The perfect after school exam preparation courses for your child

How exam preparation courses benefit your child

In our competitive society, many children participate in extracurricular activities after school to gain an edge. These activities are well known to lay the foundation for the development of intelligence, personality, social behaviour and learning capacity, and as vital elements to ensure your child does not fall behind in their development.

Exam preparation classes are no exception and there is much research that points to their ability to increase a student's examination confidence, provide them with valuable study techniques and result in higher scores on standardized tests1. It should be noted that research studies vary in the quantification of the benefits of exam preparation on college admission tests2. For example, benefits have been found to range from 30 to 100 points or more on the SAT3, in part due to the differing quality of exam preparation courses. However, it has been consistently established that the positive impact of exam coaching on the SATs is larger in the area of maths than in the critical reading section. Moreover, there is convincing research that suggests that higher levels of cognitive test anxiety are associated with significantly lower test scores on examinations so it would seem that reducing study anxiety via exam preparation classes may itself have a positive impact on test performance4.

While some Western countries have moved away from focusing on examinations as a way to measure the achievements of children, children in Asia still face immense pressure to perform well on exams. Influenced by Confucianism, children across Asia are encouraged to study at the expense of other activities, due to a belief that diligence and education facilitate upward social mobility. And nothing causes more stress for both parents and children than preparation for exams and assessments. Exam preparation courses are one way to help alleviate the pressure children face as it arms them with a sense of readiness, helps develop memory skills and devices, and review exam content in a way that can supplement formal school curricula.

Academic literature supports the notion that educational level, quality, prestige and degree type are the major predictors of financial and executive career success5. Attending a college of high quality and prestige also transmits socioeconomic status6. Given this fact, it is understandable that exam preparation courses command such high wallet share of private education spending. For example, in South Korea, government spending on education is around 3.5% of GDP which is average for OECD countries, while household spending on private tutoring for primary and secondary school students amounts to around 2.6% of GDP driven by a desire to pass admissions tests to elite universities7.

Given the importance of differentiating high quality exam preparation courses, Bizibuz is proud to work with top tier education centres in order to meet the demand for exam preparation courses for the local school system, under international school curricula and for international college admissions.

Bizibuz KnowYourChild™: Find out about your child’s proficiency relative to others

Our unique KnowYourChild™ tools are a series of benchmarking tools for children of different ages designed to track a child’s development, highlight necessary intervention and hidden talents, guide on activities to optimize performance and monitor the efficacy of activities over time.

These tools are developed using advanced algorithms and input from top universities including the Education University of Hong Kong and Polytechnic University and senior teachers from leading institutions including the Chinese International School and Canadian International School.

Our Primary KnowYourChild™ tool is the first of its kind to gauge the creative proclivities of a child aged 6-12 years of age in order to map proficiency across a broad spectrum of 8-9 subjects spanning academic and non-academic areas. After the child has completed the tool, parents receive a comprehensive report of their child including smart activity recommendations targeted to address either weaker areas (performance more than one standard deviation below the mean) and to foster talents (performance more than two standard deviations above the mean). If the child has previously used the KnowYourChild™ tool, the report also includes development trend analysis in order to reflect on the impact of activities previously undertaken.

Visit our KnowYourChild™ tools in order to further explore your child’s developmental progress and activity recommendations that optimize your child’s future exam success.