About Us

From early childhood learning to high school mastery, Twinkle Academy Gold Coast combines evidence-informed teaching with creativity and care to help young minds thrive.

Ask any parent what they want from their child’s education and the answer rarely changes: confidence, curiosity, a kid who comes home wanting to talk about what they learned rather than dreading going back. Ask them how easy that is to find, and the answer changes just as reliably — not very.

Somewhere between rising academic pressure and childhood’s natural instinct to play, many good intentions can get lost. Twinkle Academy was built on the belief that they don’t have to be.

Founded in Sorrento and now expanding with a second centre in Robina, the academy has spent its short life arguing that rigour and warmth aren’t opposing forces — they’re the same idea, approached from two directions. Children learn best, the founders say, when they feel genuinely seen. Everything else follows from that.

Two founders, one shared instinct

At the heart of Twinkle Academy’s success are its founders, Bryant Tan and Melody Zhu, whose complementary backgrounds create a uniquely rich educational framework.

Bryant’s background spans mathematics and music — an unlikely pairing until he explains it. “My experience in mathematics highlighted the vital importance of building strong foundations in literacy, numeracy, logical thinking, and problem-solving from an early age,” he says. “At the same time, my background in music instilled a deep appreciation for creativity, focus, and self-expression.” The two disciplines, in his telling, aren’t opposites so much as siblings — one teaches precision, the other teaches a child to trust their own voice. “Education isn’t just about test scores,” he adds. “It’s about creating a safe space where children feel confident to have a go, discover their strengths, and build a lifelong love of learning.”

Melody’s path was shaped by more than a decade of classroom teaching across Australia and Singapore, working with young learners at the very ages when small interventions tend to matter most. That experience left her with a conviction she still leads with: no two children learn the same way, and the ones who look like they’re struggling are often just waiting for a different door in. “Every child learns differently,” she says. “We met so many bright, capable children who simply needed a different entry point — more encouragement, more connection, or space to learn at their own pace. We wanted to build a place where strong academic foundations sit alongside curiosity and joy, rather than treating them as separate goals.” 

It was that shared instinct that led them to what they now call the biggest blind spot in early education: the stretch between play-based childcare and the structure of formal schooling. Parents tend to measure readiness for Prep in fairly narrow terms — can they count, do they know their letters — but the founders see something broader at stake. Emotional maturity. Fine motor skills. The ability to sit in a group, follow an instruction, and cope when something doesn’t go their way. Twinkle Academy was built to sit in that gap, holding onto the wonder of early childhood while intentionally building the skills a child will need the moment they walk through a school gate.