GREAT TALENT POOL
A leading tutoring company is offering an invaluable opportunity to elite students
Hayden McEvoy went from being a failing schoolboy to owning the Gold Coast’s largest tutoring company.
Hayden, the brother of Olympic swimmer Cameron McEvoy, started A Team Tuition five years ago, which has since partnered with Miami State High School to offer elite students scholarships.
The scholarship program was launched in January and 106 students entered the competition in the hope of winning a $5000 tutoring transformation scholarship.
Twenty students were short-listed and five made the final cut. Those students were interviewed and the panel reviewed their grades and spoke to teachers and parents.
After interviewing the final five, two students’ life stories made such an impact on the panel it was decided to offer the two Miami students this life-changing opportunity.
Skylah Rambold (Year 9) and Waide Carson (Year 10) received their awards from Cameron McEvoy.
“According to studies by Duckworth and Pyschol, it was found that grit was more determinative in predicting students’ results than IQ,” Cameron said.
“All high achieving students have shown great resilience.
“Grit is where it begins, which is why we searched for a student who is hungry to become a premier academic.
“We searched for talent and for someone willing to work and go the distance despite having experienced obstacles impacting their education.”
Both winners received a $5000 tutoring transformation scholarship from A Team Tuition.
Skylah works after school to provide support to her family and Waide has aspirations to be a pilot and hopes to follow an aeronautical engineering pathway in the navy.
Just like in sport, the Miami students will be working with tutors who will coach them to achieve their personal best.
In addition, the winners will also be personally working alongside Cameron, an Olympic swimming medallist and an OP1 equivalent student.
A Team Tuition founder, Hayden suffered from ADHD as a child and said it was only through the help of his mother, who studied a masters degree in psychiatry in order to help him, that he was able to channel his energy into swimming, and then later, his studies.
“I planned everything and stuck to a strict schedule of eating, sleeping and training and when I pulled it off and got massive results I thought ‘why don’t I do the same thing with school?’,” he said.
“I started planning every aspect of my school life, sleep, study, social life and time, even relationships with my teachers, and in one term went from Cs and Ds to straight As.
“I told my teachers ‘I’m going to get As and you’re going to help me do it’ and when I actually followed through with it, it became such a beautiful teamwork environment.”