Dan Finlay
Maths Lead
About
Dan has been part of SaveMyExams since July 2021 and he is now the subject lead for the Maths team.
Before working at SaveMyExams, Dan worked as a teacher for 8 years whilst tutoring and exam marking during any spare time.
Dan particularly enjoyed working with Sixth Form students who were resitting their GCSE Maths. He always felt like a proud parent on results day!
When Dan first started teaching at a Sixth Form college in Leeds, he taught himself A Level Accounting so that he could teach it in the following years.
Dan grew up in a deprived area in the North East of England. Dan relied on good revision resources to get good grades at GCSE. Dan was motivated to work in education after being impressed with the dedication shown by his teachers to provide him with as many opportunities as possible.
After completing his GCSEs, Dan attended a summer school at Duke University in North Carolina. It was there where Dan developed a passion for maths whilst studying Precalculus.
Dan also attended a Sutton Trust summer school at the University of Oxford during his A Levels. He would fully recommend this to prospective Oxbridge students as it gave him insight about life at Oxford.
Outside of work, Dan enjoys training at the gym and spending time with his dogs.
Education
Dan graduated from the University of Oxford in 2012 with a First in Mathematics.
Dan completed his PGCE at the University of York in 2013.
Expertise
Dan spent 8 years as a teacher working in a mixture of settings ranging from an all girls school in Oxfordshire to Sixth Form colleges in West Yorkshire.
Dan taught A Level Maths, Further Maths & Accounting as well as GCSE Maths. Dan loved teaching the Statistics modules as part of Further Maths, his favourite topic to teach was Hypothesis Testing.
Dan’s specialist subjects at University were algebraic topics (e.g. Group Theory & Lie Algebras) and numerical topics (Numerical Linear Algebra & Numerical Analysis).
Dan marked A Level Maths exams for Edexcel (Pure, Further Pure & Decision).
Top revision quote for students
“Maths questions are like solving a jigsaw puzzle! You have all the pieces, you just need to put them together!”
