Steven Tuition Centre (Hougang) - 810 Hougang Central

Lousy Tuition, lousy teachers, all i get is read newspaper. no help at all. i quit after 3 months of waste money and waste time. boo

I had a bad experience. I signed up for express Chinese lesson here in March, to find out that I was grouped with higher Chinese students, taught by the same teacher. Before the CB, my mom called in to ask for their plans. The teacher mentioned she will call us back. After, the centre closed without any notice or plans. I was lost at whether there were lessons. Only after 2 months, in May, she called back, informing that there will be ZOOM lessons. The notes sent were scanned. Their scans were crooked, unclear, and many times I couldn’t read the Chinese characters. There is NO fixed schedule. The teacher expects students to come for ZOOM lessons with only 2-3 days of notice. As a Secondary 4, I end at 6 pm every day. The lessons start at 4 pm. How was I supposed to attend the lessons? There is a lack of management. Everything is recorded on sheets of paper. There is nothing wrong, but on multiple occasions, the staff was unclear of the dates I have attended the ZOOM lessons due to their haphazard schedule, and have charged a lesson extra until I realised and let her know. I have made it extremely clear that I will not attend lessons after my Chinese O level exam during registration. The deposit was to be deducted from the last month of tuition fees. However, the staff kept rushing me to pay. Not wanting to owe them any money, and unsure of when the online lessons would end, I paid. After my exams, I stopped attending the lessons and realised that the deposit had an extra of $62. They were not going to return it, claiming, “deposit cannot be refunded” and was “stated in the form”. I was not asking for a refund for the deposit, but the extra fees that I have paid. Why then did the staff rush me to pay when it was supposed to be deducted from the deposit? Their solution was that I attend one lesson on any subject. If I attend the lesson, they won’t need to pay me back, but I will NOT benefit from a 3h lesson. Lessons are to be consistent for the teacher to understand my mistakes. This shows unprofessionalism. The teacher then lied that I said I wanted to continue with lessons even AFTER my O level Chinese exam. There is a clear lack of integrity in this centre. They lie and put words in my mouth. The teacher said I will go to JC so I will come back for their JC Chinese lessons. This is ridiculous, I have sounded out my interest to go to a JC, but NEVER mentioned I will sign up for their lesson. Why is she implying that I have already signed up for their JC lessons? When my parents came to clarify this situation, the teacher criticised and cursed that I would fail my exam, I am stupid, do not know how to count money, and my family is money-faced. Then, just brushed us away and didn’t entertain us. The staff then clarified the amounts of money, and realised that they have charged extra. “the principal told me to write down this amount” she said. This shows the lack of management, without a proper schedule and regular lessons, the amount of money charged was all inaccurate and not calculated. The teacher just mentions the amount without any transparency. Luckily I record all my lessons and time. The staff mentioned she will call back. After a week, they did not. We came down on the following Sunday. This time, the teacher was conversing with other parents, when she saw us, she suddenly became extremely nice. Playing the victim card, saying how she was not in charge of counting and managing the money when the staff said that the teacher did. After, they reluctantly returned $62 all in 10, 20, and 50 cents coins. They have already prepared it, yet didn’t want to get back to us. I am disgusted by the lack of professionalism, management, and terrible service, and lack mannerism, even though it was their fault. To ANY students/parents looking into signing up for lessons here, I urge you NOT to and strongly DO NOT recommend it. There is no system and caused much inconvenience. They were extremely rude and unprofessional.

this is by far the worst company you will ever encounter. The tuition is expensive mind u. At $300 per month. But have a look at what i got.. when i signup for my son, I paid for 2 mths of lesson. I can choose any time i want, i.e there is no fix schedule for my busy child. so i thought great, lets go! Only on the day of the tuition class that i was shocked to see 4 other children, of different level, some as young as primary 2 till secondary 1 in the same class taught by the same teacher. As I didn't think too much, i let my DS join the class since we have already paid. And so after the first lesson, I asked the teacher how is my child, the teacher told me she is from Malaysia, and of cos from her broken english I could sense so as she couldn't even construct proper sentence. (yet she is teaching English) Throughout the 1.5 hour lesson, all my Son did was assignment books and marked, explanation was given to answers that is wrong, but it was quickly explained and off with another set of worksheets from the same assignment books. So the next lesson, i realise that 2 had quit the tuition (both less than 2 mths). I asked the teacher how she is going to teach different students learning different subjects from different levels. And her answer: very simple, we will give them worksheets and explain what is wrong. i was like OMG! When I looked at lesson 2's answer, i realise that many of the open ended questions are poorly marked. very poor answer from my DS was marked correct. (my child got close to 90).. and the assignement books are very easy questions. Not exams level. Ended up, i stopped tuition in a month and decided that i would have saved more time and actual money travelling if i have forgo 1 mth of fees paid and pull my son out.

like what many of the parents had shared, i regretted sending my children to this lousy tuition center. i wished i had read about the reviews before signing up. my child was mixed with students from different levels with lousy teachers, worst, learning different subjects. when i requested to change to a weekday class, things were better as although it's not a mix class, but an empty tuition center with no students at all. except for lousy and fierce teacher.

I guess this tuition center is ok if your child is already very good in Chinese. Because the moment i send my DD, all she gets to do is to read news paper, do some compo --》 marked without explaining on how to improve compo, and than read newspaper again. I pulled out after 2 months, since is all repeating the same thing weekly without much teaching, I am forced to stay on the 2nd month as I already paid $240 deposit. That is why most of the classes only have 1 or 2 students, and as most parents leave after 2 mths with them, and $500 poorer. This is the photo i took when i first went to enquire. The place is quite dirty, The teacher said that the class only has 1 student, even thou is group tuition.

I would give 0 star if i could. This is just how I and other parents felt after attending their tuition program at Khatib Branch. The first thing that shocked me is how damaged their signboard is, yet despite many years of wear and tear, they refuse to change. This shows how much pride they have in their branding. When I stepped into their center, it feels like I was in 1970s Malaysia. The design, classroom is extremely old, with broken furniture and insects crawling around. But nonetheless, I decided to try their maths and chinese program as the timing is suitable for us. Than it comes to actual lesson. I was told that the teacher writes assignments books. But the book was last published in 2008, but yet they are still using as their curriculum. After 6 months, than I realise that my son’s maths and Chinese hasn’t improved, I looked at the book and it’s so low-standard that I believe I could write better. The questions are not related to school’s test papers, but more like basic plus and minus maths. I went to confront the teacher and she was so proud and even praise me of the standard in the assignment book. Its like repeating the same type of basic plus and minus questions 20 times, and none will help in exam as Singapore’s curriculum has evolved. What I later realise that the books used in the tuition center was published by this publication called Success Publication that cannot be found in Popular bookstore, but they seems to give the students to clear stock. Of cos, why would any parents want such low-quality teaching material that is so easy and not relevant to exams? Next is the Chinese tuition. My son was thrown with news paper articles one after the other that he can’t read, throughout all the 3 hours Chinese tuition. He would listen to the “stories” of the principle and answer some basic questions found in the passage. Again, the questions from the examination are no longer straight forward but they require students to infer the text, yet the answer to the questions can easily be found in the passage. Apart from the Oral, nothing has improved but rather my son’s score dropped. The cost for the tuition is at a premium. Yet, my son was in a class mixed with students from various levels. There are p2 to p5 in my son’s class. Even with the mix, they are only able to fit in 2 to 4 students in the class as most students only attend less than 6 months before quitting. And the center is really bad when it comes to money. I have requested to withdraw from the tuition in the first week of September and use the deposits to pay for that month. They insist that I would need to give 1 month notice before I can use the deposits to offset that month’s payment. So which means I have to pay for September’s fees in cash before I could utilised my deposit for October. This is ridiculous to say the least! I decided to stop attending lessons on that day and willing to forfeit my whatever deposit. As I believe that my son would gain more quality time than wasting his remaining time in the lousy tuition. He agrees too. but they have still constantly send me SMS despite I have made my intentions clear. With outdated assignment books, poor teaching, unprofessional teachers, expensive, unprofessional attitude when it comes to money, no pride in their business, dirty and smelly classrooms, yet with paying premium price!