Edmund

Hi, I'm Ed. I'm a trained Mathematician and Statistician (PhD, MSc, MMath), with 3 years of Maths teaching experience and 4+ years of one-to-one Maths tutoring experience. I currently work as a senior statistician for a company near Reading.

Tutoring Experience

I have three years of teaching Maths at primary and secondary level, which includes preparing students for common entrance, KS2 SATs, KS3 SATs, GCSE, A-level and International Baccalaureate examinations. In addition, I was an Maths tutor for different groups of undergraduate Maths and Statistics students for three years during my PhD.

I have a PGCE (Mathematics) teaching qualification, and academic qualifications which include an MMath degree (4 year version of a BSc) in Mathematics, an MSc in Statistics and a PhD in Applied Mathematics, all from the University of Sheffield.

Tutoring Approach

Assuming you require at least four tutoring sessions, the first tutoring session is free to ensure that you're happy with me before proceeding. There is no obligation at all to have a second session if you're not happy.

My tutoring methods are very much tailored to the needs of the student (GCSE or A-Level). This means that if there are particular topics or part of the syllabus that the student needs help with then I will prepare the tutoring in a bespoke way.

For short term tutoring (1-3 months): if the tutoring is occurring close to exams, then I can help with exam preparation, including how to effectively go through past papers. This can then highlight problem areas, which we can spend more time on. I also have a series of summary notes I have created for the entire syllabus of both GCSE and A level, which I'm happy to share with any of the students I work with - further details on these are in the next paragraph.

For longer term tutoring (for example, starting in September prior to the exams), an effective technique I have done with past students is to go through all of the topics of the syllabus (whether for Maths GCSE or Maths A-level) over a period of 4-5 months (if the tutoring is weekly). To do this I will draw on a series of summary notes that I have created and which cover the entire syllabus. I only share these summary notes with the students I tutor. Every year I modify and tweak the summary notes, adding in further examples if needed or using different examples that are beneficial. For particularly difficult topics I may spend two tutoring sessions going over the topic. The advantage of going over the entire syllabus in this way is that the student will end up with a set of completed summary notes of the entire syllabus which I will be very helpful when going through past papers. After completing the summary notes for a particular unit, we then go over problem questions on the topic and further homework questions are set.

To give a flavour of the resources I have created for past students, the first attached resource (GCSE) has summary notes and questions on the Number unit from the GCSE syllabus. The second attached Maths resource (A-level) relates to which trigonometric identity to use in order to solve a non-trivial trigonometric equation. For a topic where I do not have the correct resources I will create this for the student.

I believe that I am good at clearly explaining a particular concept or topic, whether it is going through examples or supporting the student when doing practise questions that test that concept. Hence, the pace at which the tutoring is delivered is driven by the student. This means that I can do further examples if needed and I will further adapt the questions set in the tutoring session and as part of the homework to fit the ability of the student. I plan all of my lessons with my students and any questions the student attempts I will have already gone through myself; this ensures that the time spent in the lesson is efficiently used. For exam preparation, I'm also very keen to give tips on how to prepare the most effectively. For example, I can help the student with setting up a revision timetable and to know what revision to do and when. I am very patient for slow learners and can also keep up with the pace of fast learners. My teaching experience has also helped me to explain different concepts in a variety of easily digestible ways. My goal is your success, so I will go the extra mile to ensure that you achieve your potential.

Please note that for both GCSE and A-Level, I work best with students who are using the Edexcel exam board. I can still tutor students using other exam boards (AQA or OCR) but I just have less experience with this and I don't own personal copies of the AQA / OCR textbooks for GCSE and A-level maths.