Anyone Can Be a Tutor. Can They Teach?
This week’s reflections Term is underway and the search for a tutor starts. Names gets passed round on WhatsApp groups, a profile looks impressive – loads of A* grades, a price gets agreed and that is it. Very rarely does anyone ask the one question that matters. Can this person teach? Knowing a subject and teaching a subject […]
Something Will Go Wrong in the First Fortnight. And?
This week’s reflections A new academic year starts this week for some of you and the week after for everyone else. Something will go wrong in the first fortnight. A teacher will be absent, a friendship dynamic will change, a lesson will be harder than expected, a sporting injury may happen and many other scenarios. […]
The Mindset Shift That Gives You a Head Start at A Level
This week’s reflections The GCSE results are in and whatever they said, that chapter is closed now and the marks are what they are. The useful question from here isn’t about the grades you just got, it’s about the ones you’re about to go after, because A Level starts in a few weeks and it […]
What an A* at A-Level actually tells you
This week’s reflections Results arrived on Thursday. Some students got exactly what they needed. Some did not. Almost all of them have spent the days since doing the same thing, which is measuring themselves against somebody else. That is the first habit to drop. A friend’s grade tells a student nothing about their own. It […]
Results Are Feedback. What You Do With Them Is What Matters.
This week’s reflections Thursday 13th August. Results are released from 8am, your UCAS Hub updates from around the same time and Clearing choices can be added from 1pm. Whatever is in the envelope, the grade is information about how a set of papers went in a handful of exams in May and June. That is […]
When It’s Not Going In, Get Up and Go for a Walk
This week’s reflections There’s a particular kind of stuck that every student knows. You’ve been at the desk for an hour, the page isn’t going in, you’ve read the same paragraph three times and none of it has stayed and the harder you push the worse it gets. The instinct in that moment is almost […]
If It Worked Last Year, Keep It. If It Didn’t, This Is the Week to Change It.
This week’s reflections A familiar story students tell themselves over the summer is that Year 13 will be the year it all comes together and that whatever went slightly wrong last year will sort itself out once things get serious. It’s a nice thought and it almost never happens, because September doesn’t hand you a […]
Whose A Level Is It Anyway? Why the Separation of Tasks Matters
This week’s reflections A parent tells me they were up until midnight worrying about their son’s Chemistry mock. The son slept fine. He knew the mock had gone badly, shrugged it off and went to bed. The parent carried it for both of them. I hear a version of this every week and the thing […]
Why Two Students Revise for the Same Six Hours and Get Different Grades
This week’s reflections Two students sit down on a Sunday and both do six hours of Biology. Both work hard, both finish tired and both feel like they have earned the rest of the evening off. One of them is heading for a C and the other is heading for an A*. Nothing about the […]
Starting A Levels: What Every Year 12 Student Needs to Know
This week’s reflections GCSEs are done. Whatever they were: a slog, a breeze, better or worse than you hoped; they’re behind you now and A Levels are a different game entirely. Fewer subjects, far more depth and a lot more resting on how you work rather than how much you can cram the night before. […]