You can’t learn to your full potential if you aren’t mentally and physically healthy, according to one of our Kumon students.

Joshua Nguyen, 14 years old and a student at Kumon Salisbury Education Centre, is currently studying Kumon Maths material five years ahead of his school grade level. He is in Year 10 at The Heights School. And while he worked hard to achieve this result, he took steps to balance life and education to ensure he remained healthy.

“It’s important that you realise your physical and your mental health are more important than your education,” Joshua says.

As school summer holidays begin, Joshua advises his fellow students to take the time to focus on what interests them.

“The holidays are a great time to be able to go out and to experience a lot of different things that you wouldn’t really be able to experience during school time,” Joshua says. “Everyone can find something for themselves, as long as you find something you enjoy but at the same time you’re helping push your personal limits.”

Joshua says he is considering pursuing a career in psychology or counselling after school.

Kumon encourages students to allocate a small amount of time each day to their Kumon worksheets. By completing a small amount of learning each day, students are able to maintain motivation levels while making progress towards their learning goals. Furthermore, many Kumon students have themselves identified that the school holidays can be a time to consolidate their learning, due because of the flexibility of the programme and reduced demands on their time.

A recent study from John Hopkins University of students in Baltimore found that about two-thirds of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income ninth graders could be explained by summer learning loss during the elementary school years.

Kumon is an individualised and complementary maths and English programme designed to help children develop the ability to self-learn. Around 53,600 students are currently enrolled in 330 Kumon Centres across Australia and New Zealand.

Kumon is the world’s largest after-school education provider with 4.3 million enrolments across 50 countries.