A Richmond Secondary student has launched a math tutoring initiative to help others who can't afford the steep price of private lessons.
Math4Less was founded by 17-year-old Rick Siu to give students the help they need in math without the high costs of specialty programs.
"When I found out how much (money) my parents actually spent on putting me through programs like Kumon, upwards of like $10,000, just for me to learn, I felt that was really crazy," said Siu.
Siu, an IB student going into Grade 12, and a friend found many tutoring programs in the city were charging $30 to $70 per hour just for math lessons.
"We felt like that was outrageous, especially for our future, where education is very important."
Siu said he was lucky to have parents who could pay for his tutoring, but he knows that's not the case for everyone.
"This really opened my eyes as to how lucky I am, and it's a core problem I wanted to combat. We wanted to combine fundamental math learning, academic success and affordability together," he said.
"I don't feel like there's a need to put such a high price on simple math ... like addition, subtraction and multiplication."
He added many tutoring centres charge the same rate for elementary and high school math.
Math4Less is a weekly workshop at City Centre Community Centre, with each session running one to one-and-a-half hours.
The workshops cover school curriculum topics from elementary-level math to AP Calculus. They are taught one-on-one by Siu and other senior high school volunteers.
For ages nine to 13, the registration fee is $13.40 for four workshops until the end of the month or $40.20 for 12 workshops starting Sept. 14.
Youth ages 13 to 18 can get a free youth facility pass at City Centre Community Centre for free drop-in access to the math homework club every Friday until Aug. 29.
Fees are for renting the community centre rooms for the workshop.
The program now helps more than 20 local students, and workshops are expected to expand to South Arm Community Centre in the fall, according to Siu.
"Affordable education is becoming worse in my perspective. Unnecessarily high prices shouldn't be placed on a necessity."
To book tutoring workshops, families and students can register through the MyRichmond booking portal here under the homework club category.
📣 Got an opinion on this story or any others in Richmond? Send us a letter or email your thoughts or story tips to [email protected].
📲 To stay updated on Richmond news, sign up for our daily headline newsletter.
💬 Words missing in article? Your adblocker might be preventing hyperlinked text from appearing.
