Tutoring
Our tutoring is structured, academic, but unapologetically human. Students are placed into small groups based on year level, ability, and text familiarity. Lessons are anchored in tried and tested teaching models which we’ve used for students across the decades. They’re rich in discussions, and our curriculum is designed in house — the first of its kind for any tuition centre in Australia.
We don’t teach tricks or shortcuts. We treat writing as a craft and thinking as muscle. Whether it’s preparing for the HSC/IB or mastering foundational literacy, every class is a chance to deepen understanding and sharpen expression.
Our curriculum,
designed from within
Tutoring has historically followed behind the curriculum of schools. But, not anymore. Ever since 2025, Foci Education flipped that relationship on its head by being the first private tuition centre to lead with intentional design by creating our own - truly independent - curriculum.
Much like a university program, our students follow a structured and internally designed unit list; one that’s crafted not only to meet curriculum outcomes set by schools and governments, but to elevate them and prepare our students to be critical thinkers once they graduate.
We use what we call the Foci Foundations: a curated sequence of core units, disciplines, and intellectual challenges that prepare students for the demands of Senior English (Years 11–12) — and even beyond.
Why this
matters
Our unit design reflects the values which we see our students embodying — inclusivity, critical thinking, cultural literacy, and most importantly, originality. Every student, regardless of background, deserves the kind of learning that prepares them to think clearly, write powerfully, and engage deeply with the world (near and far).
Because the next generation deserves more than just worksheets. They deserve to be taught like thinkers.
Primary Schoolers
Our K–6 curriculum is designed from the ground up. From Kindergarten through to Year 6, students engage with our internally developed framework, the Foci Foundations, across all units of study. These foundations reflect what we believe shapes a strong young learner — not just literacy, but curiosity, empathy, and an early sense of the world beyond themselves.
Across the year, students encounter a shared family of themes that will underpin their studied units. These are:
Family and Friends
Worlds Around Me
Australian Values
Imaginary Worlds
While these themes provide continuity and coherence, each stage explores them through age-appropriate, carefully sequenced units. These units vary in writing volume, textual/resource complexity, and technical focus, ensuring students steadily build both confidence and capability as they progress throughout primary school.
Alongside creativity and meaning-making, our curriculum explicitly teaches the technical and mechanical elements of English and language. Each stage of their primary years focus on different skills:
Stage 1: Spelling and phonics/Grammar and punctuation
Stage 2: Reading and Writing/Parts of Speech
Stage 3: Simple, compound and complex sentences/Opinion building
Building upon their mechanical in conjunction with the thematic focuses we’ve chosen underpin the knowledge required for success in school-based assessments and future examinations later expected for high school. In this way, imagination and rigour work side by side.
Together, these units ensure that by the end of primary school, students are not only fluent readers and capable writers, but confident thinkers ready for the academic and conceptual demands of secondary English.
The Unit List (K-6)
Just like a university prospectus, our junior and senior English program comes with its own curated Unit List. Each unit builds upon the last, layering complexity, criticality, and confidence.
Year 2
Term 1: Recipe for Relationships
Term 2: Cycles and Cities
Term 3: The Rhythm of Australia
Term 4: Deep Sea to Deep Space
Year 3
Term 1: Circles of Storytelling
Term 2: Wild Australia
Term 3: Many Voices, One Country
Term 4: Myths, Magic, Machines
Year 4
Term 1: Found Families
Term 2: Environmental Stewardship
Term 3: Gold, Grit & The Fair Go
Term 4: Realms and Riddles
Year 5
Term 1: Lineage and Legacy
Term 2: Truth vs Trends
Term 3: The Great Debate
Term 4: The Other Side
Year 6
Term 1: Rites of Passage
Term 2: Global Citizens
Term 3: Issues of Identity
Term 4: The Art of the Twist
High Schoolers
Our Secondary Program is designed to guide students through the most significant academic transition of their schooling — from foundational literacy to analytical, discursive, and expressive control of language.
Across Years 7 to 10, students progress through a vertically scaffolded curriculum organised around five enduring focus areas. These “Foci Foundations” shape every unit of study, ensuring that skills are revisited, extended, and refined through increasingly complex texts, challenging in-class and take-home tasks or assessments, ideas, and modes of writing.
Discursive Writing
Creative Writing
Contemporary Australian Voices
Advertising & Journalism
Cosmopolitan Voices
By returning to these foundations each year, students build confidence in creative and discursive expression, sharpen their analytical voice, and develop the linguistic and conceptual fluency required for the demands of Stage 6 English and beyond.
The Unit List (7-10)
Year 7
Term 1: Language Fundamentals (CDPA)
Term 2: Identity and Expression
Term 3: Perspectives and Culture
Term 4: Language and Persuasion
Year 8
Term 1: Language and Contemporary Voices
Term 2: Visual Literacy – Art, Context and Meaning
Term 3: Film Study: Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite
Term 4: The Power of Media
Year 9
Term 1: Language and Cosmopolitanism
Term 2: Shakespearean Romance
Term 3: Poetry and Social Commentary
Term 4: Narrativising the Self – Asian-Australian Literature
Year 10
Term 1: Language and Journalism
Term 2: Shakespearean Tragedy
Term 3: Ways of Thinking – Post-colonialism, Feminism, Marxism
Term 4: Humans as Capital – Media, Money and the Self
Our Offerings
Team classes
For students who are from the same school and are studying the same level of English, these classes are the perfect way to grow academically as a team. This option requires a minimum of five students to enrol.
Private classes
For the more discerning students, private classes give them the opportunity to receive a completely tailored learning experience that’s unique to them. A very popular option for IB/HSC English preparation.
Group classes
With 3-10 students per class, students are able to make the most of very concentrated lessons which encourage debate, conversation, presentations, and open interpretations to the NESA English syllabus and prescriptions.
Group & Team
*all prices are in AUD and are calculated per student on a quarterly basis.
* Prices are prepaid for 10 lessons
(1 lesson per week during the school term)
* K-6 lessons last 1 hour. 7-12 lessons last 1.5 hours
As of 6/11/2025
Grade
K-2
3-6
7-10
11-12
Extension 1
Extension 2
Price
531 per term (inc. GST)
664 per term (inc. GST)
799 per term (inc. GST)
930 per term (inc. GST)
1063 per term (inc. GST)
1197 per term (inc. GST)
Private
*all prices are in AUD and are calculated per student on an annual basis.
* Prices are prepaid for 40 lessons
(1 lesson per week during the school term, 4 terms per year)
* Lessons for any student (K-12) last 1 hour
AAs of 6/11/2025
Grade
K-2
3-6
7-10
11-12
Ext 1/2
Price
2896 per year (inc. GST)
4108 per year (inc. GST)
4592 per year (inc. GST)
5316 per year (inc. GST)
6280 per year (inc. GST)
Sibling Discount
Discount only applies to students paying full tuition fees.
Discount applies to combined-total fees
Children Enrolled
1
2
3 or more
Discount
Tuition fee less 0%
Tuition fee less 10%
Tuition fee less 15%
Early Start Cover
All new Year 12 enrolments who join Foci Education during ‘Trial Exam’ or HSC period will have an extra 20% surcharge apply to their final invoice. Early Start Cover (ESC) is an additional loading that is added to the cost of your tutoring fees if you join after Term 2 (Week 10) of 12th Grade during any given year — please refer to the NSW Public School Term Dates for more information as these dates change every year. For each term after you join, you’ll pay an extra 20% on tutoring fees. ESC loading disappears after the year 12 student has graduated. It is not applied to younger siblings of the Year 12 student even if they are listed on the same invoice. .