Online IB Maths & Physics Tutor with a PhD in Physics: lessons and exam preparation in your time zone

When the lesson happens in your time zone

Italy is on Central European Time, one hour ahead of London and six or seven hours behind Singapore and Hong Kong, depending on the season. That shapes the day. A nine o'clock lesson in Italy is three or four in the afternoon in Singapore and Hong Kong, right after school; an early morning in Italy is the late afternoon in Sydney or Melbourne. The Gulf is two or three hours ahead, so an Italian late afternoon is an evening slot in Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Doha. Switzerland, Germany and most of Europe share my clock. Daylight saving moves on different dates in different countries, and in a few weeks a year the gap shifts by an hour; the booking calendar already shows each slot in your local time, so nobody has to do the arithmetic.

• Singapore, Hong Kong, China: Italian mornings, your afternoons
• Australia and New Zealand: early Italian mornings
• Gulf: Italian afternoons, your evenings
• Switzerland and Europe: same clock, after school

May or November: two exam sessions, one plan

Most IB schools sit the final exams in the May session, with results in early July. Schools that follow the southern-hemisphere calendar, in Australia and elsewhere, sit them in November, with results in early January, and the November session is also where many resits happen. The plan is built backwards from whichever session your child sits, and from the school's own internal deadlines: the draft of the Maths exploration and of the Physics investigation, the mocks, the date the school sends predicted grades. Those dates matter more than the exam itself, because a university offer is made on the predicted grade, months before the real paper.

Exam preparation is a different kind of lesson

Earlier in the Diploma a lesson rebuilds concepts. In the months before the exam it changes shape. We work on real past papers under the real time limit, then read the official mark scheme line by line to see where the method marks and the accuracy marks actually sit. Every lost mark goes into an error log, sorted by cause: a concept that is not there, a technique that breaks under pressure, a misread command term, a calculator slip, time running out. After three or four papers the log shows a pattern, and the remaining weeks go on the two or three causes that cost the most. In Maths the papers differ in kind (AA Paper 1 without a calculator, AA Paper 2 and all AI papers with one, Paper 3 at Higher Level), so timing is practised paper by paper. In Physics the multiple-choice section, the data-based questions and the long structured questions each need their own pace.

• Past papers under real timing, marked on the official mark scheme
• An error log sorted by cause, not by topic
• Timing strategy for each paper, not one for all
• Command terms: what "show that", "hence" and "explain" ask for

The last eight weeks

Eight weeks before the first paper there is no time left to rebuild a whole course, and trying to is the most common mistake. What works is narrower. Two full papers a week in the subject that needs it, done at home under exam conditions and taken apart in the lesson. One topic a week from the error log, the one with the most marks behind it. A short list of formulas and results the student must know without the booklet. And, in the last ten days, nothing new: only papers already seen, redone faster. Students who follow this usually gain more from the timing and from the mark scheme than from new content, which is why the work is worth doing even when the start is late.

What online changes, and what it does not

The student writes on the same whiteboard I do, so I see the working as it happens, which is where most errors are. Nothing is lost between lessons: the full board is sent after each one, and the family area keeps the plan, the error log and the papers in one place. What does not change is the content. The syllabus, the papers and the mark schemes are the same in Milan, Dubai and Sydney, and so is the work.