Frequently asked questions

Yes! If you are joining mid-topic or miss a lesson, we will always catch you up through resources such as detailed lesson videos and tutorials bookable with your teacher.

No, our 2-lesson trial applies only to weekly courses. Holiday courses are intensive and have limited spots, so we don’t offer trials for them.

Cognito Tuition offers a 2-lesson, obligation-free trial for weekly courses. If you choose to continue, the trial lessons will be included in your invoice. If you decide that Cognito is not for you, walk away without paying anything.

No, there’s no lock-in period for our weekly courses. If you choose to drop a subject at school and need to discontinue the course at Cognito, your invoice will be adjusted on a pro rata basis.

No problem! We have multiple classes running the same lesson throughout the week, so you can do a makeup at a different time. If you cannot attend a makeup lesson, we provide you the lesson booklet and all the digital resources you need to catch up, including lesson videos, and topic revision videos.

Year 11 tutoring starts from $599 for holiday programs and $800 for weekly term programs.

We offer:

• $0 enrolment fees
• Flexible split payment options
• Discounts for enrolling in multiple subjects or with siblings

For full pricing details, please visit our pricing page.

Our HSC terms are 8 weeks long whereas our preliminary terms are 7 weeks long. Being in their final, crucial year of high school, students tend to utilise our additional services such as tutorials and Slack Q&A to a much greater extent. We price our courses by approximating this utilisation rate, then averaging our expenses across the cohort. Due to the greater difficulty of the year 12 syllabus, we produce a significantly greater amount of homework questions, worksheets, webinars, videos and mock exams for our year 12 students.

Yes, Cognito offers accelerated classes for Year 11 & Year 12 HSC Chemistry, Physics and Maths (subject to availability). Our standard classes stay approximately 2–4 weeks ahead of school, but accelerated streams are 1 term. ‍All core content and lesson structure are identical.

Lessons at Cognito are 2 hours long and cover topic content, practice questions and more. Students are expected to complete and mark the homework assigned in their own time.

School-specific classes are tailored to your school’s exact teaching order and exam timetable. Since different schools cover topics and assess them in different sequences, these classes follow your school’s schedule so you’re always learning the right content at the right time.

With years of experience teaching school-specific cohorts, we understand how individual schools set and mark their exams. This means you’ll also learn school-specific strategies that help you perform better in assessments.

You can join an existing school-specific class (if available), or create a new one with friends. Custom lessons can also be added based on your needs!

‍Weekly Program:
Weekly classes follow a steady, structured pace with ongoing revision, tutorials, and end‑of‑topic exams. This is the best option for most students, especially those who benefit from regular reinforcement and consistent support throughout the term.

Holiday Program:
A 3–4 day intensive course during the school holidays where you learn a full term of content at once. It’s ideal for students who prefer to get ahead quickly and can revise independently throughout the term. Holiday courses do not include tutorials or end‑of‑topic exams, and spots are limited.

Cognito is a two minute walk from Chatswood Station, located at Level 1 / 24 Thomas St, Chatswood NSW 2067.

Yes! Alongside the weekly classes, students can schedule an in-person or online tutorial with their tutor to go through school assignments outside of class time at no additional cost. Tutorials can be used by students to go through homework questions, discuss school work, or review assignments with their tutor. When a school assessment covers particularly challenging or otherwise out-of-syllabus content, we also create specialised groups with students from the same school to provide custom-curated resource sets.

No, we firmly believe students should carefully review their own work to understand the criteria and improve their work. We provide full marking criteria and exemplar responses to help students achieve this. When students get stuck on homework, or want feedback on their work, they can reach out via Slack or schedule a tutorial with their tutor. Student's will receive professional marking by our highly qualified tutors for their end of module exams as well as our mock exams.

If you need extra support, you can ask questions anytime on our Q&A forum via Slack, or log into Cognito Online to schedule a tutorial with their tutor, access revision videos, past papers, and extra worksheets. We also run workshops and webinars which cover revision, study tips, university applications, scholarships and medicine interviews. Everything is included in our course fees, we do not charge extra for any of our additional services!

If you need support in person, see us at the front desk during office hours, or DM @Elfie on Slack, and our friendly admin team will help you.

Usually no, our weekly program classes take a break during school holidays. However, we run holiday programs for students who want to continue studying and get ahead.

📌 Year 12 students will continue classes during the final school holidays before graduation to help prepare for final assessments.

For all our school-specific classes, we follow each school's unique order of progression of topics to match school assessments. If new students are able to form a new school specific class with their friends, we can run the lessons at their order and pace.

Fixed breaks are scheduled breaks that cannot be changed. This is when all Cognito students and staff go on holiday.

Flexible breaks however can be taken at any point during the term, based on the students needs and preferences. For example, a class may choose to take a flexible break during exam week to focus on their schoolwork. Each Cognito term typically contains 1 flexible break.

If none of the schedules above suit you, please get in touch, and we’ll do our best to make it work.

We try to stay ahead of school, our standard stream is ~4 weeks ahead whereas our accelerated stream is 1 term ahead. We also have flexible breaks so students don't miss out on class when they have their exam blocks. As such, our terms do not align with school terms.

Because an SMS authentication code is required to access Cognito Online, you may experience difficulty accessing the platform internationally.

If you wish to access Cognito Online while overseas, please reach out to our support team to temporarily have your access method switched to an international number, or to a multi-factor authenticator like Google Authenticator, so that you can continue to enjoy access to Cognito Online. Note that this must be done before you lose access to your Australian SMS.

You can access Cognito Online at: online.cognitotuition.com‍

Sign in with your email and the temporary password from your onboarding email, and enjoy unrestricted access to our feature-rich, custom-developed learning platform.

Our friendly support team is accessible via Slack, and can help troubleshoot any technical issues you may be having. Simply reach out and we will be more than happy to help.

Cognito Online is our custom-developed student learning platform, where students can:

• Access exam analytics
• Watch revision videos for each topic
• Practice with extra worksheets, past papers and resources
• Schedule makeup lessons
• View their upcoming lesson schedule

Slack is our messaging platform for communications with tutors, classmates and the Cognito admin team. Use it to access shared resources, book free extra tutorials, ask questions in your subject’s help chat, and stay up-to-date with important announcements.

Check your onboarding email for sign in details: remember to check your spam folder if you can’t find it!

Lesson resources are automatically shared with you each time the roll for a lesson is marked, regardless of your actual attendance. That means that you’ll have access to all resources automatically before your class even finishes!