Specialist Tutor for Early Year Education

As a mother of two, I have dedicated a lot of my time to the 4+ assessments, ensuring my children got into the school of our choice. I learned the system, identified the different assessment models, and have dedicated my life to helping parents navigate the uncertainty and challenges that the 4+ assessment poses. I am DBS checked with experience working with younger children. I work closely with parents, advising on the best schools to apply to, along with how to prepare for the 4+ assessments. I focus the activities around your child without a classroom approach to tutoring, as my belief is that schools can quickly identify a tutored child, rather than an all-rounded child.

All tutoring is done in a safe home environment, where your child is tutored through play, improving on areas where they need help. This is combined with activities you can do with your little one at home, ensuring consistent help in preparation. Giving your child one hour a day of the activities I recommend will make a big difference when they have their 4 plus assessment. In early years, traditional learning doesn't work. The 4 plus assessment is not designed to evaluate academic achievement, which is why my tutoring focuses on a hands-on approach with play based and developmental learning.

Your child starts learning from the moment they are born, they learn to recognise faces, voices, and sounds, but preparing for the 4+ assessment requires tailored tuition, designed with your child in mind. I do not force children to take part in tutoring sessions, but encourage them through a fun-centric approach, where children see the session as play time, rather than learning.

Every new child I get to work with goes through a gentle assessment, this helps me understand your child's letter recognition, phonics, number sense, fine motor skills, and listening, and concentrating abilities. I look for confidence, pace, accuracy, and methods, not simply the right or wrong answers. This helps me identify any gaps your child may need help with, giving them a fun way of learning, that prepares them with confidence for their assessment.

During play activities, I observe your child, seeing what tasks your child avoids or rushes through, signs of boredom or frustration, along with their strengths, and weaknesses. Through observation, I am able to identify where children struggle, this can be difficulty with instructions or memory recall, giving me a clear indication on what needs to be focused on. Every tutoring sessions is tailored to your child's development and progress, helping them prepare for the day of their assessment.

Supporting Families Applying to Independent Schools

At 4 Plus Tutor, I spent years preparing my own children for their 4+ assessments with great success. Over the years, my tutoring business has grown organically through referrals. Today, I have extensive experience helping children gain places in well-known independent and grammar schools. For parents, I know what an important step this is in your child's future. With every school using their own 4+ assessment, they are all looking for the same things. They want to ensure your child is ready to learn in a school environment, functioning as part of a class.

4+ Assessments often include play-based assessments, that are used to see how your child behaviours naturally. This is free play time where your child is encouraged to play with toys, blocks, puzzles, and role-play materials. It often includes small groups to observe collaborative play, along with creative activities, such as drawing or threading beads. All schools observe communication, creativity, confidence, independence, social interaction, turn-taking, and problem-solving.

These assessments also often include one-on-one teacher tasks, which are short, individual tasks, where they identify your child's early learning skills, such as identifying letters, shapes, sounds, colours, and numbers. It may include simple counting activities, matching games, picture sequencing, and following instruction. This is done to observe language development, receptive and expressive communication, focus, numeracy foundations, along with teachability.

4 Plus Tutor also helps your little one prepare for small group activities, such as story time with follow-up questions, group games, or craft activities, along with fine motor skills tasks, such as drawing and colouring within lines, holding a pencil, or tracing shapes. While not all the schools do literacy checks, many of the schools do assess letter recognition, initial sounds, and simple phonics, along with listening and answering. They focus on familiarity, along with confidence, independence, curiosity, engagement, and emotional regulation.

Some schools also conduct parent interviews. This is a short parent meeting to discuss your child's routine, personality, strengthens, and development. This may include discussing your home environment and values. Don't worry this is not an assessment of you as parents, it's a chance for the school assessors to decide if your child is a good fit for the school.

4 Plus Tutor focuses on school readiness, building essential foundations expected in Reception, behaviours and social skills your child needs in the classroom, play groups, and during structured activities. My 4+ tutoring style helps to strengthen communication and literacy skills, improving vocabulary, story comprehension, speaking in full sentences, and confidence when expressing ideas, essential when making friends, understanding lessons, and talking to the teachers.