Analysis and Approaches at Standard or Higher Level, one tutor to one student. Paper 1 without a calculator, Paper 2 and Paper 3 with one, and the Exploration that carries a fifth of the final grade.
IB DP Mathematics: Analysis and Approaches is one of two mathematics courses in the IB Diploma Programme, taken at Standard or Higher Level across Year 12 and Year 13. It is the algebraic route: proof, functions, trigonometry, probability and calculus, assessed by written papers plus an Exploration the student writes alone.
The mathematics is the same in all three. What changes is who else is in the room and how the tutor watches the student's pen.
The tutor comes to the home with past papers printed and a markscheme to hand, and the student works on paper in the form an examiner reads.
A shared board plus a camera pointed at the student's own paper, so the tutor follows the working as it is written rather than reading the finished answer.
Students from the same year and the same level work one paper together, so each hears how the others reasoned through the same question.
The Diploma runs across two school years, and the useful entry points are fixed by the calendar rather than by how a term is going.
International schools in Bangkok open the year in August and close it in June, so the choice between AA and AI, and between Standard and Higher, is made months before the first Diploma lesson. This is the term to find out on paper whether the algebra will carry Higher Level.
Subjects:
Focus Areas:
Standard Level keeps the analytic core intact across all five topics. It is assessed over two papers of an hour and a half and 80 marks each, worth 40 per cent apiece, with the Exploration taking the remaining 20 per cent.
Subjects:
Focus Areas:
Higher Level is a different course rather than a faster one. It adds proof by induction and contradiction, complex numbers, vectors in three dimensions, Maclaurin series and differential equations, and it adds Paper 3: an hour spent on two problems that keep unfolding.
Subjects:
Focus Areas:
This is the IB's own division of the course. The lines marked HL are content that Higher Level adds, rather than a harder treatment of the same material.
A session is planned against these topic numbers, so the note you receive afterwards lines up with the school's own scheme of work.
The topic that decides Paper 1, because almost none of it survives contact with a calculator.
Where a graph has to be read, sketched and argued about rather than plotted.
The topic with the widest spread between an exact answer and a decimal one.
The topic where the calculator does the arithmetic and the marks sit in the interpretation.
The largest topic at both levels, and the one Higher Level extends furthest.
Twenty marks written by the student over several months, worth a fifth of the grade at both levels.
Four moments account for most of the requests, and each one wants a different first session.
The first no-calculator assessment usually lands in the opening term, and it is often the first time a confident IGCSE student has been asked for an exact value instead of a decimal.
Recommended:
The Exploration runs alongside five other subjects and is the piece students postpone, because nobody sets it as homework on a Tuesday.
Recommended:
AA or AI, Standard or Higher. The choice is made in the spring, is hard to reverse after the first DP term, and shapes which degree courses stay open.
Recommended:
A student arriving from a Thai national school, or from an IGCSE course that stopped before Additional Mathematics, meets AA notation and IB command terms at the same time as a new language of instruction.
Recommended:
The card below is a specimen of the form itself. Every figure on it is a worked example rather than a record of a real child, since no student in Thailand has sat a session with us so far.
Topic 1 to Topic 5 as the IB numbers them, so the note lines up against the school's own scheme of work.
Show that, hence, find the exact value. Each one carries a rule, and the note says which rule the session was practising.
Which past paper, which question, and what the student's own working would have earned against the published markscheme.
During the Exploration term the note names the criterion being worked on and the student's next step, with the writing left entirely to the student.
Sample Progress Report
IB DP Year 2 · Mathematics AA HL • Specimen · one reporting month
Overall Progress
8 of 12
A full Paper 3 under timed conditions
After the next two sessions
Exact values now handled without reaching for the calculator. Logarithm laws still costing marks in Section B.
Reading solutions off the calculator is secure. Two answers still rounded before the final step.
Loses the thread at the part where the problem turns. One whole Paper 3 problem per session from here.
Criterion E lifted by moving from describing data to modelling it. Reflection is still thin.
None of these is a gap in mathematical ability. Each one is a habit that costs marks a student had already earned.
Why it happens
Paper 1 is sat with nothing on the desk, and it carries 40 per cent at Standard Level and 30 per cent at Higher. A student who has always typed the question in never learned the exact-value route: surds left as surds, logarithm laws used rather than evaluated, a derivative found by rule.
How we fix it
Part of every session runs with the calculator in the bag, from the first week rather than from the mock. The student sits Paper 1 questions in the conditions of Paper 1.
Why it happens
In IB command terms, hence is an instruction: the previous part must be used. An answer that is numerically correct but reached by an independent route earns nothing under that instruction, and students meet this for the first time in a real examination.
How we fix it
Command terms are taught as rules with consequences. Show that means the answer is printed in the question and the marks live entirely in the steps between.
Why it happens
The markscheme awards marks for an attempted method, separately from the answer. A student who writes one line and gets it wrong scores nothing, while a student who shows the substitution and the integral and then slips in arithmetic keeps most of the question.
How we fix it
Working is written out in full and marked in front of the student, so they see which line earned which mark rather than being told that working matters.
Why it happens
Unless a question says otherwise, an answer is given exactly or correct to three significant figures. Rounding at an intermediate step and then quoting three figures produces an answer wrong in the third figure, which loses a mark that had already been earned.
How we fix it
The full value is carried through the calculator and rounded once, at the end. It is a five-minute habit that recovers marks across every paper.
Why it happens
Paper 3 is an hour and 55 marks spent on two compulsory problems, each developing through many parts toward a result. Its difficulty is sustained attention, not extra content, and a student trained on short questions has never held one thread for half an hour.
How we fix it
Paper 3 problems are practised whole and timed, with the session spent on the part where the problem turns rather than on the opening parts that always go well.
Why it happens
Criterion E, worth 6 of the 20 marks, asks for mathematics commensurate with the level of the course. An exploration built on a scatter graph and a line of best fit can be beautifully written and still sit low at Higher Level, because the mathematics in it belongs to an earlier year.
How we fix it
The topic is chosen as a mathematical decision before any writing starts, and the tutor teaches the mathematics the student wants to use while the student does all of the writing.
Why it happens
Thai international programmes run their own admissions. Mahidol University International College asks for SAT Math 600 or ACT Math 25, and applicants arriving without a mathematics score sit MUIC's own mathematics examination. A Year 13 student who assumed the Diploma covered it finds out very late.
How we fix it
The SAT sitting is planned alongside the Diploma rather than after it. Thresholds here were read from the MUIC Regular Applicants page on 18 September 2026, and MUIC updates them, so check that page before you apply.
The seven above are about this course specifically. Nothing here transfers to Applications and Interpretation, which is examined on its own papers with its own habits.
Six commitments, each one tied to how this particular course is marked.
Paper 1 carries 40 per cent at Standard Level and 30 per cent at Higher, and it lends nobody a calculator. That half of the assessment is rehearsed in its own conditions rather than at the end of the year.
The student watches their own working being marked line by line, so they see where a method mark was earned and where a blank line gave one away.
Hence, show that, find the exact value. Each carries an instruction that changes what counts as an answer, and each is taught before it appears in a paper.
The tutor teaches the mathematics and reads the criteria aloud. The student writes every sentence, because the school declares it as their work and that declaration has to be true.
Analysis and Approaches was first examined in 2021. A tutor trained on the courses it replaced will teach content that is no longer assessed and skip content that is.
You receive the topic, the command term, the paper reference and the mark. If the first session does not fit, you are matched with another tutor at no charge.
We have no roll of Thai results to show you, because no lesson has been taught here yet. What can be shown is the test a tutor passes before meeting your child.
A shared board with a camera on the student's paper, which matters more in this course than in most: the marks are in the working, so the tutor has to see the pen rather than the result.
Tutors travel to the home along the corridors where international school families cluster. On the Sukhumvit line that is Watthana. Across toward the river it is Sathon with Bang Rak beside it and Bang Kho Laem below. Out on Rama IX and Ratchada it is Huai Khwang, to the south east Bang Na and Saphan Sung, and to the north Don Mueang. Nonthaburi, Samut Prakan and Pathum Thani are reached on the same basis. The matching follows BTS and MRT lines, because a tutor who cannot be at your door by seven o'clock cannot teach you on a weekday.
Answers that hold for this course specifically. The Applications and Interpretation answers are different, and so are the Cambridge ones.
Standard or Higher. Paper 1, Paper 3, or the Exploration. We will tell you what a first session would look for and what it would cost, before you commit to anything.