I teach maths in a secondary school. I’ve got a maths degree, a PGCE in Secondary Mathematics and Qualified Teacher Status, and I started out in a busy comprehensive — where in my first year my Year 10 class made the strongest progress in their GCSE mocks relative to where they’d started.
I’d already been tutoring for years by then, and it taught me something that hasn’t changed since: nothing works until the student trusts you. So I take the time to work out how someone learns and what actually trips them up, and we agree what they’re aiming for, so they always know what they’re working towards.
Most students who struggle with maths aren’t bad at it. There’s a gap somewhere further back that nobody had time to go and fix, and everything built on top of it wobbles. Close the gap properly and the confidence comes back on its own.
How I teach
Two live lessons every week. Tuesday is a masterclass on one topic, taught properly rather than rushed through. Thursday is an exam workshop — we work real exam questions together and I show exactly how the marks get awarded. Questions go in the chat as we go and I work through them live, so nobody sits stuck on something for a week. Everything is recorded too, so a missed week isn’t a lost week.
If you want someone watching your own child’s working every week, that’s what the Small Group and one to one plans are for.
Marking the papers
I’m also a GCSE examiner, which means I see the other end of it. Every year I mark scripts where a student clearly understood the maths and still lost marks — working not shown, an answer left unrounded, a method mark thrown away for the sake of one line. Those marks are the difference between a 5 and a 6, and they’re entirely fixable.
Why Up Your Maths
Tutoring one family at a time, I could only ever reach a handful of students a year — and only the ones whose parents could find £50 an hour. The students who needed me most were rarely the ones who could book me.
Up Your Maths is my answer to that. The same teaching, live every week, at a price that isn’t really a decision — and a free session in Urmston once a month for anyone who wants it, member or not.