The levels we cover
Maths goes wrong in different ways at different stages, and the fix is rarely “more exercises”. What follows is where families in Monaco most often ask for help.
Lower secondary — Years 7 to 9, collège
Fractions, negative numbers, proportionality and the first algebra. This is where small gaps become permanent: a student who is unsure why you can multiply both sides of an equation will struggle with everything built on top of it.
Upper secondary — GCSE, IGCSE, seconde to terminale
Functions, derivatives, sequences, probability, vectors. The jump here is that answers must be justified, not just found. Students who could always “see” the answer often stumble the first time they are asked to write down why.
IB Diploma and A-Level
Analysis & Approaches, Applications & Interpretation, and A-Level Pure and Mechanics. Command terms matter as much as content: show that, hence, justify and determine each expect a different kind of answer.
University and preparatory classes
First-year analysis, linear algebra, complex numbers and probability, plus the French classes préparatoires programme. Tell us the module and we will confirm coverage before committing.
A worked example: the step that usually breaks
Solve 3(x − 2) = 5x + 4
3x − 6 = 5x + 4
−6 − 4 = 5x − 3x
−10 = 2x, so x = −5
Most students can reproduce these lines. Far fewer can answer the question that matters: why are you allowed to move the 3x across? The answer — because you subtracted 3x from both sides, and an equation stays true if you do the same thing to both sides — is the whole idea. A student who holds that idea can solve equations they have never seen. A student who has only memorised the shape of the lines cannot.
So in a lesson we ask for the reason before we accept the answer, then set a second equation that looks different but tests the same understanding.
How you will know it is working
Marks are a lagging indicator: they arrive weeks after the learning did or did not happen. Three earlier signals are more useful.
- Your child can restart a stalled exercise. Not finish it perfectly — restart it. That means they have a way in, which is what was missing before.
- They can explain a step out loud. If they can justify why an operation is legitimate, the knowledge is portable to new problems.
- They spot their own mistake before you do. Checking a solution by substituting it back is a habit, and it is teachable.
Our tutors report on these after each block of lessons, so you are not waiting for the next report card to know whether the work is landing.
Taught in the language of the syllabus
Notation is not universal. Decimal separators, the naming of intervals, whether a trapezium is a trapezoid, how a derivative is written — these differ between the French and Anglophone traditions, and a student assessed in English who has only ever been taught in French will lose marks for reasons that have nothing to do with mathematics. Luckas, who completed his MSc at Imperial College London after French preparatory classes, teaches on either side of that line.
