The British Tutor

My name is Nick Thomas. I am an Eton and Oxford educated British tutor with 20 years experience teaching in London, NYC, and Los Angeles, with clients based all over the world.

I tutor all subjects and all tests, but always by developing the one skill that actually matters: problem-solving.

For too many people, school is nothing more than a tedious, unpaid job, requiring you to learn information that you know you will never use later in life. 

All too often you invest a lot of work and money to achieve that all-important grade, but once that mountain has been climbed, it’s all forgotten about as you gear up for the next big mountain ahead. It’s like having to start from scratch all over again. 

This is not the case if we shift the focus from merely acquiring knowledge – which is only useful in specific situations – to developing problem-solving skills, which will be useful in all situations. And once you leave college, and join the job market, your opportunities and income will be directly linked not to how much you know, but rather to your ability to solve the problems in your chosen field.

Unfortunately, schools almost never teach students how to think. And that is where the real value of a good tutor is. I can help your child learn how to think, how to understand and ultimately how to be efficient, effective and even how to enjoy discovering about the world they live in. 

WHAT DO I TEACH?

I teach most subjects, to all ages (including adults), and am uniquely familiar with all tests across the USA, UK and Europe. I also specialize in numeracy issues, mathphobia, dyscalculia, language-learning and essay-writing. 

Full details regarding my rates, discounts, and packages can be found here.

• American test-prep (SAT, ACT, SSAT, ISEE, PSAT etc)
• British Examinations (Common Entrance, 11+, GCSE, iGCSE, A-level, IB)
• Business and Law tests (GMAT, GRE, LSAT)
• Logic and critical thinking skills (ask me about this… it’s life-changing)
• Mathematics at all levels
• English language and literature at all levels
• Languages (French, German and Latin) for pupils who really can’t get a handle on them.

WHAT DO I DO THAT IS SPECIAL?

I teach problem-solving skills.

Yes, I teach Test Prep, Math, English, Essay-Writing, French, Latin, History, Chemistry, Logic and more… but there is little value in merely studying these subjects if they’re not helping you grow as a person by deepening your thinking skills. 

Every kid wonders – sometimes on a regular basis – why they have to learn some topic or other. Most of the time, we try to convince them that the material itself is really important.

But if we’re honest, adults only use a fraction of the knowledge they acquired at school. The Quadratic Formula is almost certainly never going to be part of your adult life unless you happen to be an engineer. The Ode To A Grecian Urn by John Keats may be a beautiful poem to explore and discuss, but you’ll get by just fine without it. 

The point of learning most of this stuff isn’t that we need it. Hopefully we can appreciate it, and enjoy learning about the world we find ourselves born into. But the value of these studies lies in how every single morsel that we explore allows us to hone our ability to process a new idea, think about it, understand it, appreciate its implications, and draw conclusions from it. 

When you merely “learn”, you end up looking to an authority figure to endorse you, or correct you. But when you understand concepts, you are empowered to become your own authority: you understand why you are right or wrong, and are able to adapt accordingly. This powerful confidence-building is what I teach… no matter which subject we happen to be working on.