Lee Guffick - Guffick Tuition

04/09/2026

Every September I meet a Year 11 stuck on a grade 6 who has never once been taught a grade 8 topic, and as an examiner I'd say that's the main thing keeping them on a 6.

To be fair to schools, nobody decides this on purpose. Sets are settled early, and somewhere along the line it's assumed the grade 7, 8 and 9 topics are simply too hard for this class. So they never get taught.

The advice instead is one I've heard in plenty of maths departments: get everything right "up to the staples". The actual staples, in the middle of the exam booklet. In other words, get the first half of the paper right and you'll be fine.

Except the grades above 6 live in the second half. Everything past the staples has been quietly written off.

Here's what surprised me when I first started teaching these students the harder algebra: a lot of them can do it. Not all of it, but enough of it, and quicker than anyone expected once someone actually showed them.

And once they can, the paper changes shape. Questions they used to skip become questions they attempt. Attempting is worth method marks. Getting a few right is worth a grade.

That's the jump I see from 6 to 7, and sometimes 8. It isn't the student getting better at the maths they already knew. It's the student finally being shown the maths they were supposedly being protected from.

If your Year 11 works hard and is stuck on a 6, ask them which grade 8 topics they've actually been taught. Quite often the answer is none.

I'll be starting a Year 11 group in the coming weeks. If that sounds like your child, message me.

03/09/2026

As an Edexcel examiner, the Year 13 students I see losing the A* on integration are rarely the ones who never understood it. They're the ones who only met it once.

I'll be honest: nobody understands Year 13 calculus the first time they see it, and that includes the strongest students I've taught.

When does the reverse chain rule apply? Is this one a substitution, or by parts? And the one that takes longest to land: spotting that a trig identity is the only way in.

You can't teach that in a lesson. Students get there by having seen it before, so the second time round they recognise the question instead of decoding it.

Most schools only get one go. The hardest chapters on the course are taught once, at pace, and then it's revision.

So the exam asks a student to choose a method, and all they've ever done is watch one being demonstrated.

The students I've taught who got the A* had nearly always met the calculus twice. Once early, before school needed it. Then again in class, when it clicked. The line I hear most is some version of "it made so much more sense the second time".

Which is why the first week of Year 13 matters more than people think. Whatever your child does this month, aim for one thing: make sure the school lesson isn't the first time they meet the hardest maths on the course.

The second pass is where the A* lives. September is for making sure there's a first.

02/09/2026

I mark A-level maths papers for Edexcel, and the students I most want to see in September are the ones who don't look like they need me yet.

Fifteen students have signed up to my groups this term.

Almost none of them arrived with a problem.

No failed mock. No panicking parent. No "we've tried everything".

Just a Grade 7, 8 or 9 in the bag and a parent who understood something most people work out too late:

The jump from GCSE to A-level maths isn't a step. It's a floor giving way.

By the time the first Year 12 test comes back at a D, three months have gone. Confidence has gone with it. And now the work isn't learning A-level maths. It's undoing the belief that they can't do it.

That's a much harder job. I know because I do both.

The students who start in September never have to be rescued. They just build the foundations properly, week by week, before the assessments start asking questions they can't answer.

Every year I watch families pay for the cure in January that would have cost far less as prevention in September.

The wisest parents don't wait for the evidence. They act on what they already know.

01/09/2026

As an A-level examiner, I can usually tell what term a topic was taught in just from how students handle it in the exam.

The hardest ideas in A-level Maths — the chain rule inside the product rule, the quotient rule, the questions that decide A versus A* — sit near the back of most textbooks.

So most schools reach them just before Easter of Year 13.

The syllabus gets finished on time. Everyone relaxes.

Then study leave starts, and students meet the hardest content in the course with the least time to absorb it.

I run it the other way round.

My Year 13 groups covered the product rule within the product rule this week. Yesterday was a bank holiday Monday — they logged in anyway.

When their schools reach this material in spring, they'll be polishing ground they already know.

Content finished on time is not the same as content learned on time.

31/08/2026

A-Level Maths starts this week, and as an Edexcel examiner the students I worry about most are the ones with a grade 7 who think the hard part is over.

A 7 at GCSE sounds safe. Top 20% of the country. "Good at maths."

But GCSE rewards recognising question types. A-Level assumes your algebra runs on autopilot.

Surds. Indices. Rearranging. Completing the square without thinking about it.

A grade 7 often means scoring around 70% — which leaves real gaps in exactly those skills. And in September the gaps are invisible, because the first chapters feel like GCSE revision.

Then October arrives. Coordinated Geometry is often where putting together several new concepts feels cognitively challenging.

The students who thrive are the ones who spend September rebuilding fluency while everyone else coasts.

If your teenager starts Year 12 this week with a 7, the most valuable thing they can do this month is boring: drill the algebra until it's automatic. Everything new gets built on it.

The grade got them in. It doesn't mean they're ready.

28/08/2026

I mark A-Level Maths papers for Edexcel.

When Year 13 students lose marks, the error is usually algebraic — not calculus.

Which explains what September looks like in my small groups.

Year 13: differentiation. [one real detail from this week's session — a question they wrestled with, a moment that clicked]

Year 12: a recap of grade 8/9 GCSE algebra. Indices, surds, algebraic fractions.

Recapping GCSE content with A-Level students sounds backwards. But that algebra is the load-bearing wall of the whole course. Chain rule, integration, proof — all of it stands on skills from Year 11.

Schools rarely have time for this. The scheme of work has to move.

A small group can slow down for a fortnight in September and bank marks for next June.

Students who find Year 13 hard usually don't have a calculus problem. They have an algebra problem from two years earlier.

26/08/2026

I examine for Edexcel, and the most useful thing in a set of mock results is never the grades.

My Year 13 group formed in June. They gave up Monday and Thursday evenings over the summer — teenagers, in the school holidays, logging on to do maths together.

Last week they sat a full AS paper. Timed, unseen, marked to the real grade boundaries.

Every one of them came back at an A.

But here's what I actually found when I marked the scripts: almost no marks were lost to maths they couldn't do. The losses were calculator answers with no working shown. Rounding before the exact value. A "show that" question with one step assumed instead of written.

In Year 13, that's the entire gap between an A and an A*. Not harder maths — discipline on paper they already understand.

Every parent got the full question-by-question breakdown this week.

September is for closing gaps you can name.

25/08/2026

The first thing I ever achieved in maths was getting moved off the green books and onto the orange ones.
Year 6. Beta Mathematics to Alpha Mathematics. I was really, really pleased with myself.
It did not last.
My secondary school entered every single student for Foundation maths. Everyone. I only discovered a higher tier existed at the end of Year 10.
I was outraged.
So I spent the summer holidays teaching myself a year's worth of higher-tier work.
I came out with an A in GCSE Maths (A* hadn't been invented yet), and a Merit in the extension paper set for the top 2.5% of the ability range.
I mention this because results season always brings back the same feeling.
The student who grafts their way to a Grade 5 has climbed the same hill I did. So has the student who turns a 7 into a 9.
It's very rewarding as a teacher when you see students win their own battles in maths. This Year I've seen GCSE students achieve Grade 5, Grades 7 and 9 and A* in A-level maths and Further Maths and each one of those achievements represented a major victory for the student.

23/08/2026

Some of the students I will worry about this September have just opened a Grade 9 in GCSE Maths.

For some students GCSE Maths can be mastered without ever being properly stuck. Recognise the question type, execute the method, collect the marks. Two years of that produces a 9, and no experience at all of the feeling A-level serves up in week three.

On paper, the first term looks reassuring: indices, surds, quadratics, coordinate geometry. GCSE's greatest hits. In practice they arrive at twice the pace, with the scaffolding gone and far less signposting in the questions. I've seen numerous students hit this wall in Year 12 and find it quite shocking - they have no frame of reference for how to deal with it and it shook their confidence.

Whereas the students who had to fight for their GCSE grade know that feeling and work through it they have developed "mathematical resilience".

The ones who thrive in Year 12 arrive expecting to be stuck, and treat being stuck as the actual work.

22/08/2026

Every results day the same pattern repeats, and it still surprises parents: the first students to arrange support for the next course are the strongest ones.

Within a day of opening their 8s and 9s, several of my GCSE students were set up for A-level Maths in September. Not because something is wrong. Because nothing is, and they intend to keep it that way.

There is a version of tuition that is a rescue service. The January phone call after a grim mock, habits already set, half the course already delivered. I do that work every year, and it is always harder than it needed to be.

The families I rarely worry about treat support the way athletes treat coaching. It goes in place while things are going well, at the exact moment the demands change.

And the demands are about to change: the first term of A-level re-runs GCSE algebra at twice the speed with the scaffolding removed.

After 15 years of Septembers, the clearest predictor I can influence is when support starts.

Strong students do not wait to struggle.

My new Year 12 group starts next week - details below!

Struggling with the jump from GCSE to A-Level Maths? Lee Guffick — former Head of Maths and current A-Level examiner — runs small online groups for Year 12 students. Max 10 students. £110/week. No contracts.