Science

Online does not have to mean theoretical. Across the year, a good number of the required practicals are done with household materials.

• From the kitchen cupboard

  Electrolysis with a battery and pencil leads, indicators from red cabbage, density columns, simple circuits and seed germination. The list is sent in advance, and nothing needs buying beyond what most kitchens have.

• Simulations for the rest

  Practicals that genuinely cannot be done at home are worked through with simulations and real recorded footage.

• Written up the examiner’s way

  Every practical is written up as apparatus, method, observation and conclusion — the structure the examiner wants.

Science papers are lost on presentation as often as on knowledge, and presentation is the part that can be taught quickly.

• The usual leaks

  Numerical answers without units, graphs with unlabelled axes, three-mark questions answered in one line, and long answers that never state the conclusion.

• Read the command word

  “State”, “explain” and “evaluate” ask for different answers. From Grade 9, a fixed part of each class goes on reading the question before answering it.

• Count the marks

  One mark, one point, with the answer structured to match what the question is worth. It is unglamorous, and it reliably moves a grade.

Physics and Maths is the pairing families ask for most, and for good reason: most of what goes wrong in Physics from Grade 9 onwards is not Physics.

• It is usually the algebra

  Rearranging a formula, handling indices, reading a gradient off a graph. Maths that was never secure shows up first as “bad at Physics”.

• One plan, not two

  A student sent to two tutors gets each treating the other’s subject as somebody else’s problem. Here the same teacher plans both.

• Fixed where it gets in the way

  A kinematics class can stop for twenty minutes of simultaneous equations when that is what is actually in the way, and the next Maths class uses the same example.

See the Maths curriculum →

Organic Chemistry is where many otherwise strong students decide they are bad at Chemistry — because it is usually taught as a list of reactions, and by Grade 12 the list is enormous.

• Mechanisms, not lists

  We teach what is attacking what, and why, so that a reaction never seen before can be reasoned through rather than recalled.

• Physical and Inorganic too

  The rest of the subject gets the same treatment: understand the behaviour first, then learn the facts that hang off it.

• Numbers drilled on past papers

  The numerical work is practised against real past papers until it is routine.

Biology rewards precision of language more than any other Science, and punishes a paragraph where the examiner wanted a named process.

• The content, in full

  Life processes, genetics, evolution, ecology and biotechnology.

• Say the thing exactly

  A fixed part of each class goes on the precise term — “photosynthesis”, not “the plant makes its food”.

• Diagrams that earn marks

  Diagrams carry marks of their own, so they are drawn, labelled and checked like any other answer.

If your child is deciding between streams, I am happy to spend a class talking it through with them honestly.

• With your child, not about them

  A class spent with the student, looking at what each stream actually involves.

• Enjoyment and ability, separately

  Sometimes the subject a child enjoys and the subject they are good at are not the same one. That is worth saying out loud before the choice is made.