About Mindful Tuition
Calm, structured tuition that helps children feel capable, focused and ready.
At Mindful Tuition, we offer calm, structured one-to-one tuition for children aged 8–11 preparing for grammar and independent school entrance exams across Cheshire and Greater Manchester.
Based in Wilmslow and Sale, we specialise in 11+ preparation — but our approach goes beyond exam technique. We make every lesson mindful, engaging, and genuinely enjoyable, building both skills and confidence so that children feel capable, focused, and supported throughout their exam journey.
Using trusted materials such as CGP and Bond, alongside optional access to Mindful Plus, we create a personalised path for each child. Lessons build core knowledge in English, maths, verbal reasoning, and non-verbal reasoning — all while nurturing the self-belief that makes children exam-ready.
Our tutors are experienced, warm, and patient. We keep things calm and clear, so children can learn without pressure and with growing confidence.
Hi, I'm Ria Dunn, founder of Mindful Tuition and a specialist 11+ tutor.
I hold a Master's degree in English Literature and also studied Education, combining a love of language with a strong understanding of how children learn.
I created Mindful Tuition because I wanted to offer something I felt was missing—a place where academic success is supported by emotional wellbeing. The 11+ journey can feel overwhelming for both children and parents and I believe children achieve their best when they feel calm, confident, and supported. Today, I'm proud to work alongside a team of tutors who share these same values.
Over the years, I've helped many children gain places at grammar and independent schools across Cheshire and Greater Manchester. Alongside strong teaching and effective exam preparation, I focus on building confidence, resilience, and a genuine belief in each child's ability.
Outside of tutoring, you'll usually find me spending time with my daughter, Ophelia. Becoming a parent has given me an even greater appreciation of how important it is for children to feel understood, encouraged, and able to enjoy learning.
Nathan Scott — Founder, Mindful Tuition
I should say at the outset that the 11+ industry is mostly ghastly, and I say that as a fully paid-up member of it. It smells of laminated desperation. It is franchises in business parks with names like Excellia, promising to unlock your child's potential the way a bailiff promises to unlock your front door. I have spent years trying to be the exception, and I'll let you judge how that's going.
The facts, briefly, because you'll want them and I'd rather get them over with: top of my year at Edge Hill, distinction, a Master's, a teaching qualification — the full trousseau. I've written a great many educational books; someone recently used the word "prolific," which I've decided to take as a compliment, though it's also what they say about weeds. I grew up in Rossendale, which teaches you early that nobody is coming to hand you anything, and I have found this to be the single most useful qualification I hold.
I write the books on one principle, which took me an embarrassingly long time to learn: most educational writing is a man shouting directions at you in a language you don't speak. A complicated idea is almost always a simple one that somebody has dressed up to feel important, and the child concludes — children being ruthless logicians — that the problem must be them. It is never them. I have made it my life's work to be the person walking alongside, pointing things out, and if that sounds modest, try doing it at nine o'clock on a Saturday morning with a child who has decided fractions are a personal insult.
Because here's what the 11+ actually does, and nobody warns you: it turns kitchens into examination halls and Sunday mornings into siege warfare. Sensible, loving parents start whispering "non-verbal reasoning" in their sleep. My job — my whole job, really — is to walk into that hysteria and open a window. Calm down. Here's the plan. This is doable. And then, some weeks in, comes the moment I do all of it for: a nine-year-old discovers they were clever all along, and the look on their face is worth more than every league table ever printed. I'd do the job for that look. Don't tell the parents; they'd stop paying me.
The rest you can probably guess. I listen to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Johannes Brahms and The Fall, which I'm told is a record collection with a duelling scar. There are cats, who supervise everything and remain the only honest critics I have. There's a small team too — people considerably nicer than me, which was the plan all along.
If you take one thing from this page, take this, because it's the only thing I actually know: the exam was never the product. The product is a child who walks into that hall in September believing they belong there. Everything else is stationery.