Fake Gifted Tutor and Tuition Centre

Education in Singapore is very competitive and thus, parents are willing to send their children to tuition centres set up by talented tutors who have been through very good education, especially the gifted programmes. Let's not focus on the results that the tuition centres can produce, but rather, their credibility.

Do the founders of the tuition centres have very outstanding education history and have impressive experience? How about the tutors engaged by the tuition centres?

In http://news.asiaone.com, tutor Mr Kelvin Ong made the headline.

The Sunday Times reported that he had never attended National University of Singapore, and thus was not a double mathematics major graduate there.

The Education Ministry defused his claim that he was a pupil in the Gifted Education Programme, nor a teacher. After that, he pushed the blame to his mother for lying over his self-proclaimed education history, stating that he did not have the records from the past to verify it.

Anglo-Chinese School's (Primary) denied his another claim as a relief teacher over the school from 2002 to 2003 to handle the gifted classes. The long-serving teachers from ACS primary had also revealed that he was never a relief teacher there.

The Sunday Times revealed that Mr Ong had actually graduated from Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) with a diploma in 2000. He worked as a physiotherapist at National University Hospital (NUH) before being asked to leave in 2004 over "integrity" issues. It was the same period of time when he was working at NUH that he had claimed he had been a relief teacher in ACS primary.

The paper also reported that people who knew him said that he was always trying to make money, including through tuition. He had set up Aristocare tuition centre that charged parents up to $500 per student for a 3-hour session. He justified his unworthy high tuition fees with his claims of not only having been through the gifted programme but having taught in the programme for 10 years in ACS primary. Meanwhile, some parents have demanded refunds for the tuition fees that they have paid him.

Mr Ong had told the paper that he had closed down the tuition centre and that he would not be teaching any more.