Most maths tuition is about keeping up. ThinkLab is about going further.
I teach students who are already doing well at school. Their parents can see it — the child finishes the work too quickly, asks for harder questions, or is simply not being stretched. For those students, more worksheets are not the answer. What they need is a space where hard problems are the point, not the exception.
A typical ThinkLab class has six students, one problem on the board, and a lot of thinking. Sometimes a student solves it in two minutes. Sometimes we spend twenty minutes on one question, trying different approaches, hitting dead ends, and finding the way through together. Both are fine. The struggle is where the learning happens.
I do not rush through content. I do not hand out worksheets full of near-identical questions. I do not teach students to recognise a problem type and apply a formula. Those habits help on school tests, but they break down on anything unfamiliar. And unfamiliar is what real mathematics looks like.
Instead, I focus on how my students think. Can they stay with a problem when the answer is not obvious? Can they try something, see it fail, and try again? Can they explain their reasoning clearly? These are the habits that build strong mathematicians, strong competition performers, and strong thinkers.
I assign homework, but not the worksheet kind. I am not trying to get students to practise until they get everything right. I want them to spend time with a problem, think carefully, and sometimes come back to me with questions. That is a good outcome too.
I ask students to try their best on their own, without external help. A problem they struggled with and almost solved is far more valuable than one someone else solved for them. The point is the thinking, not the completed page.
ThinkLab is a registered AMT coaching clinic. My students sit KSF, Bebras, AMC, and other competitions every year. But competitions are not the goal. They are a tool. The preparation is where students grow.
I take a similar view on the Selective High School Placement Test. My Year 5 maths class is not designed around SHSPT, but it covers everything a student needs to do well on the Mathematical Reasoning section. The reasoning is a subset of what we already do.
For the Thinking Skills section, I run a dedicated Year 5 course, because thinking skills are not taught at school. Families often pair ThinkLab with trial-test courses elsewhere in the final months, and that combination works well. ThinkLab builds the reasoning. Test prep adds the exam familiarity.
I do not prepare Year 3 students for the OC test. At that age, I would rather see children learning to enjoy hard problems than preparing for an exam.
ThinkLab is a good fit if your child is in Year 3 to 9, already does well at school maths, and enjoys being challenged. It is not the right place for a child who needs help catching up, wants homework support, or is not yet ready to sit with a hard problem for more than a few minutes.
If you are not sure, that is what the assessment is for. It is a short, low-pressure meeting where I work through a few problems with your child, and together we figure out whether ThinkLab is the right environment right now.
I am currently building an online assessment tool. In the meantime, please message me on Facebook or use the enquiry form.