Online tuition for Class 10, with a teacher who already teaches this year.

CBSE conducts board examinations at Class 10 and Class 12 only, so this is the first external examination of your child's school life. In most subjects the assessment is split between a written paper and internal assessment carried out by the school, which means a portion of the final result is earned across the year rather than in March. Students who ignore internal assessment because "the board exam is what counts" give away marks that were the easiest ones available.

The board has also moved Class 10 to two examination sittings in a year - a main exam and a second opportunity, with the first attempt compulsory - rather than the single annual paper that parents remember. The detail of how the two sittings interact, which subjects are covered and what the deadlines are is set by CBSE circular and has changed between cycles, so please confirm the current position from CBSE's own notification for your child's year rather than from any summary, including this one.

The syllabus itself has also been revised in recent years and topics have been removed as well as added. This matters practically: an older guidebook, an inherited set of notes or a coaching handout from a few years ago may contain material your child does not need and omit material they do. Work from the current syllabus your school is following, and check the sample paper the board publishes for your year.

None of this is a reason to panic. It is a reason to be precise, which is a much calmer thing to be.

CBSE offers Class 10 students two mathematics papers: Mathematics Standard and Mathematics Basic. Both cover the same syllabus and are taught in the same class; the papers differ in how demanding they are. Basic exists for students who do not intend to take mathematics further, and it is a legitimate choice rather than a lesser one.

What makes it consequential is the downstream effect: choosing Basic generally closes off Mathematics in Class 11. CBSE has at times permitted students who pass Basic to attempt the Standard paper at the compartment examination in order to regain eligibility, but the exact rule is set by the board and the school applies it, so confirm the current position with your school before the choice is registered rather than afterwards.

Our part in that decision is to give you the evidence rather than an opinion dressed as one. By the middle of Class 10 we can tell you how a student performs on full-length Standard papers under time, which topics cost them marks and whether the gap is closing. A student who is two marks short and improving is in a different position from one who is thirty marks short and static, and those two students should not be given the same advice.

What we will not do is push a student towards Standard because it sounds better, or towards Basic because it is easier to teach. A student who takes Standard and struggles through Class 11 mathematics they never wanted has not been well served, and neither has one who took Basic at fifteen and found at seventeen that it had quietly closed a door.

Class 10 Science covers chemical reactions, acids, bases and salts, metals and non-metals and carbon compounds; life processes, control and coordination, reproduction and heredity; and light, the human eye, electricity and magnetic effects. It is a wide paper, and the students who do well on it are rarely the ones who know the most.

They are the ones with three habits.

• Units on every line. Electricity and light numericals declare their own errors the moment the units stop making sense. A student who carries units catches most mistakes without being told, and one who does not will keep making the same error invisibly.
• Diagrams drawn, not imagined. Ray diagrams, circuit diagrams and biological structures earn marks in their own right, and a hurried sketch loses them. Drawing the diagram also solves a surprising number of questions before any calculation starts.
• Answer length matched to the marks. A three-mark question wants three creditable points, not a paragraph containing them somewhere. Students who write everything they know run out of time in the second half of the paper and lose marks they had already earned elsewhere.

The other thing worth saying plainly: Chemistry equations and Physics numericals are the two areas students postpone, and postponing them is why they become frightening. We schedule both early in the year for exactly that reason, when there is still time for them to become ordinary.

A large share of the Class 10 enquiries we receive arrive after the half-yearly results, and a smaller share arrive in December. It is worth being straight about what each of those can achieve.

Starting at the beginning of Class 10 means the Class 9 foundations can be repaired properly alongside the new syllabus. Starting after the half-yearly means choosing: the highest-value topics get rebuilt and the rest get exam technique. Starting in December means exam technique, past papers, and targeted work on the topics where the marks are most recoverable. All three are worth doing. They are not the same thing, and we will tell you which one you are buying.

What we do not do is guarantee marks or ranks. No honest tutor can, because the paper is set by someone else and sat by your child. What we can commit to is a teacher who has taught this board and this class before, full-length papers under real timing, a logged record of the mistakes your child actually makes, and a straight answer when you ask how it is going.

One more thing, said gently. A fifteen-year-old carrying board anxiety usually cannot say so at home, because the people they would say it to are the ones who seem most worried. If your child has gone quiet this year, that is worth noticing before the marks are. A group class helps here more than parents expect - it turns out to be reassuring to discover that other students find quadratic equations difficult too.