How I work

The longer I taught, the clearer one observation became: the difference between a student who gets an A and one who gets an A* almost never lives in whether they understand the mathematics. It lives in how precisely they read the question, structure the response, and communicate the reasoning. That observation now shapes every session I run.

Marking work as an active Edexcel A-Level examiner alongside teaching has only sharpened the point. Examination papers reward clarity, mark-scheme literacy, and the discipline of writing maths in the language the exam expects. Most students don't lose those marks because they can't — they lose them because nobody's taught them, deliberately, where the marks actually go.

What I run is a structured small-group programme — capped at ten students per cohort, live online, focused on bridging that gap between mathematical understanding and exam performance. It isn't generic revision. It's deliberate practice in writing maths the way the mark scheme rewards, week by week, until that becomes second nature.

Why this works

Fifteen years into classroom teaching, I'd seen the same pattern enough times to know it wasn't isolated: capable students who understood mathematics well were leaving examinations with grades two or three marks below what their understanding could justify. Not because they didn't know the content. Because no-one had taught them, in a deliberate way, how examination questions work — how they're read, how responses are structured, how mark schemes reward precision.

I built this programme to address that pattern directly. It isn't about teaching more content; it's about teaching with attention to the specific gap that costs students marks. The small-group format — ten students per cohort, live, online, weekly — is what makes the deliberate practice possible: enough individual attention for each student to be seen, enough cohort dynamic for accountability and pace.

The active examining work alongside the teaching keeps the observation specific. Every examination cycle, I read papers from students at the cusp between grade bands. The factors that separate them are remarkably consistent — and remarkably teachable, given the right format and enough time.

What students do in the programme

 Each cohort works through five things, week by week, deliberately. 

* Read questions deliberately –  Most lost marks start with the question being misread. We practise reading exam questions with the same care that the mark scheme assumes.

* Structure responses to mark schemes –  Every paper rewards a particular kind of working-out. We learn what that looks like for each topic, and practise writing it.

* Build fluency through deliberate practice –  Topic-by-topic, the work is repeated in different contexts until it's automatic under exam conditions.

* Receive feedback on the writing, not just the answer –  Two students can both get the right answer; only one writes it the way the mark scheme rewards. We focus on the second.

* Practise under exam timing –  Timed-paper work is built into the programme cadence, not bolted on at the end.