One to one · Mathematics AA and AI, SL and HL

Twenty per cent of your final Mathematics grade comes from a piece of work with no time limit, no unseen questions and no exam hall. It is the only part of the course you control completely — and it is the part where the gap between what students believe and what the examiners actually write is at its widest.

Most students lose marks in the exploration for reasons that have nothing to do with their mathematics. Personal engagement gets declared rather than evidenced. Reflection ends up in a section at the end. Syllabus content gets explained at length when it should not be explained at all. None of these are hard to fix once you can see them — the difficulty is that almost nobody can see them in their own work.

The Exploration Review is built to change that.

1. I read your exploration. Properly, in full, against all five assessment criteria, with nineteen years of preparing IB candidates and the published subject reports for all four Mathematics courses open beside me.

2. You get a written Criterion Report. Not corrections, and not a mark. For each of the five criteria: what the examiners' own published reports say separates a strong response from a weak one, what your exploration is currently doing, and the specific question you now need to ask yourself about your own work. Written so that the next move is obvious — and so that the next move is yours.

3. We meet, one to one, for sixty minutes. This is where the work happens. We go through the report together, you tell me what you think each criterion is currently evidencing, and I tell you what an examiner reading it cold would see instead. You leave with a clear, prioritised list of what to change — in your words, not mine. The session is recorded for you to revisit.

What this is not, and why that matters

I do not write on your exploration. I do not edit it, annotate it, restructure it, suggest sentences, or hand you a mark. The IB allows you one draft with written feedback and the person who gives that feedback is your own teacher — that is how the qualification is designed to work, and nothing I do interferes with it.

I also ask you to tell your teacher you are doing this. Not because there is anything to hide, but because there isn't. The point of this service is to teach you to read your own work the way an examiner will, and a student who can do that has gained a skill rather than borrowed an advantage.

If you are looking for someone to mark your IA or improve the wording for you, I am not that person, and I would gently suggest that nobody offering it has your interests at heart.

Practical details

£450, one fixed fee, covering the read, the written report, the session and the recording.

Send your exploration at least five working days before the session.

One review per student, per exploration.

Available to any IB Mathematics student — you do not need to be in a mentorship cohort.

Best booked once you have a complete draft and before your school's own draft deadline, so you still have time to act on it.