Zakaria Bacha

I am a Mathematics and Statistics student at King's College London, one of the world's leading universities, with A-Level results of A* in Mathematics and A in Further Mathematics. Alongside my academic background, I have extensive tutoring experience working with family, friends, and peers during my time in Sixth Form, and I have invested significant time in studying the psychology of learning — most notably through works such as Make It Stick, which has directly shaped how I structure my lessons.

My approach places conceptual understanding at the centre of everything. I believe that a student who truly understands the 'why' behind mathematics will not need to rely on memorised methods — they will be capable of constructing their own approaches when faced with unfamiliar problems. That is the standard I hold my students to, and the one I work towards in every session.

Each lesson begins with a deliberately challenging opener rooted in prior knowledge. This is not designed to be answered in full — it is designed to expose the boundaries of a student's current understanding and create genuine curiosity about what they do not yet know. From there, I provide structured grounding in the relevant concepts before moving into worked examples, where I place particular emphasis on explaining why a method works rather than simply demonstrating it.

Students then move into independent practice, with carefully selected questions interspersed throughout that test conceptual understanding rather than procedural repetition. Once core material is secured, I introduce more nuanced problems that require students to draw on knowledge from multiple topics simultaneously — blending ideas together in the way that exams and real mathematical thinking demand.

The goal of every session is not for a student to leave knowing what I taught them. It is for them to leave thinking in a way they could not before.