year and 9 months to complete the curriculum. (You start JC1 in February and sit for the A Levels starting in November in JC2.)

Excelling at the A Levels is possible, but tedious / difficult. Many students take A Level Economics tuition given that it is a brand new subject for them, but given the number of JC Economics tuition centres out there, deciding on an option may be difficult! The following are 10 golden points you must know before you make your decision.

1. Tutor Qualifications

The A Level Economics curriculum is rigorous. A tutor will need to be competent to dissect and help students understand Economics concepts and theories which can be at times quite abstract and also teach skills specific to essay writing and answering case study questions. Let’s start with a couple of reference points - school teachers and MOE requirements for teachers teaching at private schools (aka tuition centres).

School teachers teaching A Level Economics in JCs usually take a Bachelors degree with a major in Economics. Most of them graduate from local universities with a handful of them from foreign universities. They then go on to do a 1-year teaching qualification at NIE, also known as the Post-Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE).

MOE requires all Private Schools (Tuition Centres) to register all teachers under their employ. Approval is required. In general, approval is only granted if the teacher has a higher qualification than the subject-level that they are proposing to teach in, and the qualification must be in a related field. In other words - you can only teach A Level Economics at a tuition centre only if you have a degree related to Economics e.g. Bachelor of Arts / Bachelor of Social Sciences in Economics. If a tuition centre employs an undergraduate (even in Economics) to tutor Economics in a classroom group setting - that’s actually likely done without approval from MOE.

Thus, the minimum qualifications you should accept for a tutor / tuition programme should not be lower than what is expected of school teachers and tuition teachers approved by MOE to teach at a private school / tuition centre.

There are many undergraduate tutors offering private 1-1 A Level Economics tuition and the market rate is around $35/hour. These don’t meet the MOE standards for registering as a tutor at a tuition centre nor better than your school teachers in terms of your qualifications. Qualifications and the ability to teach are not necessarily the same thing and there are potentially undergraduate tutors who can possibly teach well - but you have to be mindful that they may not be really able to competently understand or deliver the curriculum well.

I would say that you should score an A minimally for the subject you would like to tutor in. However, scoring an A at the A Levels does not necessarily translate to a) the ability to teach or b) that the student has a comprehensive mastery of the subject.

Learning and teaching are two fundamentally different things. The ability to study and understand content/material is different from trying to explain and help a student understand the concepts or skills required to excel in the subject.

Scoring an A also doesn’t necessarily mean that the student have a comprehensive mastery of the subject. Remember that the A grade is usually pegged at 70%. You only need to score 70% to get an A - that can also still mean gaps in content / material understanding. 

For H2 Economics, you get to pick 3 questions out of 6 questions to attempt for your essay paper. There is a possibility that the 3 questions that the student (who scored an A) picked are the topics he/she has a good understanding of. The student could be still weak in the topics tested in the remaining 3 questions that he/she did not attempt.

There are A level graduates on Reddit offering free A Level tuition, many of them did well at the A Levels, some with 90 rank-points. These are applaudable if they are committed efforts (finish / follow through the two years with the students they do actually take up). For those with budget constraints and are financially disadvantaged - they are a good option to consider.

If you are considering hiring a private tutor for $35/hour - consider topping up to take group classes from a qualified Economics tutor teaching an established Economics tuition programme.

2. Tutor Experience

The phrase “practice makes perfect” is usually true. Now that doesn’t mean you go looking for the oldest possible tutor.

Let’s take surgeries as an example. If you were going to go through a critical life-endangering / high-risk surgery - would you like a surgeon with 20 years of experience on such specific surgeries or someone who is in the middle of a surgical residency (still learning but allowed to operate)? The surgeon with 20 years of experience started somewhere too, went through a residency. There is no doubt however, that the now renowned / competent surgeon has made some mistakes in his/her younger days as a surgical resident.

You can apply this to a tutor that you are going to engage. You would want to hire someone with years of experience in tutoring Economics because he/she would have taught many students, understand different student profile types and how to best reach out / deliver concepts to them.

He/she would have also tried/done/taught enough exam questions over the course of many years to many students that breaking down exam questions and helping students understand the techniques behind dealing with specific questions become effortless.

3. Tutor Charisma

Tutor charisma is important - this is because teaching is a lot also like a ‘performance’. You need to keep a student sufficiently engaged in the 1.5hour / 2 hours lesson. A charismatic tutor is also able to motivate students to do better, be interested in the subject which leads to potentially better outcomes.

I’ve managed multiple education brands in the last 15 years and at some point, managed more than 30 teachers and interviewed hundreds of teachers for teaching positions. I found that tutor charisma is not necessarily positively correlated with student performance at the final examinations. I’ll not name the subject(s) or level(s) here to avoid identifying teachers. At one tuition centre chain I managed, we collect results of the students after the exam results have been released. 

Students of Tutor A who is extremely popular and passionate about teaching and well loved by his students, consistently did poorly compared to students of Tutor B whom taught the subject in a methodical way but her students consistently did well for the subject over the years.

While tutor charisma is important, it cannot be the only sole plus point of the tutor - otherwise the students may grow to love the subject, but flunk the exams.

4. Programme Structure

You will want your tutor walking into the classroom conducting the day’s lesson to be adhering to a well-planned, carefully designed curriculum and not just ‘wing’ it and teach whatever pleases him/her whims or fancies for the day.

There’s a lot of content packed within the two year curriculum. Given that tuition is usually just two hours a week - we need to plan the full year curriculum really well to ensure that everything is covered and we also do adequate essay-writing, tackling full case study practices within each term.

Most tuition centres offer multiple subjects and across multiple levels. Some offer A Level Economics as one of the tutoring subjects available. In such cases, they usually do not have a full fledged in-house curriculum planning department. What they will likely do is just simply hire a part-time Economics tutor (usually an undergraduate or a tutor doing private home tuition) paid by the hour. These tutors then decide what to teach on a weekly basis without a specific structure set by the centre.

Before sitting for the final A Level examinations, you will want to have covered all the key concepts and be exposed to as many exam questions types as possible. A rigorous, well-planned programme should have all these ‘checked’.

Thus, keep in mind to check that the tuition centre actually has a rigorous two year programme planned out as opposed to having a ‘wing it’ plan by the tutor teaching for the week!

5. Materials (Quality & Comprehensiveness)

Here’s something you might be surprised to know - at the A Levels, there’s no specific textbook that any school uses but each school comes up with their own materials and notes packages for their students. I’ve heard students sharing that their notes have TMI (too much information) and they don’t know what to study. I’ve also heard students sharing that their notes are confusing and don't quite explain points succinctly.

Tuition centres too, should likely offer notes and materials used in conjunction with their lessons. For notes - look out for quality as opposed to quantity. You can request to take a look at the notes / materials used during lessons. See if adequate real-world examples are used to explain the points given / concepts taught. If the notes end up being largely ‘theoretical’ they are of little value-add to you.

Check that the centre actually produces its own notes / materials as opposed to just ‘using existing school notes / ripping off school notes’ because this is also a sign that they don’t actually have a proper programme.

6. Results (actual vs what is claimed)

Let me run through with you the range of statistics (based on student sharing over the years) that are true:

National distinction rates range from 20 - 30+ % of the entire cohort. This means 1 out of 4 or 1 out of 5 students actually gets an A for A Level Economics. Distinction rates in top schools like HCI & RI typically range from 50% - 70%.

Tuition centres all around Singapore reports pretty incredible statistics. I’ve seen 90% As. I vaguely recall a few years back I saw a centre reporting “100%” As. Incredible. They might be living in a multiverse.

I think that most statistics are either blatantly false or somewhat manipulated. I’ve heard of centres only calling up ONLY students who have done well in internal assessments to ask them for their A Level results so that their ‘results’ are untainted. That’s just being manipulative.

You can ignore most of the statistics because they probably are untrue. There’s no proper way to verify them.

7. Reviews (are they real?)

Go and google “fake google reviews” and you will be able to find many articles explaining how fake Google reviews are affecting proper businesses. There are unethical businesses out there that:

1. Write fake negative reviews on competitors’ sites

2. Write fake positive reviews for their own sites

I’ve been on the receiving end of ‘attacks’ by probably competitors so I can share with you what I’ve observed. I noticed that for competitors who ‘suddenly’ gained a number of reviews within a couple of years - there are a couple of suspicious points:

1. There’s a certain level of consistency when it comes to names of their reviewers. All their reviewers seem to have very nice / standard template names. When it comes to my students, not all of them use their names - they may use names like Unknown XMe

2. They have a consistent writing style - they write in similar formats

It’s not too difficult to check and find out whether reviews are authentic. Just ask yourselves would you or your friends write reviews that sound like that.

8. Additional Support

Check that the centre / tutor provides additional support. Additional support can come in the form of recorded video lessons, supplementary lessons, ability to consult tutors for additional questions, grading / homework. Some tutors charge for grading papers. Some tutors charge for additional consultations. 

9. Advertising

You might have also encountered advertisements claiming that classes for certain subjects at tuition centres are already full or that you would have to be put on a waitlist - there are centres out there using such ‘fear-mongering’ tactics. It is possible that they are full-house and you really have to be on a waitlist. But these probabilities are low and unlikely.

The first question I’ll ask is - what is the business model / structure and thus, what are the constraints leading to ‘classes being full’? For single-tutor / ‘super-tutor’ setups where there is ONE single tutor who is a reputable / famous tutor taking ALL of the classes - that is actually a possibility.

Here’s a fun fact - there are a few top Economics tutors around like myself. I think our enrolment numbers are all largely similar and we all only have the capacity to teach 120 - 240 students yearly depending on our various energy levels and our desired work-life balance. We might advertise our classes being “close to full” (and that’s always the truth) but we always usually have some space for enrolments. There is a chance that our classes are full house and that’s usually at the end of the year towards August / September. Some friends I know claim its ‘full’ in August / September only because they don’t want to deal with the students who want to seek last minute help as they find it disruptive.

For regular tuition centres offering multiple subjects across multiple outlets and classes are taught by multiple teachers - if they say they are ‘full-house’, what are their likely constraints? When they reach full capacity, what they can simply do is just to hire new teachers. Tuition centres that list all their timings as “FULL” and tell you to be on a waiting list are likely betting that you have a “FOMO” mindset. You will likely call them up to be on the waitlist. Within a couple of days or up to a week - they will call you back and come up with some ‘miraculous / coincidental’ excuse that someone withdrew from classes / someone dropped out to Poly  / someone is repeating JC1 and presto “you have a seat”.

10. Private 1-1 Tuition or Group Tuition

A competent tutor would likely be able to conduct private 1-1 tuition OR group tuition effectively. What are the arguments for picking one over the other?

Private 1-1 tuition is useful if the student is motivated, disciplined to do a lot of self-revision on his/her own. Through such self-revision, the student then ideally comes up with a list of questions and queries that he/she cannot answer. The following step will usually be to go and consult his / her school teacher. Some students are shy to approach their school teachers or the school teachers may be too stretched / don't have the time. In such cases - private 1-1 tuition can be quite useful.

Group tuition - when taught by a strong / competent teacher is useful because each lesson is supposed to be structured with clear learning objectives. Thus, you walk out from each session a little more ready to tackle the final A Level examinations.

Most top Economics tutors I know do not teach private 1-1 classes. I’ve conducted end of year workshops where students pay a fee of $200 for 6 hours and the capacity of the venue can hold 150 students. This means that the potential earnings for such a workshop is $200 x 150 = $30,000 for 6 hours of work. Of course - that’s an anomaly because I only conduct such a workshop once a year.

During pre-COVID19 days, each of my classes fit between 24 to 30 students. If each student pays an average of $90/lesson that will work out to between $2160 to $2700 per lesson. This works out to be an average of $1080 to $1350 per hour.

This is true for most top Economics tutors - would we thus likely take up private 1-1 classes? Probably not. I had a lot of free time during the circuitbreaker period and took up a single 1-1 student as the parent was really insistent. I charged a rate of $350/h for this student and did a few classes during this period. I haven’t taught 1-1 tuition for more than a decade.

For 1-1 tuition, although you may get more attention - this may not necessarily be as beneficial as group classes as the students who would usually benefit from such classes are students who have ready questions to ask. Group classes taught by top Economics tutors may be more beneficial for a large majority of the population.

Conclusion

Take a comprehensive approach towards selecting a tuition programme - and that applies actually to any subject / level. Examine all of the above factors that I’ve shared and do a comparison across different centres.

You can find out more about ETG’s Economics tuition programme here.