Harry Mavrolefteros’ First Education Centre at Mascot in Sydney’s inner south has won the ‘Outstanding Educational Services Award’ at the 2025 Bayside Local Business Awards.
At First Education, students from Kindergarten to Year 12 are given one-on-one tuition by dedicated tutors in a range of school subjects, and there are also group debating classes and study sessions for the Year 12 Higher School Certificate exams. The tutoring centres are located at Bondi, Earlwood, Maroubra, Mascot and Randwick.
Harry told The Greek Herald he was proud of the award recognition.
“The Mascot Centre had never been nominated before for the Local Business Awards and in 2024 we not only got finalists, but we won the Educational Services Local Business Award,” he said.
“This is a testament to the hard work of our Centre Manager Roza Papas who is at the Centre every day making sure everything runs smoothly (and the previous Centre Manager Telly Tselonis before her), to our 20 tutors for their inspirational efforts, and to our 120 student and parents for trusting us with their learning.”
First Education was born out of Harry’s devout interest in mathematics. In between his university studies, Harry began private tutoring in 2005, driving to and from students’ homes. Once Harry completed his degree and moved into a Financial Planning firm, tutoring continued to remain a growing constant in his life.
Despite being advised otherwise, Harry decided to leave the Financial Planning firm after one year and solely pursue tutoring at 22 years old. This led to the opening of the Maroubra Centre in October 2010; a space above the Maroubra Optometry practice on Anzac Parade, owned and continually run by Harry’s parents. It was in this space that First Education began to grow.
Harry worked alongside his brother, Pana, tutoring Maths and English respectively to the 10 students present at the time. As the business began to grow in popularity, so too did it expand with more tutors joining the business, adding to the pool of expertise and more subject areas were made available for tuition.
The success of the Maroubra Centre made notable impressions in the community. The then-Principal of All Saints Grammar recognised the difference in Harry’s teaching and asked for tutoring sessions to be held during after school hours at their Belmore campus. This then led to the opening of the First Education Earlwood centre on Homer Street in January 2015.
With both centres running, First Education began to establish itself as a leading tutoring service in both areas. The 10 students who used to enter the doorway of the Maroubra Centre when the business first started had now grown to over 450.
Nevertheless, the business’ central ethos seemed to ring clearer the more it grew, prompting the opening of the Bondi Centre on Bondi Road in early 2016. In July 2021, the fourth Centre at Mascot was opened up in the middle of COVID to support students who had fallen behind in this extremely difficult time. At the start of 2023, the Randwick Centre was opened to provide further support to students in this community.
Now, with over 200 tutors and 1,000 students in the business across the five centres, First Education is able to successfully promote core values of confidence, passion and hard work in students to help them achieve their potential and beyond.
