Michael

Please find below a snapshot of my private tuition experience.

Age 16 SEN Home schooling

I worked with an age sixteen student with an ASD diagnosis and significant delays in expressive and receptive language skills. When I first met him, he would only communicate in single words and stock phrases. Over the course of a year, by leaning into his personal interests and asking very basic questions to begin with, he gradually became more confident speaking with me and others. We would spend a dedicated portion of every day working on communication and listening, playing games where he would instruct me on which lego piece to pick up in order to replicate a picture I had given him, or tapping into his love of buses by having him describe whether toy passengers were on or off the toy bus using full sentences. Eventually he could express himself in relatively extensive and creative ways, even advocating for his preferences in a variety of situations. We made similar gains in mathematics: through a fun and systematic approach, he went from having difficulties with subtraction to confidently dealing with basic multiplication. Likewise, through daily literacy activities, his comprehension improved by leaps and bounds to the point where he could follow basic written instructions. Further, we spent a lot of time focusing on life skills: learning about hygiene, developing basic cooking skills, and going on regular short trips where we would practise navigating public transport and buying items at a store. We’d also explore basic drama and mindfulness. His independence, along with his academic capabilities, greatly improved during the time that we worked together.

7+ St Paul’s Prep School

This student (Arnold House) was extremely mature but struggled with focus, especially when it came to examinations. He was a keen mathematician but lacked fluency in basic addition and a knowledge of elementary rules. He was a good reader with notable comprehension skills but struggled with writing clearly. With a year of preparation time, I focused on channelling his comprehension skills onto exam-style texts and problem-solving tasks while strengthening his writing skills through targeted dictation exercises. We also developed a strong understanding of groundwork mathematical knowledge which we then drew on to tackle multi-step problems. This approach served him well in his assessments and he gained an offer for St Paul’s Prep School.

ISEB Common Pre-tests

This student (Thomas’s Battersea) was intelligent but lacked self-assurance, struggling to finish questions and relying on ineffective rote learning techniques. Over the course of a year, we worked on building a strong and intuitive foundation, ensuring he not only understood key techniques but also the reasoning behind them. We explored the connections between different concepts, helping him take a more holistic approach to problem-solving and develop a bird’s eye view of how a problem will unfold. He received an unconditional offer to Westminster School.

Tonbridge Final Entrance Exam

This student (Notting Hill Prep) had received a Provisional Offer to Tonbridge School and I was brought in to help him sit the final entrance exam. The student had strong hyperactivity considerations and had struggled with previous tutors. He also had a strong anti-authority streak. Over the span of a year, I made great progress with him by building rapport first and foremost, before helping him work through some difficult topics by incorporating his interests into the learning experience and having structured interruptions—like taking a couple of shots at a basketball hoop after every five questions. He received an unconditional offer to Tonbridge.

IB Maths

This student (Oak House School) initially had difficulty recognising which techniques to apply when approaching integration problems. I built up her understanding of integration layer-by-layer, including clarifying the meaning of mathematical expressions, to familiarise her with how different types of integration problems arise. We then broke these problems down into their core components to understand how to solve them systematically and predictably. For eighteen months, we applied this approach to different areas of the syllabus, paying close attention to what examiners are looking for and the patterns that crop up in past papers. She achieved a grade 7 then took a well-earned gap year.

A-level Economics (Edexcel)

This student (St Paul’s Girls’) wanted to understand how different topics within Economics were connected and develop an intuitive grasp of the course material so that she could confidently provide more in-depth answers. Using a graphical approach, we explored the logic behind the conclusions she was taught, reinforcing foundational concepts and enabling her to apply them across a range of exam questions. Over the course of a year, we also focused extensively on the subtleties of exam techniques. She achieved an A* and received an offer for Economics and Management at Oxford University.

IB Economics

This student (Wellington College) was very unsure about why economic graphs look the way they do and needed real world context to grasp economic concepts. Over a period of two years, I built up his confidence in these ideas by breaking down real world examples in which these concepts provide powerful resolutions to practical problems. We built graphs together in response to tailored case studies, deriving convincing and actionable insights. He finished the course with a grade 7, took the SAT along with his IB exams and went to Yale.