NAPLAN tutoring, without the drilling.

What is NAPLAN tutoring at Argo?

Writing lessons. One hour, weekly, at a fixed time, one to one and online, taught by Callum Hay— the practice’s only teacher, so there is no roster and no matching process. The hour is built around the student’s own writing: a piece they have drafted, something written in the lesson itself and read back immediately, or a piece written to time when that is the thing worth practising. Lessons are $120 an hour for the standard online lesson, and the discovery call and trial lesson are both free.

Writing, and not the other four domains. NAPLAN also tests reading, spelling, grammar and punctuation and numeracy, and this practice does not teach numeracy at all. Spelling, grammar and sentence control are taught, but inside the writing rather than as separate drills — which is also how the marking criteria treat them.

What it is not

It is not test preparation, and it would be dishonest to sell it as such after what the rest of this site says about NAPLAN. There are no practice papers worked through week after week, no structure to memorise, no list of persuasive devices to deploy on cue. Coaching a formula can lift a band score while building habits — template openings, techniques used without judgment — that cost real marks later, in scholarship and selective entry assessments and eventually VCE.

Nor is it a course, a program with a fixed number of weeks, or a guarantee of a level. Nothing is admitted, awarded or decided on a NAPLAN result, and a practice that promised a band would be promising something it cannot deliver and should not be asked to.

Is this NAPLAN coaching?

No, and the distinction is worth having in plain words because the two get sold under the same heading. Coaching means preparing a student for a particular test: the format, the timing, the moves that tend to score on that paper. Teaching means building the writing, and letting the test result follow from it. This is the second thing.

The difference shows up in what happens afterwards. A coached student has a set of moves fitted to one paper. But the published criteria divide into qualities that exist only across a whole piece — audience, text structure, ideas, cohesion, paragraphing — and control a marker sees line by line: vocabulary, sentence structure, punctuation, spelling. Surface moves reach the second group. The first is where a formula has nothing to offer, because those qualities are properties of a piece of writing rather than things that can be added to one. A student taught to write has what the criteria are measuring, which is also what is still there in Year 11.

If coaching is what you want, it exists and it is not hard to find. It is a legitimate thing to buy, particularly close to a test date. It is simply not what this practice does, and it would be a poor use of $120 an hour to buy it here.

Who it is for

Students in Years 3 to 9 whose parents want the writing itself built — usually after a report that surprised them, or because the writing at home has been thin for a while and NAPLAN simply named it. The enquiry almost always comes from a parent, which is why this page is written to one.

It is worth saying plainly that the earlier this happens the better, and not for the reason a test-prep argument would give. Writing is the domain where students spread apart most as they get older, and the distance compounds because every later task assumes the control the earlier one built. Regular writing, read back closely, is worth more at Year 3 than a term of coaching at Year 9. If a test in six weeks is the reason you are here, the honest answer is that six weeks will not move a band much — and that the work is worth starting anyway, for what comes after it.

What a lesson looks like

One hour over Google Meet, at the same time each week. Most of it is spent on a piece of the student’s writing: what it is doing, where a sentence carries more than it can hold, where a paragraph is doing two jobs, what to change in the next attempt. Sometimes the piece is written in the lesson so it can be read back while the decisions are still fresh. Occasionally it is written to time, because producing a whole piece in one sitting is a distinct skill and most students have never tried it.

Work between lessons is encouraged but never compulsory; school comes first. Every session is logged with a written summary, any work set and the next steps, so you can see the trajectory without sitting in on the lesson. Billing is weekly by direct debit, only once the work is underway and you have chosen to continue — no term contracts, no exit fee, and you can pause or stop at any time.

Do you have to be in Melbourne?

No. Lessons run online over Google Meet, so families anywhere in Australia can enrol and lesson times are set to your state’s clock. NAPLAN is national, and the reading and writing craft underneath it is not state-specific. All your child needs is a laptop or tablet with a working camera and microphone, a steady connection, and a quiet place to work.

Before you book anything at all

Read the report properly first. Most of what a parent wants from a tutor in results season is an interpretation, and that is free: how to read your child’s report works through what each part of it shows, and the writing prompts give a student something real to write without anyone paying for anything, and every past paper ACARA has released is linked at the source, free — as is what free practice actually exists, and what “NAPLAN-style” means when someone sells it. A surprising result is a reason to look at the actual writing, and quite often looking is enough. And if what brought you here is a worry rather than a result — that he does not write, that the typing is the problem — those are answered separately, each against a published figure.