About VIVA
Origin and method.
A small, tutor-led practice — built to translate the assessment culture of Singapore's private universities for the students living inside it.
Origin
Founded by Leonard Chow, a Kaplan-UCD First-Class Honours graduate.
VIVA EDUCATION was founded in Singapore by Leonard Chow after he graduated with First-Class Honours from the Kaplan-UCD Bachelor of Business Studies programme. During his own years as an international student in Singapore's private-university system, he watched a pattern repeat itself: bright students from Chinese-medium high schools arriving in Singapore, enrolling in a UK or Australian degree delivered through a local Private Education Institution, and then quietly losing marks not because they did not understand the subject — but because no one had translated the assessment culture for them.
A Northumbria rubric, a UCD traffic-light AI declaration, a Murdoch Works-Cited list, a Portsmouth AI Acknowledgment Form — each one is a small piece of academic infrastructure that a UK or Australian domestic student picks up by osmosis, and that an international student in Singapore is often left to decode alone. VIVA exists to close that gap.
We are a small, tutor-led practice. Our founders teach. Our tutors hold honours and postgraduate degrees from the same partner-university system our students study under. We work in English and Mandarin, on the academic conventions of the awarding university, and inside the academic-integrity rules of the school the student is actually enrolled in.
To give international undergraduates at Singapore's private universities the bilingual coaching, structure, and academic-integrity discipline they need to graduate on their own merit.
What 护航 Means
A naval term — escort. The smaller vessel that sails alongside.
Terminology
护 航 · hù háng · escort
In Chinese, 护航 (hù háng) is the word for a naval escort — a smaller vessel sailing alongside a larger one through dangerous waters. We chose it deliberately. We do not row the boat. We coach concepts, structure arguments, walk through marking rubrics, rehearse oral defences, and require the student to submit a draft to their school tutor for review at least once before final submission. Any AI assistance — Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude — must be declared per the partner university's policy. Anything written for the student, by us, would breach that policy. We do not do it.