Why We Don't Do Open Plan

Walk into most coworking spaces and you'll find the same thing: one big room, a bunch of desks arranged in rows or clusters, no barriers between them. Open plan. It's the default. It's what people expect.

We don't do it. Every desk in every one of our spaces has dividers between it and the next one. And the reason is simple: we watched teenagers fail at open plan for years before we ever thought about coworking.

What we saw at BTA

A lot of tutoring centres do group sessions. Four or five kids around a table, one tutor managing the room. Better Tuition Academy doesn't. Every session is one-on-one: one student, one tutor, one desk. That's a deliberate choice, and it's the reason our spaces are set up the way they are.

Group tutoring is noisy. When you've got multiple students in the same room working on different things at different paces, there's always background noise, always distraction. A kid finishes a problem and wants to talk about it. Another one is stuck and asks a question out loud. The tutor's attention is split. It's hard to focus when the room is full of that kind of ambient activity.

One-on-one removes all of that. When it's just you and your tutor, the room doesn't need to be managed. It just needs to be quiet. And that's exactly what our spaces are.

There's also something worth knowing about the desks themselves. Each one is sized for two people, a student and a tutor sitting side by side. For coworking, it's just you. That means you get the full desk to yourself: room for your laptop, a notepad, a coffee, whatever else you need to spread out. It's a genuinely large workspace, not a cramped hot desk with six inches of surface area.

Most coworking spaces go open plan because it's cheaper to build, looks better in photos, and fits more desks per square metre. We don't have that incentive. Our spaces were set up for focused one-on-one work, and we're not changing them.

What our desks actually look like

Each workstation is an individual desk with a monitor, facing a wall or panel. Dividers on both sides. You can't see the person next to you unless you deliberately stand up and look over the partition.

It's more like a library carrel than a coworking hot desk. And for most of the work people actually do: writing, emails, spreadsheets, code, design. That's exactly what you want. A bubble. Your screen, your desk, your space. No peripheral distractions.

We know this isn't for everyone. If you want a social coworking experience, the kind where you chat to the person next to you and go for coffee together. You won't find that here. Our spaces are for people who want to sit down, focus, and get their work done in the limited hours they have.

Try it at any of our locations: Forestville, Belrose, Gordon, or Mona Vale. The dividers might not look exciting, but your output will thank you.