Penguin Tutoring Blog

Penguin Tutoring is the leading provider of private tuition in South Africa. Our tutors are specialised, screened and trained to give your child the best possible academic support in the comfort of your own home.

Due to some of the learning difficulties being experienced under Outcomes Based Education, Basic Education minister Angie Motshekga announced yesterday that next year would see yet more changes to the national curriculum.

According to The Star newspaper, those changes are designed to improve the application of OBE, in schools throughout South Africa.

Some of the changes include:

• Giving teachers less administrative work to allow for at least 7 hours a day in the classroom
• Introducing English earlier than Grade 3
• Giving fewer subjects to learners in Grades 4-6, allowing for greater depth of understanding
• Reducing the number of projects produced by pupils during the school year and stopping matric portfolios altogether, which accounted for a percentage of the overall matric mark.

The result of these changes will mean a shift in focus back onto exams and the pressure on learners to “perform during exams or else” will inevitably return.

These changes are due to come into effect at the beginning of the 2010 school year in January.

So, if you battle with exam preparation or technique, be responsible about your education and take steps to deal with those issues, so that your matric does not fall victim to government policy changes.

One way to cope is to get a tutor early on, so that you can dedicate the necessary time to improving your exam technique and slowly building your confidence.

If you need help, don’t hesitate to contact Penguin Tutoring at any stage during the year. Once we know what your specific needs are, we can allocate the perfect tutor for you, who will provide you with the school support you need to achieve consistent academic success, regardless of the turbulence surrounding you.

Visit www.penguintutoring.co.za for more information.

It's madness out there! Make sense of it all with Penguin Tutoring!

Penguin Tutoring is the leading provider of inspirational extra lessons in South Africa. Our specialised tutors are carefully screened and trained to provide your child with the highest quality private tuition in the comfort of your own home.

We are looking for an area manager to join our dynamic team and assist in our client services and operations division for Penguin Tutoring in Johannesburg.  The position is ideally suited to a mother or recent graduate, with a background in HR, customer care, education or a person with PA experience.

The typical roles of the position would involve:

• Liaison with new and existing customers
• Personalised placement of tutors with new clients
• Management of tutor database
• Interviewing and training of new tutor recruits
• Reporting to the operations manager

The role can be performed from home, with the flexibility of manageable hours. Two days per week would involve tutor liaison from our Parktown head office. Salary will vary depending on experience, but will range from R7000 to R10000 plus cell allowance and performance bonuses.

Interested candidates are to please email their CV and a motivation to team@penguintutoring.co.za before 30 November 2009.

To see who else works in our team, have a look here.

Penguin Tutoring is the leading provider of inspirational extra lessons in South Africa. Our specialised tutors are carefully screened and trained to provide your child with the highest quality private tuition in the comfort of your own home.

• Organisation of tutors, including induction and training, scheduling of interviews, system activation and a level of management, in support of area managers
• Writing up and releasing of Electronic Newsletters
• Booking advertising campaigns at schools
• Providing telephonic support for general enquiries
• Providing franchisee support for client, tutor and system queries
• A small amount of filing - but we are virtually paperless!

Penguin Tutoring is the leading provider of inspirational extra lessons in South Africa. Our specialised tutors are carefully screened and trained to provide your child with the highest quality private tuition in the comfort of your own home.

Penguin Tutoring would like to wish every single one of South Africa’s matric candidates the very best of luck as they write their final exams! We are especially holding thumbs for all of our own matrics across the country who benefitted from the knowledge and guidance of our extra lessons. Please don’t forget to let your tutor know how the exam went when it’s over and also how your results improved when you find out how you did!

Some of our best tutors are the ones who know first hand, how important good extra lessons can be, so if you’re heading off to university next year and are thinking about getting a student job, why don’t you consider becoming a Penguin Tutor yourself? Go to www.penguintutoring.co.za/tutors/apply to fill out an application!

Good Luck Class of 2009!

Matric 2009: You're Never Alone with Penguin Tutoring!

Penguin Tutoring is the national leader in providing inspirational extra lessons in the familiar environment of your own home. Contact us now to find out how we can help your child acheive academic success!

Learners in the Winelands have been reaping the benefits of Penguin Tutoring’s exceptional home tuition!

We phoned one of our first clients to find out how their tutor was getting along. It was rewarding as always, to hear that their son’s Accounting mark had improved from 22% to 48% in less than 3 months! We can’t wait to find out how he does in the November exams!

Whether you’re in The Winelands, Durban, Pretoria, Cape Town or Pietermaritzburg, you will not get more effective extra lessons and more professional service delivery from our tutoring management team! Go to www.penguintutoring.co.za

“I am definitely going to recommend Penguin Tutoring to anyone and everyone who needs private tuition!”

It’s easy to have confidence in our tutors and in our management when we hear these kinds of comments from our clients!

Penguin Tutoring is the leading provider of private extra lessons in South Africa. From  Afrikaans to Zulu, from Maths and Science to Art, Penguin Tutoring has a skilled, specialised and trained tutor in your area, waiting for the opportunity to help your child achieve academic confidence and success. Please visit www.penguintutoring.co.za for more information.

Penguin Tutoring Cape Town personalises the placement of a screened and trained tutor, matched to your child’s needs, and provides inspirational extra lessons and tutoring for them in the comfort of your own home. Visit www.penguintutoring.co.za to find out more.

When his son was battling with Grade 9 Maths, the client approached Penguin Tutoring for help, not necessarily to get him up to an A symbol immediately, but rather to cement a strong foundation that might stop him from struggling in later years.

But in the space of only four months, his son has become an A Maths student and has shot to the top of the class!

An even greater sense of satisfaction came upon going through the June exam paper with their tutor, who found an extra 10% that the teacher had missed!

Now, our young learner is sharing his knowledge and new found passion for Maths with his class mates and is now confidently assisting the teacher to explain concepts to his classmates who are struggling to understand!

It just goes to show that not only does good tutoring improve understanding of subjects like Maths or Science, it does wonders for a child’s self confidence as well!

Visit www.penguintutoring.co.za for more information about what we can do for your child!

Penguin Tutoring is a well established tutoring company with branches all over South Africa. We provide high quality individual extra lessons in all subjects, to help our learners fulfil their academic dreams.

All of us at Penguin Tutoring were thrilled to hear President Jacob Zuma throwing his support behind the 1Goal - Education For All Campaign earlier this month, along with other political heavyweights such as United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and FIFA President Sepp Blatter.

1Goal aims at enabling governments to provide at least a primary level of education to the 75 million children worldwide who are forced to face life without access to teachers or classrooms.

The campaign was born out of an agreement in 2000 between 164 nations, which set out a number of aims called the Education For All Goals, promising to provide free quality education by 2015.

Recently though, 1Goal has been focussed on the FIFA 2010 World Cup, and has made it their prime purpose to ensure that the tournament leaves a lasting legacy of education here, across Africa and throughout the world. With the spotlight on South Africa as the first African nation ever to host the World Cup, and our country’s education system facing so many challenges, what better incentive to accelerate our progress?

“The South African government remains committed to ensuring that every child receives proper education which is one of the main priorities of the campaign…we need to see action at the world cup and beyond.” said Zuma on 6 October.

The FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, reiterated that the 2010 FIFA World Cup represents a unique opportunity to mobilise energies around the globe to provide education and thus a better future for every child on the planet.

“This campaign should become the rallying point to concrete commitments by government, investors and individuals to be true to our values of universality and to the values of football - an amazing school of life,” he said.

Penguin Tutoring has signed up to join the 1Goal campaign because we see first hand the multiple effects of quality educational support.

Many of our tutors have had to overcome significant obstacles in their academic careers, but with their hard work has come an exceptional knowledge of their specialist subjects, which means they are well placed to help others make similar strides.

A well tutored learner becomes a well educated citizen, who can then in turn, help to achieve quality EDUCATION FOR ALL!!!!

Visit www.penguintutoring.co.za to find out more. Sign up at www.join1goal.org.