# Tuition Class Poster
**Source:** https://si.advice.lk/tuition/guides/tuition-class-poster
**Language:** Sinhalese

---

# ශ්‍රී ලංකාවේ ඔබේ ටියුෂන් පන්තිය ප්‍රචාරය කරන්නේ කෙසේද: පෝස්ටර්, කණ්ඩායම් සහ නොමිලේ ලැයිස්තුගත කිරීම්

ටියුෂන් පන්ති පෝස්ටරයක කුමක් දැමිය යුතුද, කුමක් ඉවත් කළ යුතුද, එය ඇත්ත වශයෙන්ම කොතැනට දැමිය යුතුද, සහ කඩදාසි වලට වඩා වැඩි සිසුන් ගෙන එන නොමිලේ නාලිකා මොනවාද යන්න.

 On this page

- The six things a poster must say
- What to leave off
- Size and printing
- Where you may actually put it
- The channels that outlast paper
- One thing worth doing before you print

Most advice about tuition posters is about design. Design is the least important
part. A plain poster with the right six facts will out-perform a beautiful one
that makes a parent squint to work out what grade it is for.

This covers what to put on it, where you are actually allowed to put it, and the
channels that bring more students than paper does.

## The six things a poster must say

A parent scanning a crowded noticeboard gives each sheet about four seconds. In
that time they are answering one question: *is this for my child?* Answer it
first.

1. **Subject and grade** — “A/L Chemistry”, “Grade 10-11 Maths”. Not “Classes
   conducted by an experienced teacher”.
2. **Medium** — Sinhala, English or Tamil. This is not optional. A parent whose
   child sits the paper in Sinhala medium will skip your poster entirely rather
   than call to ask.
3. **Your name and qualification** — the real one. “B.Sc. (Colombo)”,
   “Government school teacher, 12 years”. A poster with name reads as an
   agency.
4. **Where** — the town, or “Online (Zoom)”. A parent will not call to find out
   whether you are within travelling distance.
5. **When** — day and time. “Saturdays 8.00 - 10.00 a.m.”
6. **One phone number** — with WhatsApp marked if you use it. One number, not
   three.

Everything else is decoration.

## What to leave off

- **Clip art and stock photos of foreign children.** They make a local class
  look like a franchise.
- **More than two fonts.** Photocopy shops will happily give you five.
- **A long paragraph about your teaching philosophy.** Nobody reads it on paper.
  Save it for your listing, where there is room.
- **“Limited seats”** unless it is true. Sri Lankan parents have seen that line
  on every poster since the 1990s and it longer moves anyone.
- **Your home address**, unless the class is genuinely held there and you are
  comfortable with strangers having it.

## Size and printing

A4 for noticeboards and shop windows. A3 only if it will be read from across a
road. A4 is cheaper, fits in more places, and on a crowded noticeboard a bigger
sheet just gets covered by the next one. Ten A4 copies in ten good locations
beat one A3 in a bad one.

Two practical points:

- **Black on white photocopies fine. Colour often does not.** If you are
  photocopying rather than printing, design in high contrast and check one copy
  before you pay for fifty.
- **Sinhala and Tamil text needs the right font embedded** or the shop’s
  computer will substitute something unreadable. Take the file as a PDF, not a
  Word document, and look at the proof before you approve the run.

We are not going to quote print prices here, because they vary by town and by
year and a wrong number is worse than number. Ask two shops. The second quote
is usually the useful one.

## Where you may actually put it

**Yes, with permission:**

- Photocopy and stationery shops — the single best location, because parents
  going in to photocopy past papers are already thinking about school
- Pharmacies and grocery shops near schools
- Temple, church, mosque and kovil noticeboards
- Private tuition institute noticeboards, if you are not competing with them
- Your own gate

**No:**

- Electricity and telephone poles
- Bus halts and railway stations
- Public walls, culverts and road signs

Local councils remove those and can fine you. Beyond the fine, asking permission
has a practical payoff: a poster the shopkeeper agreed to stays up for months,
and one stuck on a pole is gone by the weekend.

Ask the shopkeeper directly, offer to bring a fresh copy when it fades, and
leave. Do not put it up and hope.

## The channels that outlast paper

A poster reaches people who physically walk past it. That is genuinely useful
for a class held in one town. It has two hard limits: it costs money per copy,
and it stops working the moment someone takes it down.

**Parent and school WhatsApp groups** are where Sri Lankan class recommendations
actually spread. You cannot spam your way in. What works is being introduced by
a parent who already sends their child to you, which means the first two or
three students matter far more than the next twenty. Ask them.

**A free directory listing** does the job a poster cannot: it reaches a parent
searching for your subject and medium across the whole district, at the moment
they are looking, and it keeps working without you. It also lets you publish the
things that do not fit on paper — your full background, the syllabus year you
teach to, your fee range, and what a parent should expect in the first month.

You can list your classes on Advice.lk free. There is no
commission on anything you earn, enquiries go straight to your phone or
WhatsApp, and a person reviews every submission before it goes live so the
directory stays worth reading.

## One thing worth doing before you print

Publish your fee range. Most posters say “reasonable fees” or nothing at all,
and every parent reads that the same way: *this will be a negotiation I might
lose.* A real number filters out people who were never going to pay it and
brings you the ones who will, which is the entire point of advertising.

If you are not ready to put a number on paper, put it in your listing. It is the
single most common thing parents tell us they cannot find.

## Questions

 What should a tuition class poster include?

Six things, in this order: the subject and grade, the medium, the teacher's name and qualification, the location or whether it is online, the day and time, and one phone number. Everything else is decoration. A parent scanning a noticeboard for four seconds needs to answer 'is this for my child?' before anything else, and subject plus grade plus medium is what answers it.

 What size should a tuition poster be?

A4 for noticeboards and shop windows, A3 if it will be read from across a road. A4 is cheaper, fits more places, and most noticeboards are crowded enough that a larger sheet just gets covered by the next one. Print a few A4 rather than one A3.

 Is it legal to put up tuition posters in Sri Lanka?

On private property with the owner's permission, yes. On electricity poles, bus halts, walls and public property, no. Local councils remove them and can fine you. Ask the shop, the pharmacy, the photocopy place and the temple or church noticeboard first. Permission also means your poster stays up instead of being torn down in a day.

 Do tuition posters still work, or should I advertise online?

Both, but they do different jobs. A poster reaches parents within walking distance of where it hangs, which is exactly who will attend a physical class. Online listings reach people searching for your subject across the district and are the only thing that works for online classes. Posters cost money per copy and stop working when they are removed; a listing costs nothing and keeps working.

Browse the directory ඔබම නොමිලේ ලැයිස්තුගත කරන්න