Anyone can advertise themselves as a maths tutor. There’s no requirement to have taught a single lesson, marked a single exam paper, or spent a single year in front of a classroom of thirty children figuring out, in real time, why half of them have suddenly stopped understanding fractions. That’s not a criticism of everyone who tutors without that background, but it’s worth being honest with parents about what qualified experience actually buys you.

Nearly 20 years in the classroom

I’ve been teaching for close to two decades now, and if there’s one thing that time has given me, it’s pattern recognition. I can usually tell within the first session or two exactly where a pupil’s gap sits, because I’ve seen that same gap a hundred times before, in a hundred different pupils. That’s not something a few months of tutoring experience can replicate; it comes from years of watching what actually works, and quietly retiring what doesn’t.

Maths and English, together

I studied a double major in English and Maths, which sounds like an unusual combination until you sit with a pupil who understands the maths perfectly well but loses marks because they’ve misread what the question is actually asking. GCSE maths increasingly leans on literacy: multi-step worded problems, context-heavy questions, instructions that require careful reading before a single calculation happens. Being equally at home in both subjects means I can help pupils work through the reading of a question, not just the arithmetic inside it.

An examiner’s view from the inside

As a Pearson Edexcel GCSE examiner, I mark real exam papers every year. That gives me a level of insight that’s hard to get any other way: I know exactly how marks are awarded, where pupils commonly lose them for reasons that have nothing to do with understanding the maths, and what examiners are actually looking for in a written answer. It’s the kind of detail that turns “knowing the topic” into “scoring well on the day.”

What this means for your child

• Nearly 20 years of experience recognising exactly where gaps sit, and how to close them
• A rare ability to support both the maths and the reading comprehension it depends on
• Genuine, current examiner insight into how GCSE papers are marked
• Results and feedback you can see reflected in real parent reviews, not just marketing copy

If you’d like to talk about what your child needs, get in touch. You can also read more about my background, or see what other parents have said about working together.