Recently, one of the members of The Extraordinaries Club asked me how I became an academic coach and if I could write a blog post and publish a podcast episode about it. I thought as it's Christmas week, you might quite like a story rather than a ‘how-to'. It's not a straightforward story and I […]

While it's the Christmas holiday and your priorities should rightly be pulling crackers, opening presents and eating turkey you or your child might also have some important academic goals to achieve in these two weeks. I'm going to run through some of the academic priorities you might have right now and explain how I can […]

“How much should you revise…?” is one of the most frequent questions I get asked. Today, I'm going to talk about how much you should revise in the Christmas holidays because no-one wants mock exams in January ruining the Christmas holidays. How much should you revise in the Christmas holidays? The number of hours per […]

Is your child overwhelmed by their studies? Do they have a stack of homework to do, coursework tasks to complete and also feel like they should be revising? In year 13, on top of all that, students often also have their UCAS personal statement to write, and possibly university admissions tests and interviews as well. […]

I have a funny feeling that quite a lot of people, in the last couple of weeks, have just felt like they want the world to stop. I know I have. It's a strange situation to be in when the world has kind of been on hold since March. But, at the same time as […]

Through the autumn and spring term every year, many students and parents ask me how to balance homework and revision. Students in years 11 and 13 find the competing demands of homework and revision particularly difficult to cope with in the build-up to mock exams. In this blog post, I'm going to explain how you […]

Read this shortened version of the conversation I had with Aarti Lodhia to introduce her as an academic coach. Or, use the podcast player above to listen to the full conversation. You can find conversations with all the academic coaches at Life More Extraordinary and find out more about academic coaching here. The official stuff […]

The word ‘blag' has lots of negative connotations. It brings up images of people getting something they don't deserve through deception or guile. However, the best students are the ones who are confident in blagging their exams. This is probably a huge surprise to all the perfectionists out there, and maybe even more of a […]

One of the most important aspects of helping your child reach their academic potential is making education part of your fundamental family values. In this post, I'm going to share 7 signs that your family values education. If you're not doing any of these, don't worry, you can start doing them as soon as you […]

Most GCSE and A-Level students are really bad at revising. They get multiple things wrong about how to revise successfully which leads them to get bored and frustrated, either giving up or getting marks that they're not proud of. In this post, I'm going to talk about seven things GCSE and A-Level students get wrong […]