Tutoring For Excellence

Tutors are all experienced teachers and do a great job at helping students understand class content. Very good, highly recommended

DO NOT USE Tutoring for Excellence. The tutoring was sub-standard, parent communication poor, the terms unreasonably inflexible, and the interactions unpleasant. But most of all, when we cancelled after a year and thousands of dollars in fees, they KEPT OUR MONEY under cover of “terms and conditions”. Buyer beware. We engaged them for our daughter for the 2025 school year. Across three children we’ve had hundreds of hours of tutoring with multiple providers. We know what good tutoring looks like. This was not it.

1. Poor quality tutoring Sessions were largely tutor-led monologues with minimal opportunity for engagement. In English, the tutor set weekly creative writing tasks but provided little meaningful feedback, despite our repeated request that our daughter be taught how to analyse texts using literary devices — her key weakness. In maths, there was plenty of chatting but little structured teaching, and algebra (our main concern) was never properly addressed. Our daughter ultimately told us she was not learning. That defeats the entire purpose.

2. No proper lesson feedback to parents Every other tutoring service we’ve used provides brief written feedback after each lesson — what was covered, gaps identified, and next steps. Tutoring for Excellence refuses to make this part of the service. When we pushed, we were told they had “been in business 30 years” and were not changing. Feedback was eventually provided, but at the expense of lesson time — and it amounted to little more than copied curriculum content with no qualitative insight. For a premium hourly rate, this is unacceptable.

3. Rigid cancellation rules You must hold prepaid credit at all times and are automatically charged in 6-hour blocks. Cancellation only becomes effective once all credit is used at a minimum of one hour per week. In plain English: once they have your money, you’re taking lessons whether you want them or not. No meaningful flexibility for illness or holidays. Zero discretion.

4. Aggressive, clause-driven communication All correspondence is framed around sub-clauses of their terms. No commercial judgement. No relationship focus. Just “as per clause 2.4”. The sales process presents one impression; the operational reality is rigid and robotic.

5. The clincher — they kept unused credit At the end of a full year — having paid thousands — we decided before the new school year not to continue. Due to timing, they had auto-charged another 6 hours. We had 5 unused hours ($475) on file. We requested a refund.

They refused.

After significant pushback, they offered to retain $210 as an “administration fee” for services never delivered. After further pressure, they reduced that to $142 as a “goodwill gesture”. There was no goodwill in it. We were long-standing, reliable clients. They chose to end the relationship by keeping part of our unused money.

Retaining hundreds of dollars for services not provided is a break fee in everything but name. It may sit inside their terms, but it is not fair and not customer-centric.

If you are comfortable prepaying in blocks, being locked into rigid cancellation mechanics, receiving limited feedback, and potentially forfeiting unused credit, proceed.

If not, there are many tutoring providers who are flexible, communicative and commercially reasonable.

We strongly recommend you look elsewhere.

They don't trust their customers and traps in the fine prints – Firstly, there are a lot of fine prints you need to go through. These can be traps if you are not careful. Basically you need to commit each week and no fail. Secondly, they only trust their tutors (contractor/employees in-lieu) not their customers. They requested me to send through the proofs for the lessons taken from my end first but they wouldn't send across their proofs for the hours taken. They claimed it should be done this way in case we find other excuses/reasons to challenge their record... Can you see the distrust and arrogance here? We never claimed before and were treated this way. Thirdly, the proof provided by them is inconsistent with what my son's phone SMS conversation indicated. And they wrongly claimed the client cancelled the lesson instead of the tutor. You won't have any flexibility from your side but the tutor can have the flexibility to rearrange the time again and again. What a private tutor! You can see from my evidence provided. Finally, the penalty for you to stop, cancel or other not allowed in their fine prints is dear.