Testimonials and case studies
“Alex has tutored my eldest son, Max, who is in Year 11, for the past 5 years in both maths and science. Max has successfully reached tops sets in both subjects, and is taking Triple Science this GCSE year. Alex has tutored my younger son, Will, who is in Year 8, for the past 2 years in maths.
During that time, I’ve gotten to know Alex well and can thoroughly vouch for his character and abilities. He is reliable, trustworthy and gets on easily with all personalities and levels of ability. The boys find him easy to relate to; he is a great role model, a gifted teacher and strong leader.”
— Karen, London
“Alex’s lessons are so different from school - it’s like he’s shooting knowledge directly into your brain”
— Silas, 13 High-school maths and programming student, Hong Kong
“I have worked with Alex for many years and he consistently delivers great results, is an inspiration to his students and is a thoroughly good chap.”
— Andras Kapuvari, Education Consultant, Worldwide
“Hi Alex!! Hope that you are well! I just wanted to let you know that I got four A* ! I can’t believe that my UK education journey is coming to an end when I feel like it started with our lessons together!”
— Maria-Julia , Monaco, after receiving her results
Homeschooling and worldwide travel
I was incredibly fortunate to spend a year travelling as the tutor and teacher for a family aboard their yacht and between their homes. I had three students to look after with radically different needs: the eldest needed stimulating mathematics and programming work during the holidays in which he returned from boarding school, the middle child was preparing for his 13+ scholarship entrance exam into one of the UK’s top schools, and the youngest was continuing his preparatory school syllabus. I created a learning experience that used the sights and scenes around us as much as possible: students studied erosion when surveying Burmese islands from under and over water, compared ecosystems between New Mexican desert plateaus and temperate southern England, contrasted Balinese gamelan to Western symphony orchestras, and (roughly) calculated the size of the earth using the distance to a boat on the horizon on a flat sea. I worked closely with the family to plan and create a stable learning environment, and worked well with the crew, staff and the family’s nanny who was absolutely invaluable to helping the teaching go well.
All three students resumed their education a year later in great shape and the middle student entered the excellent school of his choice.
Intensive exam preparation - Turkey
I have often been called in at the last minute to quickly bring up a student’s grades in the weeks or months before an important examination. A student was having difficulty with GCSE science and wanted to reach the higher grades he was capable of, but was feeling the pressure of the other subjects and was no longer studying in an effective manner. I flew in and helped him quickly accomplish the following tasks:
Assessing which areas of work needed greater study, the degree of competence to which they had been learned, and helping to prioritise which topics made sure to approach low-hanging fruit first.Teaching effective memorisation techniques such as flashcards, active repetition, and iterated summarising to integrate large amounts of information quickly into the long-term memory.Helping the student to understand the most difficult aspects of GCSE science such as genetics, evolution, atomic theory, balancing chemical equations and mathematical physics.
Student with anxiety and poor executive functions
I began working with a student purely to help with his mathematics and science work but quickly realised that the root of his problems lay in a mixture of poor executive functions and anxiety to do with the Covid pandemic and increasing school work. I brought up his confidence and lessened his anxiety by laser-focusing on what particular skill until mastery was achieved. This foundation of almost automatic reliable skills in arithmetic and algebra gradually lifted the cognitive burden and made it possible for his to learn more material and even start enjoying maths.
I was avuncular in teaching, but strict in my expectations when it came to lesson preparation and planning. I provided my students with simple and effective methods of planning such as printed timetables, check-lists and bag-packing. Gradually, these became unconscious habits which compound with time into a much calmer, long-term thinking. I don’t take all the credit for this development myself, but I am very proud to have been part of it.
Drone photography and history project
Over a long summer a student came to me from an educational consultant who wanted to combine a nascent interest in drone photography with his long-term interest in military history. After teaching him how to fly a drone safely, we scouted out the locations of WW2 gun batteries and other ruined fortifications as well as the war cemetery. I taught him how to plan, compose and edit a portfolio that he combined with historical research. The result was a fantastic portfolio and an accompanying modernist sculpture created by pasting on our black and white photographs onto a folded angular polyhedron. I thoroughly enjoyed taking such a project through from inception to production and finally to evaluation.
