February Half Term Revision Course 2026
Let’s face it not everyone loves maths. However, if you are doing your GCSE’s you don’t have any choice, you have to tackle maths whether you love or hate it or perhaps are just indifferent to it.
We are here to help. Founded in 1997 OXSS has taught GCSE maths on every course we have ever run. Through the covid pandemic we taught everything online and now we also offer year-round online tuition for GCSE maths and pretty much everything else!
We have over a hundred tutors who are willing to teach maths from 1st year GCSE through to degree level. Our tutors will be familiar with both ends of the love-hate spectrum of students and will tailor their approach accordingly. For many students GCSE maths is just something they need to “get out of the way”. Conversely, given that A level maths is one of the most popular options, there are obviously students who love maths, or at least accept they need it.
As noted above we have offered GCSE Maths for very nearly thirty years. We have helped thousands of students get through their maths studies. Every year close to one million students sit GCSE or IGCSE maths. IGCSE maths is a little different and dealt with on our IGCSE Maths revision course page.
Maths is one of the subjects that is often taught in groups. We have a maximum group size of 6 so even a full class is never particularly big. As is the case with all subject tuition the tutorials are student-led – the students in the classes determine what is covered. For further information on how this works in practice see our Student-led Revision Courses page.
Given that there is a common curriculum for GCSE maths we do occasionally group across exam boards, though for convenience we do split groups into exam boards where possible. We also split groups between higher and foundation level and also by year, i.e. first or second year of GCSE. Obviously, a first-year student tackling foundation level would not benefit from being grouped with second year higher level students. If you are curious about the common curriculum, click here for the government website detailing the approach to maths education.
Within the space of a day or day and half long course we cannot cover the entire syllabus. With input from the students in the group the tutor will tackle problem areas. Also, of course, the tutor will know from experience the types of questions/topics students generally struggle with. Given the student-led approach we can cover key problem areas within the scope of the course.
In short you can just revise at home, and in all honesty most of your revision will be done at home. However, we are here to help you through problem areas.
It’s easy enough to practice things you are already reasonably good at, the issues occur with the bits of the syllabus you struggle with. Working through things you are genuinely stuck with can take absolutely ages. However, with the assistance of a tutor in a small group it may only take a few minutes.
Sometimes the penny will only drop with an outside nudge. One of the nice things about teaching GCSE maths at OXSS is that there will be “Oh, I see it now” moments. Sometimes a different teacher with a different approach or perspective can make a big difference.
Yes and no.
Given that the internet will provide you with “proof” that the earth is flat or that the moon landings were faked, then some level of judgement is required when Googling. There in lies the problem, if you are not particularly confident about something in GCSE Maths how are you supposed to judge that the internet’s answer is correct? There are “safe” resources:
There’s some good stuff on YouTube, though best to have someone else check it first.
Unfortunately, TikTok and AI tend to be somewhere on the spectrum from not particularly helpful through to just wrong or completely mad. If you’re in the “ChatGPT is OK” camp just have a look at the image below – hopefully it is just obviously not helpful.
The advice that is correct is either weirdly presented or surrounded by oddities such as “pasisage” or the continual insistence that “expanding brackets” is essential. Expanding brackets is a useful skill, but it is just one among several and doesn’t need repeating three times.
I am not sure that knowing the “The clock in exams ticks like a dramatic villain” is an encouraging piece of news. Some incredible progress has been made in AI, but it seems that what is freely available can be wildly inaccurate. To be fair, I can see what the AI is getting at in this case, but it is much more artificial than intelligent.
