As an A-level mathematics tutor, I notice that a large number of students beginning their A-level studies have remarkably poor algebra skills. This hard core of students (usually boys) are unable to manipulate fractions, confidently rearrange formulae, work with negative numbers or perform the necessary basic skills to progress in the subject. They repeatedly ask the same questions and try to learn methods by rote because they don’t have the skills to do otherwise. Teaching them can be very frustrating because the same issues are revisited again and again and little progress can be made until they learn basic skills which should have been learned at GCSE.
I should add that this is a minority of students but nevertheless a significant minority. If you recognise yourself in this category, do yourself a big favour and learn to walk before you try to run. Mathematics is a hierarchical subject and progression is made on the basis of having mastered prior skills.
If you failed to achieve the mathematics results you were hoping for, getting bad exam results, all is not lost. Taking a year out can be a good move. There are a number of reasons why students fail to achieve the exam grades they were hoping for. Make time to reflect on where things went wrong. There will be many things that you did right of course, but somehow it didn’t come together. Many people do not perform well under stress and focussing on one subject instead of three for an extended period of time will allow you to assess your strengths and weaknesses and recoup.
When we are young, a year seems like a long time but patience is a virtue and needs to be cultivated these days when everyone expects to be able to get immediate satisfaction. Self-reflection and circumspection are all qualities which are sought by employers.
Download a copy of the syllabus and highlight topics that you are less sure about. Be honest. Then highlight those topics you have some idea about and those you are confident at. Now print out a copy of the formula booklet for your syllabus and have this to hand when you practise.
Do you learn better by watching videos of questions being worked through? If that is the case, then there are some websites with videos of questions by topic for you to browse through and watch. www.examsolutions.net is one such website.
When you are ready to try your hand at some exam questions, you can find many places online where they are sorted by topic or where you can download entire past papers. Of course, with the new maths syllabus, you do have to resort to ‘legacy’ questions once you have exhausted the available ‘new’ material. But as you become familiar with the syllabus, you will be come expert at picking through ‘legacy’ papers and identifying which questions are relevant and which are not.
I have been tutoring privately since 2013 and teaching mathematics and physics since 1996. I have tutored well in excess of 100 students since I started and have covered all manner of syllabi in both subjects. I have taught GCSE, IGCSE, A-level, Pre-U, International Baccalaureate as well as AP Calculus AB (the American syllabus).
In my experience, the most important factor which is overlooked is the tutor’s subject knowledge. A close second is the tutor’s enthusiasm and ability to motivate the student. If I am not totally familiar with a syllabus, all the information that I need is available online. But if I don’t understand the topics covered, it is not going to be much use even if I know the syllabus inside out. All maths and physics syllabi share a large amount of common material. You can be sure that 80% of the material is the same.
This site is run by retired maths teacher Steve Blades and contains links to a great deal of instructional videos that offer a lot of detailed help on all areas of the syllabus.
This website is highly rated by my students. It has instructional videos on examination past papers for mathematics A-level. It covers Edexcel, AQA, OCR and MEI syllabuses.
I taught at a school in Kuwait for a year from 2003. This was an interesting experience culturally. I had not lived in a Muslim country before. I taught mathematics up to A-level at Kuwait English School. This is one of the better international schools in the country. Some of my classes were difficult and it was hard work. We started the day at 7 am which was the time we had to be on site. Lessons started at 7.30 and finished by the early afternoon. This had its advantages as we could then have the afternoon free. To be honest I was often so tired that I just went home and slept.
I lived in a block about 10 miles from the school which was where the school rented some basic apartments for staff. I hired a car each term, which worked out surprisingly cheap. I think petrol worked out at about 10 US cents per litre. The driving in Kuwait is an experience not to be missed. The standard of driving is amongst the worst I have seen anywhere in the world. The main technique could be called ‘point and push’. It was very scary. There were horrendous accidents every day on the highway which ran south from Kuwait City.
A famous landmark in Kuwait City
The weekends were on Thursdays and Fridays. We called this the virtual weekend. Saturdays and Sundays were normal days. One weekend, we went out for a drive in the desert to see if we could find the so-called tank graveyard which was where the US military had dumped all the Iraqi tanks and trucks that it had attacked during the Iraqi retreat from Kuwait in the first Gulf war. There were hundreds of tanks in row upon row as well as armoured vehicles, unexploded ordnance and so on. It was blisteringly hot in the desert and I only had a rough idea of the location as we were following directions given to us by other teachers. But we found the site in the end.
View from my window – lovely
This huge amount of scrap metal rusting in the desert is worthless. The reason is that depleted uranium, a byproduct of uranium enrichment, is used in the armour piercing shells that the Americans used. The result is a lot of contaminated metal. It will lie there for many years to come.
At the top of the post, you see pictures that we took on that day. Unbeknown to us, there was a military base nearby and we were soon seen by some soldiers who came over and arrested us. We were questioned in broken English and our cameras were confiscated but not before I had removed my camera’s card. We had to report the next day to the army headquarters to collect these items. We were politely questioned by a well-spoken Kuwaiti officer and given tea.
