2020 - Alpha One’s Year in Review
2020 was full of unforeseen changes to education and our daily lives. However here at Alpha One, we were able to adapt and develop our services to better serve our community and guide our students and parents in this confusing time. With January usually being a time for reflection, let’s take a look at how far we’ve come and celebrate our 2020 achievements!
Introduction of New Services
Around March last year, NSW was hit with COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions which forced us to close our physical centres in order to keep our students safe. In response, we launched our online classes and moved all our students into a digital classroom for a term. Although face-to-face lessons have since resumed, we have continued to offer live courses online for students who wish to study from the comfort of their own home.
The Department of Education also announced last year that the OC and Selective Tests would undergo major changes including the transition to a computer-based format and Thinking Skills replacing the General Ability section. To adjust for these changes, we have incorporated Thinking Skills into our WEMT (Writing, English/Reading, Mathematical Reasoning & Thinking Skills) courses as well as developed a Thinking Skills Online Course on the newly launched Alpha One Online School that can be watched on-demand.
The Alpha One Community
In 2020 we had over 1000 enrolments across our 2 branches. Due to increased demand for our classes, we opened a second space in Castle Hill in July and hired approximately an extra 25 dedicated tutors to join our Alpha One family.
Our online community has also grown a lot over the past year, with our Facebook page community growing 4.5 times since the beginning of 2020! We now have over 3600 members in our Selective Test Discussion Group and over 2100 members in our Opportunity Class (OC) Test Discussion Group as well - creating a forum for sharing information and a community of parents who have all been supporting each other through this confusing time. Our Facebook groups are also home to our large bank of resources which are updated weekly.
In July, we launched our WeChat page as an alternate platform for communicating with our Chinese speaking community. Our YouTube channel has also been receiving lots of love, with one of our videos reaching over 3.6 thousand views!
Student Achievements
Last year our students achieved fantastic results, with our highest Selective Test score sitting on 274. The average mark in that cohort was approximately 220 and 81% received an offer or were on the waitlist for a Selective School.
For OC, our top mark so far is 257.61. We are still in the process of receiving our students’ results.
Our junior high school students also achieved fantastic results! Two of our students from James Ruse Agricultural High School were awarded Dux of Year 7 and first in Year 7 English.
These are some awesome results and we would like to congratulate all our students on their academic success! We have watched everyone grow and undergo significant levels of improvement over the course of their studies and we couldn’t be more proud.
Goals for 2021
Alpha One is starting 2021 with a big announcement. As many may already know, our North Parramatta campus is moving to a new location - the new centre is only a 2 minute drive from the old location but will provide a better learning facility for all our students. With more classrooms, we will finally be able to take more students off our long wait-list and into our highly demanded courses. We also look forward to providing even more services and features in this new space for the Alpha One community to enjoy!
As per our values, we will strive to become better teachers and mentors for our students as well as continuously improve the services we provide. In response to the OC test becoming digital later this year, we are introducing computer-based testing to our trial test students so they can adapt to the new testing format. For our first cohort of year 8 students, we have also opened year 8 Mathematics and English classes.
2021 is going to be a big year for all of us and we can't wait to see what it will bring us. We are looking forward to becoming our best self and hope that you can join us on this learning journey.
Last edited 30th January 2021
