Selective schools and the education system with Thuy Pham

CW:Today we’re gonna be talking to Thuy Pham. Thuy has 20 years experience in the tuition industry, so she’s seen it all and heard it all. Starting as a teenager teaching local kids from her home in the western suburbs of Melbourne, Thuy has built her business called Spectrum Tuition into 15 branches around Melbourne and now looking to go global. Hello Thuy.

TP: Hello Crystal. Thank you so much for having me. Really, really happy to be here and really happy to be a sponsor of Melbourne Schools as well. It’s been amazing to see how much you’ve grown, speaking about journeys, from when I first started at about 8000 members to over 33000 members now. So huge congratulations to you.

CW: Thank you, Thuy. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for being there right from the start. Yeah, so when we started, there was only I think it was around 6000 when you started, and it wasn’t that long ago, in fact. I think that was only about a year ago. So yeah, it has grown really quickly.

So obviously I wasn’t the only one who needed somebody to talk to about schools. So speaking about journeys, I really wanted to talk to you about your journey into Spectrum because I know that it hasn’t been a short or easy route. So can you tell us about how you started tutoring students all those years ago?

TP: Yeah. So I grew up in a family of three brothers. So I’ve got three brothers. And one of my older brothers is one of those really brilliant people who would always find school very easy. You know, from a young age, he taught myself and my younger brother. We would often play games like Sail of the Century after dinner, where we would just learn about different nouns and things like that. So he always just taught us. He always just taught us growing up. And so when I reached my own VCE years, you know, he taught myself and a friend of mine, and we did quite well, and he did very, very well as well.

So he ended up studying a Bachelor of Dental Science. And what happens in migrant communities is that when you see somebody like my brother who has achieved, you know, academic success in that way, all of our family friends wanted him to teach them. So at one point he had over 30 students. He was just going to different houses and teaching all of my family friends. And then at some point, it was just too difficult for him to continue. So then my parents had an office, and we invited those students to come to the office. So I started teaching a few students, and my brother was teaching a few students, and then it just grew from there.

And just like what you were mentioning before about starting Melbourne Schools, we were just helping local kids with their homework, and we didn’t realise the demand that would come from that, from just targeting work to a student’s individual needs. That’s essentially what we did. And then we were just building programs centred around where the student’s weaknesses were and just to make sure that there was a sequence of topics. And that’s what we did. And we found that we were getting a lot of results from that.

And yeah, so then when I finished my initial degrees in commerce arts, I was at a crossroads because at that time we had over 300 students. And this was just, you know, it was a bit of a side hustle for us on the weekend. And I decided at that point that I would go back to study postgraduate education. And that’s when I really discovered why we were so popular as a service. You know, even though we were very inexperienced teenagers at the time, parents were relying on our service. And I never really understood why until I actually went into schools.

And I discovered firsthand that the experience that students are receiving at the moment is incredibly inconsistent. There were some schools where it was an absolutely incredible experience. I just remember going to this one school where my supervising teacher organized all just the school, I think was just part of their program for year five. They had a veggie patch. And as part of just their integrated learning, they were selling these vegetables in their school newsletter. So the students were learning about business, and they were learning about their math and their English. They were doing advertising through there. They were learning about they were learning about procedural texts. And it was just amazing. I was so inspired by that.

And just at the very next school, very next school, year five as well, just a few suburbs down the road, the students didn’t know their two times tables. Such a difference from one school to the next. And again, went to another school and it was just different again. And I discovered that for some schools, some schools have a consistent program, which is what that very first school was like. They had meetings in the morning. All the teachers really were on top of everything. They had team meetings. They were communicating. And then we had other schools where I would arrive, and the teacher would just be photocopying worksheets at 8 o’clock in the morning. And it was just random. It was so random.

And I just remember maths, particularly maths lessons where I would arrive to lessons to observe. And one particular lesson they would have been learning about addition. Then the following day they would be learning about capacity. And the day after that, they would be learning about subtraction. The day after that, they would be learning about goodness knows what, something completely random. And that was because in the morning the teacher was just photocopying random, random, random worksheets that had nothing to do with what was taught the previous day. Yes, the curriculum is covered, right? When you’re ticking through, you’re covering everything. But that’s not how maths should be learnt and should be taught as well. Maths is very sequential. So you need to learn building blocks in order to learn the next topic and then the next topic and the next topic.

And then, you know, I just remember there was a time where I was teaching a class. And, you know, one of the girls that I was teaching just said, “I’m not good at maths,” you know? And I feel like that’s a fairly common sentiment. You know, “I’m not good at maths.” And I just said to her, “No, let’s work through it.” We were doing division at the time. And, you know, it turned out that she didn’t have some building blocks. So, you know, we went through the building blocks of what it took for division. Like we would have manipulatives, so we’d have concrete materials, and we’d work out what division actually was. And then we’d link it to multiplication. And I’d use smaller numbers so that she could understand that concept. And so in the end, she was able to understand division, right?

So because I had a sequential, and I just remember when I left, because I was just a supervising teacher, you know, she gave me a huge hug and she said, “You taught me division.” And it was just the impact of being able to help unlock a concept like that then helps a student understand fractions, and then decimals, and percentages. Like when things aren’t taught in order, it becomes really, really difficult for a student to grasp. Anyway, I can go on. But yeah, so that was my journey in how I started and where I’m at right now.

CW: Yeah, that’s fascinating. That’s fascinating. So with that little girl, what she was missing was the foundational skills for her to move on.

TP: Yes, because maths was being taught in such an ad hoc manner, where each day it was just something completely different. She didn’t understand how all the pieces connected together.

CW: That makes sense.

TP: Yeah. She didn’t understand how even addition connected to multiplication, and then multiplication to division, and then division to then connect. So, you know, there is an assumption that for a lot of students, if they’re clever already, they can’t, you know, they have no place in a scholarship or a selective school or anything like that. But sometimes it’s actually not the students. The students are very, very bright. And I’ve seen incredible transformations. They’re incredibly bright. It’s just that they were not taught. They weren’t taught in a particular sequence, in a particular way that resonated with them.

Because in addition to the sequential learning, there’s also different ways that students learn. So students can learn in a visual way, they can learn in a kinesthetic way. So students actually need to manipulate things with their hands and move with their bodies in order to learn. Not all students are the same. So to generalise and say that students can’t or shouldn’t prepare for different opportunities that are open to them, I feel is an assumption that is a bit unfair for students who actually do have that capability and who do want more for themselves but just the environment that they just happen to be in didn’t provide that.

CW: That makes a lot of sense to me because I feel like even when you’re bright, you still need to be taught, right? And that’s what school is all about, being taught the skills to do something. So to me, I think what you’re trying to say is that tutoring is filling a gap that sometimes isn’t filled by schools. Would that be right?

TP: 100%. And that goes with everything, right? So even if you are a talented athlete, you need coaches to teach you how to… or anything, a musician. You still need a teacher.

CW: That’s 100%. And sometimes it might not necessarily be, or the biggest inspiration might not necessarily be, you know, your actual teacher. It might be somebody who’s just walked that path, right? Or someone who has… So for example, you know, just say if you are aspiring to become a professional tennis player, you know, your coach might not necessarily give you the biggest inspiration, but somebody who’s just won a medal or a cup or they’ve just won a competition. And then you ask them, you know, what steps did they take to succeed?

TP: So with our tutors, they are all top-performing university students who are currently studying courses like medicine and law and dentistry. They are incredibly inspiring to our students because our students want to stand in their shoes one day. And I just remember there was this one time when I was just sitting at the desk at one of our centers, and we spotlight one of our tutors at the end of the term, right? In our tutor spotlight in our newsletter. And we had a student who was in year nine, and we actually had to place him into year five because he was missing a whole lot of knowledge that he didn’t know that he was missing at the time. And I spotlighted a tutor in that newsletter, and he was just looking at this newsletter very thoughtfully.

So with this tutor, he was of an Indian background. He had achieved 99.85. He was studying medicine at the time. He was an ex-student of Melbourne High. He was an all-round amazing, amazing person, amazing tutor, really personable, really nice. And he was actually the tutor for that particular student. And this student was looking thoughtfully at this newsletter. And he said, “If he can do it, so can I. If he can do it, so can I.” So he found this strength and this inspiration in this person who was of the same background as him, not far in age. We live in the same area. They live in the same area. And he just thought to himself, “If he can do it, so can I.”

CW: There’s some inconsistency that you speak about with the teaching inconsistency and the homework inconsistency. Do you think is there a pattern in the particular kind of schools that have that inconsistency and the ones that do a better or worse? Like do you feel like you know is there like do private schools do better and like do you find that there is a pattern?

TP: Funnily enough, that story that I told you before about that first school having that veggie patch and in the second school with the students who didn’t know their times tables, they were both private schools. They were both private schools. And that’s what was eye opening for me because it was just about the quality of that teacher in that classroom.

CW: Yeah, I see. So there’s no, there’s no like, “Oh, I’m paying for private schools, therefore the education must be better.”

TP: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And I, I mean, I sent my daughter to a public primary school, and that primary school was absolutely amazing because of the principal, right? The principal set a particular standard. They had a consistent program in place. And honestly, I felt like it was comparable because I sent my daughter to a private primary and also a public primary school, right? She’s tried both. So I like to see from all ends to make that informed decision for myself. But yeah, I found that it was very comparable and, you know, the pricing is definitely not comparable. But I felt that the quality of her education was amazing. Very passionate teachers who already had a skeleton to follow. They already had a program to follow. And I was on school council at that particular school. And so I knew from the inside what the program was like. And I had a chat to the principals and teachers, and it was, you know, I had a chat to the principals and teachers at the first school as well. And there’s, you know, that first school was amazing too. But it’s not about public or private. It’s about the consistent learning experiences that that school can provide.

CW: How do parents find that though? Like if it’s not public or private, then what is it? So is it the leadership, do you think? Is it the principal?

TP: If they can answer questions like, “How do you teach? What’s your literacy program like? Or how do you prepare students for NAPLAN? Or is NAPLAN important in your school?” Because the thing is, it’s about the attitude that you have towards different learning programs as well, because everything’s important, right? If you start picking and choosing what’s important and what’s not important, then the students will start picking and choosing. Whereas how you show up in one way in your life is how you show up everywhere in your life. So you just have that respect for the process, learn what you can from that process. And yeah, and at the end of the day, to prepare for NAPLAN, it’s just reinforcing your knowledge of literacy and numeracy, right? There’s nothing bad about that.

CW: So with regard to selective schools, what do you think is the benefit of selective schools?

TP: Students who are told all their lives that they are doing really, really well, they’re at the top of their school. There’s nobody else that they can really look up to besides themselves or to the teacher, and everybody looks up to them. And that’s what the real benefit of a selective school is. It’s actually getting the best students from, or the top 4% of students from all around Victoria, and they also opened up to interstate and overseas as well, but the top students and they bring them all together in one school, and it really motivates students to see what’s possible to push beyond what they feel that they’re capable of. I had this one student, I’ve told you the story before, Crystal, where we did the assessment. It was a year eight student, and the exam was in June, and she joined us in February. So we did the assessment with her, and we found that she was at about a year five, year six level for maths, but her English was amazing. So she wrote amazing essays, but her maths was really what was holding her back. So she didn’t know her times tables, and she hadn’t been exposed to any algebra before. She didn’t know her fractions, or decimals, or anything like that. And so I said to her, “Okay, well, you’re doing really well with English, but your maths, it’s going to be really difficult because at the time that was the edu test structure. And the edu test structure required students to be able to test on year 10 concepts. So trigonometry, Pythagoras, being able to show exact values for answers. It was just insanely difficult for a lot of students, especially for a student who did not know her times tables.” And so I said to her, “Okay, well, you need to be at a year 10 level by the middle of the year in order to be competitive on this exam.” And she said to me, “Just tell me what I want to, just tell me what I need to do.” And I said, “Oh my gosh, like, you know, this is a lot of work. This is like a marathon. You know, this is like training for a marathon.” And I said, “Okay, well, all right. Well, what you need to do is you need to join these classes. You need to show up every single week. You need to redo any questions answered incorrectly. You know, you just need to follow the course and just make sure that you understand everything.” And she’s like, “All right, I’ll do it.” And I said, “Okay, why is it so important to you to get into McRob?” Right? Or, “Why is it so important to you to get into a school?” Because usually, I don’t know, like when you present this type of program to a student who is 13 years old or, you know, they’re a little bit hesitant, and they might be a little bit afraid of what the work could be.

CW: Yeah, understandably.

TP: They’re involved with this because, you know, like most adults would be.

CW: Yeah. And jumping five levels in six months.

TP: That’s 100% what she needed to do, essentially. I said her English is great, but it’s just her maths. And she said, “Tell me what I need to do.” It was just this determination. Yeah. And so I said to her, “Why is it so important for you to get into a selective school?” And she said to me, “Well, going to another school isn’t an option for me because I’m getting bullied at the moment, and I need to be able to go to a different school.” And clearly, she was a very, very bright, very, very bright student. And it just showed that the education system had just let her down to get to a year eight level and to not know her times tables, to not know fractions, decimals, percentages, not be exposed to algebra. She had no idea how to do any of that. And so then I said, “Okay, well, if you’re determined, that’s what you need to do.” Right?

So we booked in for some private lessons as well. So I taught her myself, and I saw that transformation and just the hearts. I’ve never seen anybody be as determined as this particular student. And then we got to a point where we were up to the practice exams. We did our mock exam. This was about a month before the exam. And, you know, her English was good, but her maths was still like only, she only got like 50% or 60% or something like that, which isn’t enough. I always say to students, you need to be at least 85%, 90% in order to be competitive on these types of tests. So she would redo every single question that she got wrong. Over and over again, she would do her research. She would really go to the ends of the earth. I’ve never seen work ethic, but I just pushed her because she wanted to be pushed. So I just took her to the limit of where she wanted to go. She really enjoyed doing it as well. She started feeling more confident at school. She started getting better grades.

And that’s the thing, a lot of people say that if you prepare for the exam, then you’re going to really struggle when you get to the selective school. That could not be further from the truth, because when you’re preparing for the exam, you’re sticking to a study schedule. You’re learning material that’s higher than what is being taught at school, right? So if you’re being prepared the right way, I mean, obviously, if you’re just doing practice exams, like what I was saying before, just being thrown different types of questions, then of course I don’t feel as though that’s a very effective way to prepare. Because anyway, life goes on beyond the selective exam. They’ve also got year 9, year 10, year 11, year 12. And it’s about just being confident overall. Yeah, so, you know, it teaches you time management, teaches you to create habits, study schedule, gives you access to an environment of students who are also very high, you know, have aspirations to be high achievers.

So yeah, so this was this particular student. So two weeks before the exam, you know, she was redoing all of these questions. And then she ended up getting into McRob. It was like just one of the best, the best experiences. She ended up getting a superior for maths, given where she was at only months ago, and a high average in numerical reasoning. And I just think, gosh, anything is possible. Anything is possible. If you can, you know, if a student, and it all depends on the individual students, right, to make that decision to want to improve. It’s all a decision, and that student had particular circumstances that she wanted to break out of.

CW: Yes. That perspective that you were talking about, that’s quite pervasive, that perspective where people think that if you prepare for the exam, if you get coached for the exam, that you will struggle once you’re in there because the environment is so widely known as very academic. How, in your experience, I mean, you’ve coached a lot of kids to get into selective school, and then obviously many of them do stay on, I imagine. Have they complained about it? Have they said it’s really difficult for me to be here because of the academic standard that I can’t keep up or? Yeah. What is their perspective, do you think?

TP: Sure. It really depends on the student and what school they came from. Because there are some schools that are incredibly nurturing, very, very nurturing, and they have a lot of support for the students. Like, you know, the primary school that the first primary school that my daughter attended. In grade prep, I’ve never seen anything like it. So what happened in grade prep was, you know, for literacy and numeracy, they would have three teachers in the class. There would be the main teacher who would teach the main topic. And then they would have a teacher to support the students who were struggling. And then they would also have another teacher who would push the students who were capable of extension. And there would be, you know, and, you know, so you would have that level of support within that school. So when you get to a selective school, the perspective that I have heard is that the teachers are very nurturing as well, but it’s more about the students and being in that sort of environment, right? Some students, you know, they prefer to not be as competitive, and that’s perfectly fine, right? There are some students who are competitive. But, you know, I did an interview with two of our tutors who were previous Spectrum students who ended up getting into a selective school and who have come back as tutors. And, you know, and I asked them that question, and they found that the environment for them was incredibly nurturing, right? Because maybe their school that they previously went to, where there wasn’t a lot of support like what I told you about, there wasn’t probably a program in place. There wasn’t a program in place. It was very ad hoc. The students had to basically fend for themselves. Yeah, then a selective school would be amazing for students like that because then there’s structure, then there’s a community, there’s an environment where the students are given the space to achieve, right? The students are finally finding their tribe. Other students who are just as passionate about learning as them, right? They’re finally finding their tribe.

And that came up in that other interview with the students. There was this one person who said that, you know, when he was at his old school, it was not a very high, not a very academic school at all. And he didn’t realise that he was behind until he joined Spectrum, and we did the assessment with him. And he was able to kind of just work through those issues similar to what happened with that student that I just mentioned before, the one that was being bullied. The McRobb student. He said that, yeah, the McRobb student. So he said that since being at a selective school, like his attitude towards learning wasn’t that great either. His parents, they encouraged him. He had about a month to prepare. And then at the time, the selective exam sort of got pushed further and further. So in the end, he had six months to prepare. But in the end, he found his best friend at Melbourne High. He was able to join all of these clubs and take advantage of all of these different experiences that he otherwise would not have the opportunity to experience at his other school.

CW: At his old school.

TP: At his old school, he’s finding that he is such a high-achieving student now, and he’s pushing himself beyond what his capabilities are. And he was just such an inspirational person when I met him at the Coburg Centre that I had to invite him to come and speak and to show that, you know, you can go from a student who was actually behind, he was behind the school to prepare for the selective exam in a very short amount of time, to really be thriving right now in the school and to take advantage of the opportunities and to really reach for the stars now. He just has these ambitions and, you know, could he have achieved that same result at his previous school? Maybe, maybe not. It’s the environment that is key. And so then, you know, in response to your question, it depends on what the previous school was.

CW: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I do believe this environment. In your experience, do you find that the students who have taken tuition to get in continue with it when they’re in selective school, or do some of them drop it after they finish the exam?

TP: Some of them do. Some of them keep going because they’ve become accustomed to a certain level of work. You know, they’ve become, they’ve built the habit of doing this work. And they actually find that after joining the regular class, they find that it’s just so easy. When they continue on with Spectrum after the selective school, they join our year 9 or year 10 classes, and they’re often top performers within those classes. So we get the students, we boost the students to perform well at their, just in, just within the regular curriculum as well through that course. But that’s essentially what you need to do, right? You just need to, students just need to be at a higher level. They need to be able to critically think at a higher level. They need to be able to problem solve at a higher level. So then when they’re actually doing the exam, and that’s the goal for us, it’s to get students who are at about a year 9, early year 10 level to do a year 8 test. So then it’s easy for them.

CW: Do you think, I see a lot of parents in primary school thinking about selective schools for the future. Do you think that for primary, would you be able to pick which students would be successful or should be trying for selective schools? Do you think there’s a particular kind of student and how well they’ll be doing?

TP: The students who perform the best, and this doesn’t just apply to selective school, are the students who can build solid habits in their routine, which is why homework is so important. Because it builds routine, and it builds habits. Because what you don’t want is when you reach year 12, to get home from school, procrastinate, be on social media, watch TV, nine o’clock rolls around, you might do a little bit of work for the assignment that’s due the following day. This is what happens. Whereas what needs to happen is when a student arrives home, they might have a quick snack, and for students who are keen, they might just tackle a little bit of homework, right? Which is why I would recommend having theme days every day. So you complete your homework, but then afterwards, for that study session, which might be an hour or half an hour or whatever it is, the rest of that time should be to build up your skills in that particular subject, right? So if it’s English, then you do a little bit of reading, or you might want to learn some new vocabulary for yourself, just in those remaining whatever, 15 minutes. But you’re building that muscle, you’re getting the reps in so that you are a lot more confident in that particular subject.

That’s the real benefit about what we do at Spectrum. It gives students a consistent routine. So we’ve got a success path that we have just built into our education model, and this is how we can get students consistent.

So to learn absolutely anything, and this is what we’ve discovered over the past 23 years, and it’s mentioned in my book A Kaleidoscope, is that the first step is to assess where the students are currently at. So to provide any sort of solution to somebody’s concern, you need to assess where they’re currently at and to see where they can improve or to see which areas we need to elevate. So when we have questions in the group like, “How can my child prepare for a selective exam?” And then somebody might just say something like, “All they need to do are practice tests.” Well, have you assessed where that student currently is at? Are they like that student that I mentioned before where they have problems with certain areas in maths that need addressing? Do they need to improve their essay writing, right? In order to write these full pieces within 20 minutes, because that’s just not how you’re taught at school. At school, you’re taken through a process of drafting and redrafting a piece of writing so that it becomes this finished product. But in a selective exam, you don’t get that luxury of drafting and having somebody look over it and giving you feedback and all the rest of it. So to just say the only thing you need to do is to look over a practice test before the selective exam without assessing where the student currently is at is doing a disservice to that student who really wants to get in and might be at a school where they’re not really getting the support that they need. You know, miss out, potentially miss out on the opportunity to have a better life for themselves in the future, right?

So that’s step one in the success path. Step two is about crafting your path. So designing your journey. So in order to achieve absolutely anything, you need to set aside the time and the resources to be able to achieve your goal. If you don’t set aside the time and you don’t have the right resources, then you’re not going to achieve or improve. So for students at Spectrum, we firstly assess the students where they’re currently at through our free assessment, which tests students across three levels. We then carve out time during that week, during their week where they can fit in Spectrum work because there will be homework every single week. And that is a consistent part of what we offer at Spectrum. We also provide students with pre-recorded video lessons in addition to the live classes so that students, if they are missing anything or they need anything clarified from class, they can always refer to the online videos so then they can reinforce that knowledge. We also provide students with extra practice sheets to reinforce a particular skill. So if a student is having issues with simplifying fractions, we have extra material for them just to practice that. And if they don’t have their pens, pencils, and so forth, then they’re not going to be able to perform that task and to improve that skill.

In terms of the time, like carving out the time, I always recommend for parents to carve out maybe 10 minutes after dinner every night to complete their Spectrum homework. That way every day they’re doing something consistently. And then at the end of the week, they’ve included, they’ve added in an extra hour of work that they otherwise would not be doing. So they’re improving their skills in that way. And then the third step is adopting a growth mindset. So when you’re starting any new skill or trying to overcome any new challenge, and that includes starting a new program like Spectrum, at some point progress may feel slow, right? You’re not always going to get that result straight away. You’re not going to go from D to A plus in one week, right? So it’s about recognizing that, okay, I’m just at a dip right now. I need to just take one tiny step. Doesn’t matter how small that step is. It could just be doing one question when you’re not feeling motivated or reading one page or learning the definition of one word or anything like that, just to move that ball forward a little bit more.

And then step four is about mastering consistency. So that’s just doing the activities during the time allocated in step two, where we’ve carved out that time, like the 10 minutes after dinner. So if we’re finding that we’re not consistent with our work, it means that there’s something wrong with the time that we’ve allocated in step two, right? So we need to now go back and try to find a different time. So for some students, I’ve had a student before who preferred to do their work at 7:30 in the morning, right? After breakfast. So that worked for her as opposed to late at night after dinner. So that’s fresher for her. So that’s how she became consistent with her work, right? And then step five is about embracing growth. So that’s redoing any questions answered incorrectly. So that’s that student that I mentioned before, the student who got into McRobb and who, you know, and that’s the thing I’ve learnt from all of the students over the 23 years that I’ve been learning, that I’ve been running Spectrum Tuition, on what leads to success, how these students became successful from very, very, you know, from having a basic knowledge to having to being masters and experts. And, you know, and some of these students are only 10, 11, 12, and they just have so much courage, so much heart, so much dedication towards their studies. And, you know, there is, there is an attitude amongst some parents who might think, you know, like, you know, let them be kids or whatever it is. But they have an interest in learning, right? And they love learning. These students love, they love the feeling of having those aha moments where they didn’t know something before or things were very foggy before. And then all of a sudden, because it was taught to them in a different way, they’re confident because, you know, research shows that, you know, when you’re confident academically or confident with, because these students are at school for 30 hours a week, like, that’s, they need to, you know, when they’re feeling confident at school, that has a knock-on to other areas of their life. They could show up differently in that life, in their day-to-day life.

CW: I feel like what you offer at Spectrum, including that, is it the success pathway, is quite different from some of the other tuition that’s out there. Because parents talk about tuition, and a lot of the time, I think they mean, you know, like Kumon, where this is what I, from what I understand, they’re just repeating worksheets, and it’s a lot about rote learning and that sort of thing. But I feel like from what you’ve told me, that Spectrum is quite different in that the concepts are taught. And there seems like there’s this extra thing about, you know, teaching study habits and that sort of thing, which I didn’t know that that was actually a part of what tuition involved.

TP: Yeah. It’s a more holistic experience. And at the end of the day, it’s about learning the concepts and helping the students feel more confident. And if that is your North Star, that’s our North Star at the end of the day, places at selective schools and scholarships, that should be the cherry on top. That should be the one to take. But not everybody is going to get into a selective school or not everybody is going to achieve a scholarship because there are very limited places. But what we can do is we can set students on a path so that it doesn’t matter what school they go to, it doesn’t matter what school they go to, they’re going to achieve great results.

CW: So that’s the discipline.

TP: That’s the discipline. And it needs to be built in as a system. It can’t be ad hoc like what I saw in some schools in my early years of teaching. You know, it was so inconsistent. And, you know, we’re really doing students a disservice when we’re not having a system and a standardised way in which to teach concepts to them. So at the end of the day, you know, year three is year three. You learn these concepts. You learn how to, you know, you’re doing early fractions in year three. You’re learning how to write paragraphs in year three. There’s a process in which to do everything in order to learn everything. You know, why are we reinventing the wheel every single year? That just boggles my mind.

You know, just speaking to a few parents who have their kids at Spectrum and who are teachers in schools. I was speaking with the year seven coordinator at a P-12 school in Melbourne, and she sent her kids to Spectrum. And I was just talking, and she was just talking to me about how, you know, how structured and consistent our program is. That, you know, whether we would be open to, you know, possibly white-labelling or having our programs in schools one day. And I said, absolutely. And so I asked her, like, how are things being done at the moment at your school? And she said, well, it’s like every teacher is just doing their own thing. She said, for me, I was teaching year seven English last year, and this year I’m teaching year 10 science. And I’m not using any of the material. And I have to create that material again from scratch. If we had a program like Spectrum, it would really help us to just do our job.

And I suppose that’s why there’s so much turnover in terms of teachers at the moment. There’s such a shortage of teachers because there’s this pressure for teachers to not only reinvent the wheel in a lot of schools, to develop the program from scratch when there’s already an existing program that is there. I mean, that just reminds me of another story that I have. One of my franchisees, she’s learning to become a teacher at the moment. And there is such a severe shortage. So her methods are in business management and maths. And she turned up to school one day, and the school said to her, “Okay, we’ve got a shortage of teachers in legal studies right now. Do you mind stepping in?” Right? “I’ve never opened up any legal studies textbook. I don’t have any background in legal studies at all.” But, you know, she’s a student teacher. So she’s like, “Sure, right? I’ll take that class.” So she said, “Okay, well, just, you know, if you can give me the material, then I can teach it, or I’ll try my best to teach it.” So this particular school, they teach through PowerPoint. And so they create these PowerPoint presentations. And so the school showed her the PowerPoint presentation that they wanted her to create. They said, “This is the material.” And so she said, “Why can’t I just use that PowerPoint presentation?” And the school just said, “Well, no, it’s better that you create your own.” So she spent five hours that night creating, reinventing the same wheel using the three or four photocopied pages that they gave her. They didn’t give her the whole textbook in order to teach a group of year 11 students legal studies when that’s not even her background. And that’s what’s happening at the moment in schools, right? Like there’s such a shortage of teachers. I mean, you know, if there was an, there’s another one of my colleagues who is teaching in a school at the moment, you know, doing CRT at the moment. And she, you know, there are students, if there’s no teacher in the year 11, year 12 levels, the students are sent home. Students are left alone to play sport in the yard. These are crucial years. But because there’s no consistent program in schools, it’s about individual teachers. And if the teacher doesn’t have the program, or if the school doesn’t have the program, then there’s no learning happening. No learning whatsoever happening. Yeah. And students are just, this is the generation of students who we just don’t have a solution for them right now.

CW: Yeah, that’s quite terrifying as a parent, like hearing you say that, because I think it’s not very clear as a parent, like this is happening. I don’t, I wouldn’t know if a teacher was standing in or if they had a background in whatever my child is learning. So yeah, to hear that that’s so inconsistent and ad hoc is actually really terrifying.

TP: It is terrifying. And that’s why when I saw what I saw during my teaching rounds, I go back to Spectrum, and I had to say to my staff, we have to rebuild the entire curriculum from scratch and make sure that all of the pieces are all linking together from one year to the next. So with that teacher that I was telling you about, for the year 7 coordinator, she said that when students join her in year 7, there’s no communication from year 6 to year 7, right? You’d think that for a P-12 school there would be a consistent experience. And maybe it is like that, right? Like that first school that I mentioned, they would have a completely amazingly consistent program from prep all the way up to year 12. But some schools, it’s just not the case. And it just is overly reliant on individuals. And individuals are inconsistent. And individuals need to, you need to rely on motivation, which comes and goes. Whereas habit and a system and a process that’s in place, so you just follow that system. And it’s not to say that people can’t put their own flavour into the lessons. Like for us, the way that we structure our classes is firstly we have our quiz, and then we correct the quiz, and we upload those results to our online portal so that parents can check. And that’s the other thing. A lot of parents just don’t have any feedback about their school. So we give students feedback or parents feedback weekly. So that if anything comes up, if we’re finding that the students are having issues with any particular area or need to even move up, then we can make those real-time decisions as opposed to waiting till the end of the semester.

It makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. So that’s the factor that we’ve been able to build. But it’s taken over two decades of a lot of being actual students and to see which students we’ve had these massive turnarounds with and what was the process around that. And it is a process. It’s our success path which we’ve built into our success. But yeah, so with our classes, we have the quizzes, and then we have our engagement activity, right? And this is where the tutors can really bring in their flavour because the engagement activity is about having a game or an activity or having some sort of discussion just to introduce that concept to the students. So then now that we’re up to the worked example, so then we’ll go through worked examples with the students after that engagement activity. We’ll go through worked examples where we are explicitly teaching that concept step-by-step to students on the board. So we’ll go through examples, and then we follow that up with what we call a “have-a-go” question, which is a question that’s very similar to the worked example, but the student needs to complete all by themselves. So in that way, the tutor can see whether that student needs extra support. After that’s been ticked off, the students, they fill out a progress chart on the board, and then they complete practice questions independently. So while the students are doing the work, the independent work, the tutor can then help those students who were struggling at that “have-a-go.”

CW: So this method of teaching, is this what’s called explicit teaching? Like teaching the concepts explicitly? It’s like the, I’ve seen it before. It’s like the, I do, is that right? I do, you do, we do, you do, something like that? Is that right?

TP: Yeah. The explicit teaching, like we’ve always done things like this. So it’s been really interesting over the years with all of the new fangled theories that have come through: open plan learning spaces, gosh, whole model word thinking, like all of these different theories that have come through. We’ve really done things very, just like this, because it works with these students, because these students, we are accountable only to parents. We’re not accountable to anybody else, right? So we’re accountable to parents. So if we can get results for students, then we continue staying in operation, right? That’s the best test on how our model works. We’ve had to tweak our model. And the only way to do that is by explicitly teaching for the students. Students won’t magically absorb the information themselves. They don’t know what they don’t know.

CW: Just before we finish up, I really wanted to touch on the selective school exam, because I think the recent results have come out. Is that right?

TP: Yes.

CW: Yeah. How did you guys go?

TP: Yeah. We’re doing really, really well at the moment. And it’s because we have adapted to the new structure. And for a lot of parents who are not aware, a couple of years ago, or last year, it moved from edutest to AESA structure. And the edutest structure is just a lot of questions that are at a very high level to complete within a very short amount of time. So as I was mentioning before, with the edutest maths exam, there would have been 60 questions at a year 10 level, up to a year 10 level. So we were even getting unit circle. Like students were coming back with feedback saying that there was a question on unit circles, which is year 11, for those who didn’t do maths up to a year 11 stage. Yeah, but trigonometry was just insane. Yeah, to now a more analytical approach. So what that means is that the maths exam, it’s not just skills-based. So with the edutest exam, yeah, you can learn up to a year 10 level by looking through a maths textbook, but with analytical, you need skills in reading comprehension and interpretation as well. Because what will happen is there will be scenarios. So just say there might be a scenario about a phone plan, choosing a phone plan. So you’ve got three different phone plans here. These are the different circumstances. These are three different characters. What phone plan would suit this person if they are traveling to France during peak hour from the 15th to the 20th of August? So what you need to do there is you need to interpret that table of what the phone plans are. You need to interpret time zones. You need to interpret just the individual character, like the time, like elapsed time. So it’s got multiple concepts at one time that you need to sift through. So it’s not just about being able to simplify a cert, right? If you don’t know what a cert is, you can learn how to do certs. But with this, you need to interpret diagrams, you need to interpret the maths as well, like sift through the maths that’s involved. So with that particular question, it’s this, this, and this. And there are three or four questions. So you need the answer to question A to be correct to be able to answer question B, C, and C.

CW: Gee, that sounds so hard. I’m so glad I’m not sitting in this test.

TP: It’s hard, but the concepts aren’t like, it’s not certs or trigonometry. That’s why it’s at a year eight level. But for students who aren’t used to this style of questioning, which doesn’t really show up a lot in school-based assessments, to be honest, not at all. They’re going to be, I mean, a lot of students will be bright and they’ll be able to answer those questions within maybe 10 minutes. But if you’ve got only a minute, a minute and a half to answer these questions, then you’re not going to finish the test. And it doesn’t matter if you answer 10 out of the 30 questions correctly at 100 percent, you’re still only going to get 33 percent.
So it’s about developing the skills to be able to recognize questions straight away, to be able to apply that technique within a split second, so that you can get through as much of that exam as possible within that given time frame, and also handling the pressure. Because at school, they may or may not do a lot of tests. So a lot of students have a lot of anxiety when it comes to tests, and especially when there are thousands of other students in that same environment as you.
Being able to manage the time, the pressure of the exam, and the students all around you. It takes practice. It’s not something that comes naturally to a lot of students.

CW: Yeah. I can imagine. Oh, that sounds really intimidating the way that you’ve explained that problem.
I’m so glad that I’m way past school.

TP: But it’s a life skill, right? Like thinking about some phone plans. In the future, students are going to have to think about phone plans.

CW: Yeah. Phone plans in another country in a different time zone.

TP: Well, the Olympics are coming up, so it’s definitely timely. But yeah.

CW: Yeah. Interesting. I feel like Spectrum really has your DNA in it. Like there are other tuition companies out there, but I feel like they’re a little bit faceless, and I don’t know where the structure comes from. I don’t know where the curriculum comes from. But with you, you’ve written the whole thing.  Yeah. So I think that’s pretty amazing.

TP: It’s all from solving a series of problems over decades, and seeing how challenging some students are having it at school, and how challenging some parents have it. Because some parents, they’ve just arrived in Australia, they don’t know. They don’t have any idea.
So to have somebody and to have a structured program, to be able to assist them through that. Because at the end of the day, for my family, when I arrived here just really, really quickly, we arrived here as refugees. We had absolutely nothing.
And it’s outlined in my book as well, just the entire journey. And the only thing that could break us out of the cycle of poverty is education. And that’s why my parents focused so much on education.
And so we came here with absolutely nothing. And for me to have the privilege of being able to help the thousands upon thousands of students who have come through Spectrum, you know, I’m so grateful that I am given this opportunity to help students, you know, get into scholarships when they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to, or to get a place at a selective school because their own school is not doing enough for them. And they have aspirations to become a doctor or a lawyer or whoever, or whatever it is, right?
Choice, at the end of the day, it’s all about having that choice, giving students choice to make decisions for themselves. But yeah, that’s why I’m so passionate because I see the stories that have come through and the problems that people have had and, you know, to be able to help them through those problems is, you know, a real privilege.

CW: Mm, that’s amazing. And where do people find you, where do parents find you if they want more information?

TP: Yeah. So I would encourage, if you haven’t already done so, to start a free online assessment. I mean, I’ve done education assessments with my own daughter before, and that’s cost, you know, hundreds of dollars, and we’ve been able to build a free tool for you just to determine where your child is at.
That first step, assess and elevate. You’re testing your child across several year levels. So I would firstly go to our website, which is spectrumtuition.com.
You just click on, I’m a new student, start your free assessment. We’ll book in a free consultation with you. And whether or not you decide to enroll at Spectrum is another point, and it’s not really the purpose of this.
It’s really just to give information, parents to be able to make that informed decision about how to move forward in the future for their child.

CW: Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time, Thuy.
I really appreciate you spending your time talking to me, and also for all your time and effort that you spend in the group as well. So I will see you back in there.

TP: Yes. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And yes, I’ll speak to you soon.

CW: Thanks for joining me on this podcast. Remember that the content that you hear on this podcast is of a general nature and should not be used to make any decisions about schools or anything else. If you want to learn more about schools in Melbourne, make sure you visit the website www.melbourneschools.com.au

You can also join thousands of other parents in our community at Melbourne Schools Discussion Group on Facebook. See you there.