The gaps are always further back than the topic being taught
A Year 11 who can't do simultaneous equations usually can't reliably handle negative numbers. A Year 10 who can't do trigonometry often can't rearrange a formula. The school has to move on, so the gap gets papered over, and each new topic sits on a slightly wobblier foundation than the last.
By Year 11 the student has concluded they're bad at maths. What's actually happened is that four or five small, specific, entirely fixable gaps have compounded.
Finding those is the first job, and it's why the first session is diagnostic rather than a lesson.
Fluency and problem-solving are different skills
Most students can do a question when they're told which method to use. The marks are lost when the question doesn't announce itself — when it's wrapped in a real-world context, or needs two topics combined, or has the unknown somewhere awkward.
That's not a knowledge gap, it's a recognition gap, and it's trained by working through unfamiliar questions with someone who makes their own thinking visible: what am I looking at, what does this remind me of, what would I try first, what do I do when the first thing fails.
The non-calculator paper deserves its own mention. It punishes weak arithmetic and weak number sense harder than anything else in the qualification, and it's the paper most students revise least.
What we cover
GCSE (Foundation and Higher): number, algebra, ratio and proportion, geometry and measures, probability and statistics — with particular attention to the algebra, because that's what everything at A-Level and in the sciences is built on.
A-Level: pure maths (algebra and functions, coordinate geometry, sequences, trigonometry, exponentials and logarithms, differentiation, integration, numerical methods, vectors), plus mechanics and statistics.
All UK exam boards: AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC/Eduqas and Cambridge International.
If your child takes physics or chemistry too
There's a real advantage in having the same person teach the maths and the physics. The algebra a student meets in a maths lesson and the algebra they meet in a physics equation are the same algebra, but they're taught in different rooms by different people using different notation, and a lot of students never connect them.
When I teach both, I can make that connection explicit, and it tends to move both subjects at once.
Common questions
Foundation or Higher tier — which should my child take?
It depends on the realistic target grade and how much time is left. Foundation caps at grade 5, so it's the wrong choice for anyone aiming higher, but it's the right choice for a student who'd be overwhelmed by Higher and would drop marks across the whole paper. I'm happy to give you an honest view after a session or two.
My child says they understand it in the lesson but can't do it at home.
That's one of the most common things parents tell me, and it usually means the understanding is being carried by the teacher rather than the student. The fix is to have them explain it back and to work on questions that don't announce their own method — not to do more of the same practice.
Do you teach Further Maths?
I teach A-Level maths, and I'd want to talk to you before taking on Further Maths — it depends on which modules your child is sitting. Ask me on the free call and I'll give you a straight answer rather than a hopeful one.