Foundation or Higher tier, AQA, Edexcel or OCR. The same tutor every session, working through the specification your child's school actually teaches, with past-paper practice from the start rather than the last six weeks.
The jump from KS3 to GCSE Maths is steeper than the jump into KS3 was. Topics stop being self-contained — a question on surds assumes fluency with indices, a question on circle theorems assumes algebra, and a worded problem assumes a student can find the maths hidden inside a paragraph of text. A child who coasted through Year 9 on quick mental arithmetic can find Year 10 genuinely hard for the first time.
What usually goes wrong is not the new topic. It is a gap two or three years back — fractions, negative numbers, rearranging a formula — that nobody ever went back and fixed. In a class of thirty that gap is invisible. In a one-to-one session it shows up within twenty minutes.
Your child's first few sessions include diagnostic work across the foundations, not just the topic they are currently stuck on. Once we know where the floor gave way, the plan is built from there — which is why parents often see a jump in the topics we are not directly teaching.
Full specification coverage across both tiers. Higher-tier-only content is marked.
| Strand | Topics | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Number | Fractions, decimals, percentages, ratio, standard form, surds, bounds and error intervals | Foundation & Higher (surds and bounds Higher) |
| Algebra | Expanding and factorising, linear and quadratic equations, simultaneous equations, inequalities, sequences, functions, iteration, algebraic fractions | Foundation & Higher (functions, iteration and algebraic fractions Higher) |
| Ratio & proportion | Direct and inverse proportion, compound measures, growth and decay, best-buy problems | Foundation & Higher |
| Geometry & measures | Angles, Pythagoras, trigonometry, circle theorems, transformations, vectors, constructions, area and volume | Foundation & Higher (circle theorems and vectors Higher) |
| Probability & statistics | Tree diagrams, Venn diagrams, averages from tables, cumulative frequency, box plots, histograms | Foundation & Higher (histograms Higher) |
| Exam technique | Method marks, showing working, reading worded questions, time allocation across the three papers | Both tiers, every term |
Fractions, negatives and rearranging. Almost every GCSE Maths problem traces back to one of these. We fix them properly rather than working around them.
Students who can solve the equation freeze when it is buried in a paragraph. We drill the translation step — words to maths — as its own skill.
Right answer, no working, marks gone. We teach your child to write the way an examiner needs to read, which is worth a grade on its own.
Usually caused by over-dwelling on question 12 of 25. Timed past-paper sections from early on fix the pacing before it costs anything.
Circle theorems, vectors and algebraic fractions are the classic Higher stumbling blocks. They are learnable patterns, and we teach them as patterns.
A child who knows they need a 5 and knows which topics carry those marks revises very differently from one who is just ‘doing maths’.
| Plan | Sessions | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 3 × 1-hour sessions per week | £60 / month | Steady support in one subject alongside school |
| Intensive | 5 × 1-hour sessions per week | £100 / month | Exam years, catch-up, or two subjects at once |
Meet the tutor, watch them teach your child for a full hour, then decide. No payment up front and no contract.