Here's what happens next.
I'll call or message you within 24 hours to arrange a free 30-minute first lesson. There's nothing to prepare — we spend a few minutes on what's been going on, then do real maths together, and I'll tell you straight whether tutoring is the answer. Sometimes it isn't.
If we go ahead: sessions are one to one, online, or in person in Bristol, £30 an hour, pay per session with no minimum commitment. If the first paid session isn't worth it, you don't pay for it. Enhanced DBS checked, and you're welcome to sit in.
Why James
James MacKellar — engineering undergraduate at the University of Bristol, former teaching assistant, and the person who will actually be in the session. There's no agency behind this and no rota of tutors: you speak to James, and James teaches your child.
- Enhanced DBS check, including the children’s barred list.
- The level required to work with children in schools. Certificate available on request, and parents are welcome to sit in on any session.
- He's taught in classrooms, not just passed the exams.
- Two months as a paid teaching assistant in Plymouth schools — a special school and a secondary — doing whole-class support across every subject.
- He's still using this material, at a harder level.
- Maths, Physics and Computer Science are the three subjects an engineering degree runs on. James sat these exams recently enough to remember what was actually confusing about them.
- £30 an hour, and nothing else.
- No agency fee, no registration charge, and nothing you have to commit to. The first lesson is free and you can stop any time.
Free: the study tutor I built for my own degree
Most AI tutors let you mark your own homework, so the same misunderstanding walks into the exam with you. This one marks your work properly, writes down what you got wrong and why, and brings it back a week later to check it stuck.
It's free and open source, it runs on your own machine, and it collects nothing about you. Fair warning: it's a tool you run in a terminal, not an app you open — the page below tells you exactly what it needs before you download it.
Students rarely get stuck because a topic is too hard.
They get stuck because one small thing three chapters back never landed, and everything built on top of it has been wobbling ever since. You can't find that in a classroom of thirty, and a textbook won't tell you where to look. Most of a good tutoring session is finding that one thing.
How the sessions work →Start with a free first lesson.
A short call to work out where the gaps actually are and whether James can help. It's free, there's nothing to commit to, and if he doesn't think tutoring is what you need he'll tell you.