Case Study 1: Worst Tuition Advertising Methods in Singapore

Detrimental Tuition Advertising Methods: An Introduction

What I’m about to say may get me into trouble. Or it may turn out to be a blessing! However, in all likelihood, probably no one would really care. Here we go!

One of the interesting, ongoing conversations in Singapore as of filming / writing this in 2025, is related to tuition advertising methods. Singapore’s tuition industry is worth 1.8bn as of 2023.

Needless to say, relative to the size of Singapore’s economy, it may not be the biggest, unlike, say, finance (14.3% of nominal 2024 GDP), manufacturing (17.3% of the same year and parameters) or wholesale trade (20.3% of the same parameters). However, in an economy with a real GDP of ~$561bn USD in 2024, the value of the tuition industry is substantial enough to warrant attention and possibly scrutiny.

Learn More: https://www.singstat.gov.sg/find-data/search-by-theme/economy/national-accounts/latest-data

Its presence in the economy notwithstanding, the main thing up for discussion should actually be the implications of this industry on Singaporean society. However, since an analysis of the industry as a whole is too much to cover in one sitting, we will focus on the salient discussion, which is tuition advertising. 

So what’s the fuss about? 

Context: What is the problem with tuition advertising?

Now,  just a disclaimer. I AM a tutor myself. I run my own tuition centre, and it’s a for-profit business. I decided to make this video to achieve a couple of things: most importantly, this video is to help you analyse this issue so you can use it in your General Paper or English essays. The other thing is that hopefully, it also helps shed light on tuition advertising methods and to give a little bit more context… for what it’s worth.

But since I’m a tutor running his own business, I’d urge you to take everything I say with a grain of salt. After all, for transparency, creating this video isn’t just an expression of my arguments and analyses, but it also – full disclosure – is meant to get views and create content to market my business. So yeah, there are some self-interests involved. That said, this is also a great exercise for h2 history students; check your provenance! Is this source reliable? Well, that’s up to you to judge for yourself.

Okay, here we go.

Investigating case studies: A recap, before we look at tuition advertising

Before we delve into this case study, as with all case studies, we want to have preliminary questions to ask ourselves. You may expect the same questions to be asked over and over again as we cover more case studies.

• What happened? This is where we clarify the facts of the case study. We will investigate what’s happening, who’s involved, etc. Basic facts, in short.
• What are the impacts? This is self-explanatory, but it will build on the previous question,
• Why is it a problem? Again, we will build on the previous bit, because the impacts often are the problems themselves.
• How did this happen? This is where we investigate the causal factors or events that led to the situation on hand. 

Beginning with the first question: what happened?

For some context, the education minister Chan Chun Sing did an interview with CNA recently and very publicly and directly called out tuition centres that are employing questionable direct, targeted advertising methods on kids and parents, specifically citing an case (Jeremy Clarkson!) at a primary school earlier this year. There were people distributing flyers to Primary 1 kids, on the first day of school, imploring them to sign up for tuition. This was also brought up in a parliamentary session in early 2025 by MP Liang Eng Hwa. When the school in question caught wind of this, the principal came out and stopped the distribution process.

Minister Chan goes on to talk about a few more things aside from the flyer distribution. His main grievances, as raised in the video can be summed up as such:

1. Flyer distribution
2. Centres doing their tuition advertising using cherry-picked student results
3. Tuition advertising using student endorsements, especially paid endorsements

These, broadly speaking, are the things that warrant discussion. If you want the details of what he said, watch the CNA interview above and his thoughts on tuition advertising.

A quick aside!

Tuition Advertising: What is advertising?

Now, at this juncture, a quick side track: what is advertising?

Of course, we won’t be going into that in-depth here; but once again, we talked about structures and frameworks previously when discussing how to build examples in the A Levels. In this case, we are finding out what the basic structure of advertising is. Behold their importance! 

Anyway, we all know ads. We see them everywhere. They can manifest in different forms, and it is part of a larger framework called marketing, which we may cover another day. At its core though, it is meant to sell a product or service, so it is, in essence, content that contains persuasive messaging. So advertising is accomplished in a few very general steps:

1. Capture the attention of potential customers
2. Establish a premise and therefore a justification for your product or service
3. Explain how the product will fulfill customers’ needs
4. Have the targeted potential customers buy into the premise of your company’s product or service. 

If Apple is trying to sell you the latest iPhone ZX 31000, they would use its product specifications to create a message. The latest iteration of the iphone as of writing and filming this, for example, is the iPhone 16 series. Here’s an ad for the pro version:

Based on a quick interpretation of the ad, it sells you the product with three key points:

1. Intelligent software
2. Powerful processors for phone performance
3. Sweet, sweet camera functions.

In short, if I were to summarise it, they are saying, “content creator? Here. Overkill? Intelligence for productivity.”

Now of course we have to consider other factors like customer profiles, brand loyalty and the such, but the hope is that after viewing this ad, customers buy into this premise.

Money in the bank, offshore accounts, lobby Congress to kill tax reform. Cha-ching, you fools!

Back to tuition advertising: expounding on what happened – flyer distribution

Okay, so now that we have a VERY rudimentary understanding of advertising, let’s turn our attention to the tuition industry.

Recall that the first situation was that there were flyer distributors outside primary schools on the first day of school targeting P1 students. Now, I haven’t seen any of the centres’ tuition advertising myself, so I can’t definitively say that the following details would be there, but there will inevitably be a few messages that tuition centres typically send out in their tuition advertising. These messages would invariably be built upon the initial message, and thereafter create an overarching argument:

1. Academics in SG is tough and competitive.
2. As a result, students often fall behind.
3. Therefore, they need help. We can give you that help.
4. Our tutors churn out high A rates and are MOE-trained. (Cue all the qualifications: degree in this, masters in that, years of experience, pgde from NIE, how many percentage As; then, using these bases, they create labels like “master tutor”. Mind you, even teachers don’t call themselves that, and those with such official titles in MOE are typically teachers who teach teachers.)
5. Our lessons are fun, we have plenty of snacks and drinks, we bring our students to USS , win a gift if you sign up for a certain number of months
6. Most importantly  we get you the grades.
7. Finally, a call-to-action: sign up now! Capitalise on our early bird promotion! Etc., etc. Contact info, socials.

A little convoluted in terms of messaging, for sure, but further discussions require a deeper dive into the subject of marketing, which I absolutely have no desire nor the necessary knowledge to go into it. Marketers will do a much better job explaining it.

Now, as someone who has worked for other tuition centres and who is currently a tutor too, there are more things I’d like to add on. Aside from these flyers, there are also other ways that tuition centres use in their tuition advertising to reach out to students, depending on their age. Some methods include:

1. Free foolscap pads. These are foolscap pads customised with iconography related to the subjects or just pads emblazoned with the logos of these centres. Within the cover pages of these foolscap pads, there’d be the aforementioned advertising details I mentioned.
2. Free crash courses. These are meant to give prospective students a taste of the centres’ lessons. The crash courses would take place at the beginning of the year, probably during March holidays and June holidays, or even September holidays for students that are a year below their graduating years. So these would be p5, sec 3, or jc1 students. That in itself is fine, but the problem is once the students are hooked, the centres will give the elevator pitch in terms of why the students should sign up with them, and more importantly, they should sign up NOW, using tactics that would stoke the students’ fears. 
3. Free bubnle tea and food stuff. It happens in such a way that the centres will advertise on their socials: okay  we’re gonna head down to your school, tag 5 friends and follow our Instagram or TikTok or whatever. If we have a large enough response, we’ll be giving out FREE bubble tea! This artificially boosts organic growth. If this sounds paradoxical, yes, it is. 

Above all, really, this isn’t anything new. It’s been going on for more than a decade now. It just so happens that conversations surrounding our society’s plans to progress our education system demands a deeper look at this issue of tuition advertising in Singapore. 

So what are the impacts of this tuition advertising method?

Minister Chan has already said it, but I think it bears repeating and fleshing out.

• FOMO. The message creates anxiety, which compels parents to sign their kids up for tuition. Money in the bank for them, because anxiety or worse, fear, is a major motivator.
• Entrenchment of mindset. It’s very subtle, but such advertising compels emphasis on the results, rather than learning. This is as the message created focuses on what grades you can score, not what you can (or should!) Learn. 
• Removal of choice. This comes from the manufactured anxiety. Because parents get anxious about their kids’ academic performance, they force their kids to go for tuition even if they don’t necessarily need it. More insidiously, they force their kids to OVERLY EMPHASISE on weaker subjects without further cultivating their interest in the subjects in which they are strong. I mean, it’s typical, innit? You’d like subjects in which you have an interest and in which you’d do well. 
• Optics. The thing is that with the face to face distribution of marketing collaterals, nothing incites more FOMO than seeing someone buy into it. In accepting these marketing freebies or advertisements, an impression is made and resultantly, a sense of intrigue is created. Is it for something prestigious and exclusive? For other prospective students or parents who may not have gotten the freebies or collaterals, they may see that, and worry that they may miss out on something phenomenal. And we’re back to the first impact of FOMO. 

The end result is that students will be stuck in this never ending cycle of anxiety. Not doing well enough? Head for tuition. Tuition not helping? Go for the branded centres. Branded centres not working? I am stupid.

The natural inclination for Singaporeans is to then place the fault on the student. But is that really the ideal of education towards which we should strive as a society?

Tuition Advertising method 2 – Student Cherrypicking

For the second method, how it works is this.

Tuition centres would provide statistics on the number of students that have achieved distinction rates after experiencing their lessons. They would then take these stats and slap it onto their socials, website, or tuition advertising materials. Granted, it looks great, since it creates this veneer of excellence and legitimacy. After all, the statistics don’t lie, “facts don’t care about your feelings”.

Who wouldn’t want to sign up for a tuition service with 95% A rates?

Yet, look beneath the surface. The stats don’t include a range of years. Are the stats for this year or all the years of operation? They also often don’t include sample size. How many students did they survey? Are they students who joined up with the programme for the duration of their academic career phase? Do they include students who did not do well? Are these statistics vetted by an independent third party to ensure their veracity?

The crucial point is, the source and parameters of these stats are opaque. And because of these, they cannot be verified, and we’ll just have to take their word for it. Trust the tuition advertising process!

Let me give you my personal anecdote as an example. I had 11 JC2 H2 History students in 2024 that I saw through the A levels. They joined up between April to about September.  Of these 11, 9 got back to me with their scores. Of these 9, 3 got As, 2 got Cs, the rest got Bs. That’s about 30% As. 

Now, 30% A rate may not be great advertising material. But it gets difficult to explain plenty of contextual factors, like weak foundations, ground up rebuilding of writing techniques, building conceptual understanding, clash in instruction, etc. After all, who wants to read a detailed analysis of why I did not manage to push 100% of my students towards an A?

So what can I do? I can game the stats. If I add the As and the Bs together, it’s 7 out of 9. That’s a 77% rate of As and Bs. So I take this statistic and I market it as such in my tuition advertising.

Or, I mix these numbers with my overall track record. Thus far, I’ve been averaging these numbers for my students since I started tutoring. So I’d round it up and say, “80% As and Bs!” Come join TDE for tuition.

Apropos of this, I’d need to touch on the third method here before we discuss the collective impacts of these two methods, since they are so closely related to one another.

The third complaint raised by Minister Chan is tuition centres getting their students to endorse their products. How does that work? Typically, they’d collect a testimonial from their students and use it in their tuition advertising. 

Now, first, I just want to point out, reviews of their own are not inherently wrong; after all, tuition centres or tutors are still businesses. In fact, having reviews is critical, because it helps parents and potential students make an informed decision before they buy into the service. Such reviews or testimonials give hints on the tutor or tuition centre’s teaching methods and what they – the prospective students – stand to gain in return for the fees their parents pay.

The trouble comes, however, if the tuition centre pays their students to endorse these services. This means, once again, cherry-picking students who did well in the N, O or A Levels and have them write a glowing review of the tuition centre. Where these reviews end up is dependent on what tuition advertising materials they put out, but it can appear in YouTube ads, flyers, etc., with a picture of that student saying something like, “I went through this tuition and I got an A, therefore you should attend their lessons.” 

Minister Chan further expounds upon this by stating that some tuition centres not only cherry pick which students to showcase, but they cherry pick which students they teach. 

The idea is simple – tuition centres may reject some students on a few bases: their results are not great and it is difficult to improve their marks due to their very weak foundstions, their needs may be higher especially if they’re students who require Access Arrangements, or if they decide to look for tuition in, say, the second half of the year in their graduating year.

Now, of course, there can be deeper conversations to be had regarding AA students, especially if one is not trained to deal with such cases. Certain concerns can definitely be raised about access-friendly facilities, teaching methods and the such, and tutors may not have as robust a system nor the equipment to deal with such things, although we should definitely try for it. But for the other cases, the rejection often stems from – aside from a lack of vacancy – a desire to ensure a consistent sample size of students that they know will do well and that have been with the tuition centre for a while. Above all, this creates plausible deniability for them, so they can use that to boost the stats of their students’ results. 

But teachers can’t do this. In the public education system, they cannot choose who to teach. 

Impacts of the second and third methods of tuition advertising methods

The most obvious impact would be the almost deceptive style of advertising. The tuition centres may not necessarily be churning out these results, but they advertise themselves as such anyway.

Invariably, the veneer of legitimacy would cause students to sign up. Granted, if the centre cannot actually produce results, they wouldn’t get students anyway, or at least, the students wouldn’t stay on for the long term. The branded centres, on the other hand, may be able to produce results. But there, we can ask further questions: do the results come from learning or a verbal diarrhoea and regurgitation of model essays or answers? Does any learning even take place? 

There is an inherent conflict of interests. In paying for the reviews, the ex students that endorse the service have no choice but to say something positive about the tuition centre. When I ask my students for reviews, it’s entirely voluntary and they may or may not give it, but i suspect even then they’d already feel obligated to say something nice. If there are financial incentives, I imagine it’ll be even worse.

That brings me to the next thing, which in my opinion is the biggest yet the most subtle problem. In getting students to advertise for them or by cherry-picking the statistics, this in turn creates the optics that tuition > teachers in schools. We often forget: tutors tute. Teachers teach. From the ground up. 

So, unless the student is a private candidate with no prior experience in an MOE school whatsoever (which is highly unlikely in secondary school but still quite possible for ex-poly students taking the A Levels), teachers in schools have to do the painstaking work of setting the context for learning and introducing complex concepts. Tutors pick up on this prior knowledge – for which they do not NEED to instill, since the student already learned it in school – and claim the credit for the student’s success. 

The trouble is that, as Minister Chan has said, this situation of tutors claiming full credit for their students’ accomplishments encourages a bad impression of the teachers. Let me expound on this a little more. This is particularly insidious, because any tutor with a lick of logic would not boldly claim in their tuition advertising that they are better than MOE teachers. Yet this situation creates that view implicitly, and it further suggests that the school as an institution is lacking, and ipso facto tuition is necessary – which is definitely not the case.

Don’t get me wrong, tuition can certainly help. I did well for my science subjects in my secondary school days because I had help from my tutor. While my teachers were great, I distinctly remember that my chemistry teacher back then was my vice principal. She was a kick ass teacher, but it was difficult to get consult times with her cause, well, she was the goddamned vice principal! So I consulted my tutor and had help there, but here’s the critical thing: she didn’t and wouldn’t claim full credit.

I’m also in no way suggesting that all tutors do this. Some tutors do it to help, albeit for a fair price. Some just want to teach outside the confines of the ministry. Nor am I saying that all teachers are good; some do it purely for the iron rice bowl, some are more concerned with career advancement, and some just can’t teach. Objectively, there will always be people who may not be the best at what they do, and I’d put myself in that category. Teaching is difficult!

But if such things continue to occur, then this feeds further into the entrenched mindset that tuition is absolutely necessary for academic success in Singapore. Worst of all, I have even personally interacted with tutors who believe their own hype. I have heard these words verbatim: “Oh, that guy? I have more students than him.” “Oh, don’t believe me? Go ask your teachers for their A rates and compare with mine. We see who has higher A rates.”

Not only that, it also places undue pressure on teachers. Parents would have higher expectations of teachers and start to demand a lot more from them. But teachers also have plenty of other things to attend to, like CCAs administration, school committee work, admin duties, parent relations, event planning, and the such. And i haven’t even mentioned teaching and learning yet. But the most visible thing that we all focus on would be the results! Such issues are prevalent in tuition advertising.

We shouldn’t want that. 

General impacts of tuition advertising methods and why this is a problem

In answering the question of why this is a problem, we need to look at the more general societal impacts of this phenomenon of tuition advertising in Singapore. 

1. Mental health. Students get more anxious, competitiveness in academics deepens further, students get yet more anxious, and they begin to see academic success as the ONLY important thing in life. They neglect real-world experience for the books or worse, they neglect the development of their social skills. All that’s important in life becomes their studies. Notice we don’t use the word “education”.

2. Loss of purpose. This entrenches the view that education is but a means to an end, rather than what its fundamental purpose is and should be – gaining knowledge and learning. Due to this view of education, students lose interest in absolutely everything, and seek ways to study and study and study. Studying becomes everything, learning loses all its importance. The point of it then is just to get a degree so we can do a job that does not fulfill us but is good enough to pay the bills.

Even then, there are practical concerns here, but it would be too much to cover here. Suffice to say, cultivation of a habit of learning is absolutely critical in the world today as companies demand more of their workers and continue paying the same amount, but more on that next time.

3. Incentivisation of sleazy tactics. That being said, no matter what, these methods do bring the results… for the businesses. Students and parents alike get attracted to the freebies and sign up for their services. Now, as a tutor myself, you may say that that’s just sour grapes. Yeah, sure, I have a choice to do this too, and I could if I want to. But I refuse to, since I want my marketing to actually mean something. Yet since these tactics brought the centres results in the past, they’d be incentivised to continue these methods now to attract students to deal with the inevitable student churn. And then the whole thing goes on and on again. 

Tuition Advertising: How did this happen?

Of course, assuming you are coming in with a blank slate, you can begin by asking a simple question like, “Why do tuition centres do this? Why do they do their tuition advertising this way?” Well…

Cha-ching you blinky chumps!

The most obvious answer is money. There is no denying that tutoring – if done right and with expanded operations – can be incredibly lucrative. I mean, the industry is worth $1.8bn. So as it gets more commodified, the advertising messaging becomes increasingly refined with the primary purpose of capturing as many students as they could over time. It’s no longer about learning, but about getting you your results. 

However, simply blaming the tuition industry for such advertising practices is too simplistic. Let’s delve a little bit deeper.

Economy in Singapore

Let’s begin with a simple question; why do the ad strategies of compelling anxiety work so well? The first thing we can consider is the economy. So, obviously, Singapore has developed over the years. With such development, there will inevitably be inflation of prices. According to the EDB themselves, the average monthly costs of living are $1,391 to $4,076 USD. In SGD terms, that’s $1.8k to about $5.4k. A few caveats, these numbers were crunched specifically for expats, and it doesn’t account for social services, government subsidies, etc., for locals. These prices also include housing rental, which most Singaporeans don’t actually need to pay for.

For locals, there are measures implemented by the government to help. Just to name a few: increased subsidies, especially in the aftermath of Budget 2025, can help defray childcare costs. BTO flats are affordable if you pool your resources together with your fiance and use your CPF to pay for it. Public education is highly subsidised, and so are higher levels of education.

Furthermore, you can certainly live way below your means. For the young, you can continue living with your parents even after you embark on your careers; in fact, you are encouraged to. Take public transportation. Eat at hawker centres.

Learn More: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/median-monthly-household-income-real-after-inflation-household-singstat-4934851

I would say that sounds reasonable and workable, provided if you have these few things:

1. A university degree so that you can get
2. A white-collared job at an MNC or SME that pays competitive salaries with CPF contributions
3. A fiance, to BTO with; good luck if you are on the LGBTQ spectrum, as marriage is defined as a bond between strictly a man and a woman under our constitution
4. And, last but not least, you have a strong family unit and a great relationship with your parents.

I can go way deeper into this, but let’s leave it for another day. The point is, based on the above factors, things have to line up nicely for you. Which they often don’t. To hedge against all these costs, you would have to make sure that you get a well-paying job. It is then natural human inclination to aim for one of the top-paying jobs. Of course, the top-paying jobs depend on the economic context and trends, but some occupations consistently offer competitive wages which, according to MOM, are PMET jobs. Or as they are colloquially known… Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers.

So with this context in mind, is there any surprise then that our studies compel us to focus on the achievement of results to get into institutions of higher learning to pursue those degrees? Because, let’s face it, among the three occupations I just listed, the former two require pretty much straight As.

Not only that, if you don’t manage to get into local unis, be prepared to shell out a… ah, certain amount of money to pursue further studies in private universities or further studies overseas.How much money? Well, a simple metric to use is uh, a shit ton.

Who can get us our straight As to ensure we get into these IHLs with a fraction of the cost of private or overseas universities? Tuition.

Consequently, the ads beat the drums of “get good results, secure your future, sign up now, get ahead of the rest!”

Culture in Singapore

Now now, I’m not blaming parents or students for buying into the advertising practices. Certainly, we can all be more discerning consumers, but even if you make certain choices, no one is faulting you, unless, I don’t know, you buy drugs or something. Stay off the drugs and vape!

That said, we must also consider the reasons why we feel compelled to make certain choices. This stems from our relationship with education, which in itself can be – broadly speaking – due to the Singaporean culture. For that, we have to wind the clocks back a little bit. 

See, to understand this, we need a brief recap of Singapore’s 20th century history. After the separation from Malaysia, we were deprived of access to the resources in the hinterland, so we were left with… well, zero natural resources. Add to that an undeveloped economy, low education rates, and a lack of industry.

That’s not all. If we go back further, we faced the threat of cultural divides with a spate of racial riots in the 1950s and 1960s, even after independence. We faced a communist threat from the Malayan Communist Party. We had a conflict with Indonesia during Konfrontasi. Japan conquered us for 3 years because we did not have an army, and the Brits abandoned us. They proceeded to carry out a pogrom of the people. 

Given these historical events, our leaders were determined to make it work after separation. And thus we pursued staunch pragmatism. Government policies were not designed according to ideological lines, but according to what worked within the context of what we had. We pursued bilingualism and subsequently ethnic integration policy, the GRC system, etc., partly to integrate the population and reduce the likelihood of ethnic conflict. We opened up our economy, attracted foreign investments and built industries to tackle our lack of resources.

But beneath all these is the undercurrent of practicality. We pursued and continue to pursue practical policies that are best suited to our society. Over the course of 60 years, that would have inevitable influences on the psyche of the people. Pragmatism becomes inherent in us. 

In terms of what all these had to do with education and tuition, we developed our industries and we pushed our students to the appropriate levels. This became imperative as our industries developed further and we shifted to value-added manufacturing and eventually, a technology- and knowledge-based economy. To qualify for such jobs, we need higher levels of education. Add in the economic factor that we just talked about, such education levels become absolutely critical. So, at the expense of searching for the joy of learning, we sacrifice this joy at the altar of practicality and pursue things that secure a better economic future. 

And that’s what, I believe, is the core reason why tuition ads work so well. Capitalising on our anxieties work precisely because of our anxieties about a potential individual future where we may be forced to take less pragmatic paths. Or worse, the difficult path. 

Conclusion

If you’ve made it to the end, well done you!

Now, you can call me out all you want. I’ve attempted such things before, albeit without much success. Who knows? If I had succeeded, i may have just continued such methods too. But i guess we’ll never know; maybe my initial failures have given me the temerity to try a different path. And the good thing is, from my very limited sample size snd brief conversations with my students and ex students, such tactics are wearing out their welcome. Maybe, as a society, we can search for that better path together, especially if we have an East Coast plan.

But at the end of the day, of course, if you’re still watching, I suppose your main question is this: how do I apply this to my essays or AQs? Well, full transparency again, I can’t really go into details without disclosing EVERYTHING i have to offer. (Still have to make a living, you know) but if you’re interested, we can discuss this in our lessons! TDE offers lessons for GP, H2 History and EL for O levels. I strive to offer consumer friendly lessons that are focused on you learning concepts well and of course, applying them in exams. After all, if you can’t apply on your own, it’ll be futile. But we’re much more focused on the former and the process of finding answers (with the given answers, of course) rather than acting as a magic bullet. So if you’re interested, contact us for a free trial lesson!

Until then, I’ll see you for our next case study.