Andrew

Hi, I’m Andrew, and I am an experienced KS3/KS4 Maths tutor who has spent the past 4 years tutoring full-time in Northamptonshire secondary schools as well as privately. During this time, I have supported over 350 students with their maths, helping them grow in confidence and make significant improvements in the subject. I love maths and consider myself to be highly proficient in it, which is hopefully demonstrated by my First Class Honours degree in BSc Mathematics!

I was fortunate to have a fun and dynamic maths teacher when I was at school, who fostered a passion for mathematics in me that has never left in adulthood. It is my hope that I can ‘pay it forward’ and help my students come to appreciate the subject. Or at least realise that maths is not something to be fearful of; with the right mindset, everyone has the potential to succeed in it.

Tutoring Experience

For the past 4 years I have been employed as a full-time maths tutor in two secondary schools in Northamptonshire: one graded ‘Good’ and one graded ‘Requires Improvement’. In this role I tutored students 1:1/in small groups to help them become more confident in maths, achieve their target grade, and recover the learning that was lost due to the coronavirus pandemic of 2020-2021. I also worked with SEN students who were unable to attend mainstream lessons in the school’s internal provision/learning support departments, and supported Year 12 students with resitting their GCSE maths exams to achieve a minimum of a grade 4. I mostly taught GCSE students (Year 10 and Year 11) though I have experience teaching all year groups. My groups contained students working at all grades (U-9), though most of my students were working at grades 2-4 and ended up sitting the foundation papers.

In addition to working in schools, for the past few years I have been providing in-person private tuition to GCSE students (and college resitters) in Northampton outside of school hours. I’m pleased to say that, so far, 100% of the students who arranged to have weekly tuition sessions have been able to achieve a minimum of a grade 4 in their GCSE maths exam.

The majority of my students make significant progress by the time of their GCSE maths examinations, with most improving by at least 1 grade after having a minimum of 15 weekly lessons with me. My proudest achievement so far has undoubtedly been managing to turn a Year 11 student’s grade from a U to a grade 5 in just 8 months in the 2023 academic year. This student did not attend any mainstream lessons in her final year of school for mental health reasons and yet she was able to achieve the top grade in the foundation papers because of her sessions with me. I explained the entire syllabus clearly and concisely in a short space of time, which allowed her to quickly grasp concepts and thus her confidence to grow. More recently, I was delighted to see that all my GCSE resit students passed maths in the 2024 academic year despite the worrying statistic that only about 17% students passed nationally. Hopefully this all goes some way to demonstrate that my lessons have a positive impact on students’ attainment in Maths and allows them to fulfil their potential.

Tutoring Approach

My lessons are flexible and catered to my students’ needs/areas of development. Typically I spend the first lesson or two establishing the gaps in my students’ knowledge, through asking them to work through a worksheet testing them on a range of key topics as well as conversing with them and their parents/careers regarding topics they find challenging. I then spend the subsequent lessons going over these gaps (normally one topic per lesson), utilising powerpoints I’ve created to explain the content clearly and concisely, alongside worksheets that give students the opportunity to implement what they’ve just learnt in a structured manner, starting with the easiest question type. As the weeks progress and we move onto other topics, I use personalised starters that tie into the past few lessons to ensure previous material is not forgotten. When it comes to the exam season, I find Year 11 students benefit from working through past papers with me, where I first ask my students to independently attempt questions that are likely to appear in their exam before I show them my handwritten solutions and scaffold how the question should be answered. Overall this approach allows my students to become more confident with their Maths and gives them the greatest chance of achieving their target grade.

I am happy to deliver my lessons in person or online, either at my house or the student’s (providing they live within a commutable distance from where I am based). Due to travel expenses and lost time, I have a slightly higher rate for in-person tutoring. I am also happy to deliver as many or as few lessons as required, working around my client’s availability. Though in my experience, students make the most progress with a minimum of 15 weekly sessions.