I have a first degree in History from the University of York, and a PhD in History from Middlesex University. I have working experience in the Law. I am the author of more than forty books, including a UK Government report on Truancy.
I have more than twenty years of classroom experience in schools, sixth form colleges and universities.
I have full enhanced DBS clearance (CRB check), which is registered with HMG for continuous updates. I show the certificate to all clients on my first visit.
Availability: Evenings and weekends. Other times by arrangement.
Willing to travel: 10 miles
Tutoring Experience:
I have twenty five years of experience, in various British schools and universities, teaching these subjects: Latin, Greek, History, English, Law, Economics, Philosophy, and Religious Studies, among others.
I offer this diverse range of subjects because I can, and I have the certificates and the experience to prove it. What I also bring to private tuition, however, is my experience as a published writer.
Most of my students have done badly in previous exams, or are expected to do badly in coming exams, not because they lack knowledge of their subject. They are at school, or have been at school. They usually know the subject well enough to pass. Their problem is that they have limited understanding of how to deal with exam questions. These usually require a complete answer in not more than seven hundred words. It needs a good understanding of the writing process to manage this. A student needs to know how to structure an answer, and how to select the appropriate points and facts – and generally how to make the examiner believe that a seven hundred word answer is only the top of a student’s iceberg of knowledge.
From my own experience, I know that examination practice is hard to teach in schools alongside the subject. There is a syllabus to cover, and individual tuition to a dozen or more students is impossible to fit into a crowded schedule.
What I offer, therefore, is examination practice. I can make no promise of success, but my approach is to arrange all teaching around the exam. We study past papers. We look for common themes. We look at strategies for dealing with questions in general and in particular. Given enough time, I usually start by dictating sample answers, and then pick these apart with the student, to see how they might get a high mark. Later, the student writes the answers, and we pick those apart, seeing how they could be improved. Present me with a rush job, and the process has to be shortened. Even so, the approach is similar.
Of course, I need to know the subject, and some teaching is an integral part of the process. But my speciality as a private tutor is to supplement what is taught at school, and to help a student to perform as well as possible in the exam.
Again, no promises. But my approach has been known to take a student from a fail or borderline pass to grades good enough for university entrance, or grades good enough for an upper-class honours degree.
I do my best teaching face-to-face, either in my home or in the student’s. But I have a long experience of on-line tuition. I understand the technology, and I have a first class webcam and superfast broadband.
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