After leaving Nha Trang I travelled to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, where I coached a group of elite year 12 students in some of the basic topic in common with year 12 extension 1 in Australia.

The students all performed well above year 12 extension 1 standard, but nevertheless I was able to demonstrate some techniques, my own developments and unique to Master Coaching, which impressed the students.

The value of this experiment shows that learning is a universal process and the fact that the Vietnamese students enjoyed the sessions and were able to take so much from each lesson was heartening. Incidentally, in Vietnam, school runs for six days per week, and the senior students travelled for an hour each way, from their school, to attend the coaching sessions.

The previous junior group in Nha Trang had attended 7 hours of school before backing up for two hours of coaching starting at 7:00. On the second night, I could not accommodate all the students who wanted to attend, and each student desperately wanted to be chosen.

The most important part of the experiment was the ease shown by the Vietnamese coach that I was training whilst doing the coaching. My techniques are easily transferrable, they work, and I believe could be incorporated into the school system in Australia. Australian school standards on OECD statistics, according to PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) results are in decline. There is far too much emphasis on accountability’ whereby teachers are drowning in paperwork rather than being able to do engage in their passion, which is to teach.

Vietnam, a third world country, with very meagre resources, is ranked 10 th out of 72 countries in mathematics while Australia is ranked 27 th . Prior to the introduction of the restrictive “outcomes based learning system’ Australia had been ranked 4 th in mathematics. It remains to see if Australia reverses this trend before it become too late.