to teach Old English tǣcan (to indicate), same root as digit (pointing finger)
to tutor Latin tueri (to guard), related to intuition (watching closely)
A teacher points at the path; a tutor guards you walking it to ensure you arrive.
- Guided practice that balances patience with pressure is 99% of what I do.
- Everything is tailored to bright children who should be doing better in maths.
I don’t do fancy lessons or gimmicky activities. I like quick, simple, high-impact exercises in a supportive, challenging atmosphere with clear objectives:
- Mastery of exam-specific criteria
- Strong, flexible, long-term maths ability
We do not simply review problem topics encountered at school; we get ahead into new topics at every opportunity so that school lessons become revision. I am happy to lean into a more remedial or proactive approach at your discretion.
Many studies have tried to specify which strategies most improve exam grades. Only one consistently stands out, with around twice the effect of anything else: individual tutoring with mastery practice.
A good tutor with simple methods and an encouraging voice is very hard to beat.
Most good tutors
- Are enthusiastic about learning
- Create an atmosphere of determination
- Are sensitive to students under pressure
- Engage both intellectually & emotionally
- Have deep knowledge of the curriculum
- Can predict common problem areas
- Use only the most efficient methods
- Are adaptive – ‘strong plans loosely held’
- See from the student’s perspective
- Set clear targets and celebrate progress
Simple mastery methods
The methods that make personal tutoring more effective than anything else are:
Live feedback
- Mistakes are caught & corrected immediately during practice, making feedback vastly more impactful and preventing ingrained errors.
Mastery assessment & practice (MAPs)
- Regular tests and quick-fire reviews of previous topics build durable retention & highlight persistent misconceptions.
- When testing finds a problem, immediate corrective practice (ICP) follows – the student practises that specific skill until they can answer without hesitation.
Worked solutions
- Students analyse step-by-step solutions before replicating the method on fresh problems until it becomes automatic.
- Students may follow a worked solution in parallel to a new problem, solving one stage at a time (example-problem pairs).
Reciprocal teaching
- ‘Teach the teacher’: The student reads an explanation before re-explaining it in their own words. The tutor poses additional questions to check and deepen the student’s comprehension.
- In maths, having a student ‘teach’ worked solutions is particularly effective.
Interleaving & blocking
- Some lessons focus intensively on one skill (blocking) while others mix multiple topics (interleaving) to build both deep mastery and flexible problem-solving
Personal bests
- Mastery practice is repeated regularly with the aim of getting faster each time.
- Fluency manipulating fractions & solving quadratic equations responds very well.
Microskill targeting
- Complex topics are broken into subskills that can be perfected individually before combining them into full exam solutions.
Think-aloud protocols (TAPs)
- Before writing, students describe their plan, training the brain to look ahead into solutions rather than diving in blindly (also known as ‘verbal-first answers’).
- While solving problems, students narrate their thoughts, exposing problems silent work might hide (‘verbal-in answers’).
- Both forms encourage students to self-diagnose exactly where they trip up.
Diagnostic questioning
- Like TAPs, but the tutor asks questions to identify exactly where an error arose, allowing highly targeted intervention.
Error analysis
- Rather than simply marking answers wrong, time is spent understanding how a misconception caused it.
- This cures causes, not just symptoms.
Socratic questioning
- Rather than explain ‘at’ a student who may nod along without understanding, the tutor asks questions to guide them to understanding for themselves. It is an efficient form of discovery learning.
Testing & progress monitoring
There is a notion in education that ‘testing isn’t good teaching’. True – testing is good learning. Regular prompted recall has fast, robust effects on memory and ability.
- Getting knowledge ‘in’ takes minutes, but many students squander hours on it
- Getting knowledge back ‘out’ (practice & testing) is what builds memory & ability
The student’s performance is both the process and outcome of learning. That is very different from traditional classrooms where the teacher’s performance is seen as the process that leads to the student’s performance as the outcome.
Progress is rarely linear; it is typically variable following an exponential trend. It will be visible in:
- School assessments, reports, etc
- Regular short tests on specific topics
- Timed practice on past paper questions
- Mock exam papers
- General confidence
Parents can request updates anytime.
A 1-hour diagnostic session (£20) can give a feel for the atmosphere in lessons.