FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Most families start doing 1 hour per student to see how that goes - especially if they are young and struggle with attentiveness. Funnily enough though, many kids who struggle to stay focused in a class can be much more attentive when it’s one-on-one. After a few weeks, if the student is showing engagement for the full hour, it’s very common to request increasing lesson duration to 1.5 hours, 2 hours or even more. Either way, the same flat hourly rate applies.

If you decide you’d like to continue after the first lesson, then the minimum requirement is a 1 hour lesson at the same time each week. You can do 2 or more lessons per week if your TOTC tutor has the availability.

The requirement is at least a 1 hour lesson per week at a regular time. So long as you’re doing this, then if you’d like to do the occasional extra lesson here and there, then yes - you can do this so long as the tutor is available at the times you’d like to do them. This is quite common during occasions such as school holidays or in the leadup to major assessments where the student needs some extra tutoring sessions to brush up.

Most tutoring companies still charge if you don’t attend a lesson, or at best require you to provide 24 hours notice. We require you to provide your TOTC tutor with at least 2 hours notice.

So long as you provide 2 hours notice and cancel not more than 3 lessons per term, you won’t be charged.

Your TOTC tutor will provide all the learning materials needed, however:

a) If you have particular workbooks, homework or other materials you’d specifically like your child to work on with your TOTC tutor, then you’re welcome to do that.

b) It would be helpful (especially for the first few lessons) if you can provide recent NAPLAN results, reports or anything else the tutor can use to get an idea of how your child has been going lately. It would also be helpful to remind your child to get any homework or upcoming assessments ready if you’d like the tutor to help them with those types of tasks.

The first step is to assess your child’s needs by aiming to identify the key topics and skills that are most crucial for them. Most coaching centre's offer a ‘free assessment’ to get started, however most of them may highlight weaknesses in different topics, but not give much indication about the underlying cause of those weaknesses.

This is where having their own personal one-on-one tutor can do more than just assess which areas they need help with. The personal observation can show us why they’re struggling with those areas, which gives us clues to know how to help them most effectively. After all, once we know the areas they need help with, if we don’t know how to approach it with them, then we may just go about it in the same way they already learned at school which didn’t work the fist time and thus repeat an ineffective approach rather than identify a more effective one.

Depending on their year level, one of the most common assessment tools we’ll use are past years NAPLAN tests, as they cover the most important set of numeracy and literacy skills. The results of a NAPLAN style test will help to identify the specific topics which your child might need the most support with, so if you have past years NAPLAN results - by all means, show your TOTC tutor. But the benefit of having a personal tutor assessing them one-on-one, is that they can also observe how your child approaches the test, by asking them to ’think out loud’.

This helps to pick up on things like rushing through without checking their answers, getting stuck overthinking certain questions without prioritising their time well, as well as things like whether they are stopping to break down the meaning of the questions (as opposed to making assumptions of false inferences) and similar thinking skills. This way, we get to identify areas to improve not just their knowledge, but the way they’re going about it - the latter being something a class environment would not detect so well.

The major benefit of one-on-one personal tuition is being able to assess and target the specific areas that your child needs the most help with, and not worry so much about the rest. Unlike at school where they have many hours per week to cover the curriculum outcomes, your TOTC tutor will only have 1 or 2 hours per week (unless you choose to do more). So it’s best to utilise that time targeting the specific skills your child needs to focus on most. Some coaching centres have a ‘one size fits all’ program which may be great if your child happens to need work on all the area of that specific program (and not others). What often happens however with these programs is that they spent some time on topics they might not need to focus on so much, whilst the areas they need to stop and focus on may get rushed over.

For starters, if you have particular homework, assignments or resources you’d like your child to use with their TOTC tutor - you’re welcome to provide those and the tutor will work around your preferences.

Otherwise, your TOTC tutor has been trained to use our specific lesson plan formula, which focused a lot on things like goal setting and reflective practice. This means predetermining what specific outcomes your TOTC tutor and child will decide to aim for, as well as stopping to look back to notice improvements as well as area needing more improvement.

Some of the most powerful goals our strategies aim to achieve, focus on supporting the student to become more independent and self-directed. They start by learning to make decisions about what small goals they're going to work on, which gives them a sense of ownership over their own learning. That way, whatever progress they identify was not just because of an external locus of control (ie, “I improved because you taught me”) but instead at least partly due to their decision (ie, “I improved because I decided to persevere longer or stretch myself a bit harder”). Using reflective practice to look back and reflect on their own learning, aims to enhance their learning by teaching them to learn from their own experiences, rather than sit around helplessly waiting for someone to give them direction or permission to learn. It also aims to restore their sense of control if they feel powerless and unmotivated towards their learning, which can be especially detrimental (especially for boys) who feel that at best, they are only doing the work because someone else decided they had to, rather than because they want the learning experience for themselves.

In addition to the strategic lesson plan formula, all TOTC tutors have access to our collection of teaching resources and online training course. They also have unlimited advice provided by Principal Tutor Pamela Buchan (Qualified Teacher K-12) as well as company founder Stuart Adams (Qualified Teacher, Careers Advisor & Psychotherapist).

This is very much a personal choice. If you’d like your TOTC tutor to provide extra homework, they will. If however your child is having enough difficulty just keeping up with the homework they have from school, then the tutor does not have to provide them extra. If they’re struggling to keep up with the homework they have from school however, rather than just doing the homework with the student, it would be ideal to teach them some time management skills to become better organised, less likely to procrastinate, less dependent on waiting for prompts to do their homework, and more confident being able to plan head and pace their progress.

Our payment system was designed to be the most simple and easy among any other home tutoring option. Each Sunday afternoon you'll be emailed an invoice for that weeks lesson(s). We then bill your credit card the following day on Monday morning, and email you a receipt of payment. The lessons are billed in arrears so there's no up front payment. If the lesson is not attended, you will not be charged. That way you can start, stop or change any time that suits you, without being locked into any contracts.

We need to collect your credit card details to hold the first lesson, however if you decide not to continue after the first lesson, we'll pay the tutors wage from our own pocket and not charge you any thing. That way, you have no risk to take by giving the first lesson a go so that your child can meet our TOTC tutor in person to make it easier for you to decide if you'd like to continue.

Top of the Class was founded by Stuart Adams, a Qualified Teacher, Careers Advisor and Psychotherapist. Along with his partner and HR Manager Melody Blackburn, the two combined their intuitive people skills to hand pick the most dedicated home tutors to come and work behind the scenes at the companies Head Quarters (HQ). The most influential tutor and all-round remarkable woman to capture their attention, was Pamela Buchan - a Qualified School Teacher (K-12) who has since been appointed the companies Principal Tutor. Pamela's remarkable resiliance and dedication 'rubbed off' to create the passionate energy the companies culture maintains to this day. Pamela leads a team of admin support staff who are all TOTC tutors themselves, including Anne, Maheshi, Maurya, Samudra & Megan. So no matter who you speak to when you call us here at HQ, you'll be well taken care of with professional expertise and assurrance that you've called the right place. If you manage to have a better experience with a home tutoring company anywhere else - please let us know. So far no one has, because we strive to ensure the best home tutoring experience, second to none.