Our Founder’s Story – Rupa Harji
Every story has small beginnings, and mine is no different. I decided to change careers and went from working in various financial institutions to education. This change came from working as a volunteer in a local school during my lunch breaks while working at Citibank. I was allocated one particular boy who could not read properly. Twice a week, for 8 weeks, I would sit and read with him.
I enrolled for my PGCE in September 2004 and started tutoring alongside. Very quickly, I could see what a difference I was making. That was it! I caught the bug!
For 2 years, I worked for a local tuition company, but that same uneasy feeling of it not being right became stronger and stronger. I took the plunge and set up my own tuition service. The first year of classes were held at Ilford County High School, where we hired a classroom.
We have gone from strength to strength from there and are now setting up a company to help other potential tutors by offering a franchise following our tried and tested materials and methods.
Timeline
The Company
Redbridge Tuition started officially in 2007 as most tuition companies do; by hiring out a classroom every Saturday morning at Ilford County High School. We taught how most tutors teach – by using the usual books. That was fine for the first couple of years, but more and more frustration grew due to the differences between the teaching methods that we used and those of the different schools that the children attended. By 2012, we were running classes in 5 different locations (2 in Bexley and 3 in Redbridge); each one a hired classroom, so the frustration was now five-fold.
In 2013, we decided that we needed a permanent base and by 2014 opened our first centre in Seven Kings, Ilford. This proved to be successful and better than the impermanence of hiring classrooms.
In 2019, we opened our second permanent centre on High Road, Loughton, to satisfy the demand of students travelling distances to come to us.
We therefore now have a centre in South East Redbridge and on in South West Essex.
We have gone from strength to strength with previous students who have returned and asked us to provide GCSE and A-Level classes, as they liked our teaching methods and working ethos.
Our materials/teaching methods
In 2009, we were still using the standard books available for the 11 plus but were finding that a lot of the materials did not suit our teaching style and ethos.
The teaching was fragmented and not achieving the sort of results we knew we should be able to achieve.
So we started developing our own materials for all of the 11 plus topics and set out a teaching syllabus, much in the way that schools do. However, the syllabus was based on the 11 plus, which is what we were mostly teaching at the time.
The results improved dramatically as we now had cohesion between our teaching methods, our ethos and our values.
Now, we use resources created in house and the structure of our materials and classes makes the learning fun for the children and enjoyable for the tutors.
We are now also in the process of creating our own KS3 and GCSE resources. These resources are created by the tutors who actually teach the children meaning they are subject specialists and know exactly what level to pitch at.
Our tutors are all specialists in their field who enjoy working as a collaborative with Redbridge Tuition. Together we have over 60 years of teaching under our belt.
Our Franchise
We are happy to announce that we have also launched a nationwide franchise!
As we have achieved great success with our centres in Seven Kings and Loughton, we have realised that we had started something special. Our students enjoy their classes and achieve amazing results, so we want this idea to grow.
We never want to lose focus on our centres, so we have been approaching expansion slowly, but it is our intention to change education in England for the better. There are many children, who we are eager to reach, and we believe that franchising will grant us this ability.
Redbridge Tuition is on the lookout for capable and ambitious franchisees who want to make a difference in the lives of children. If you would jump at the prospect of running a successful tuition business, please visit our franchise page for more information on the opportunity.
