The three boards, side by side
AQA 7037 has three papers: Paper 1 (Physical, 2h30, 40%), Paper 2 (Human, 2h30, 40%), and the NEA (20%). Topics are clearly siloed — water cycle and carbon cycle in physical, globalisation and changing places in human — and the essay questions follow predictable patterns. It’s the most teach-and-test-friendly board, which is why most independent schools (Westminster, Eton, KCS, Tiffin) tend to use it.
Edexcel 9GE0 also has three papers, but Paper 3 is explicitly synoptic — students get a resource booklet and have to integrate physical and human concepts to answer. It rewards students who think across topics. Boundaries are similar to AQA but the synoptic paper catches out students who’ve revised topics in isolation.
OCR H481 weights physical content slightly higher and includes a “global connections” debate paper. Coastal landscapes, climate change debates, geopolitics. Strong board for students who already love physical geography. Henrietta Barnett, Habs and a chunk of grammar schools run it.
A good tutor matches the board. Don’t engage someone who “teaches the geography content” generically — ask which board, ask for the most recent paper they’ve worked through with a student, and ask how they’ve graded a 20-mark essay this term.
What an A-Level Geography session actually contains
Sessions run 90 minutes for most A-Level work, sometimes two hours during NEA-write-up phase. The standard structure: 15 minutes case-study recall (low-stakes quiz on five named examples), 30 minutes on a topic with worked examples and recent IPCC or ONS data, 30 minutes essay practice (a 20-mark question, planned and partially written), 15 minutes review against mark scheme.
Case-study drilling is non-negotiable. A tutor builds a personal case-study log with the student — physical column, human column, dated, statistically detailed. By March of Year 13, that log has 25-30 entries. The student can produce, for any essay prompt, two relevant case studies with named statistics in under 30 seconds. That’s what separates a B from an A — not depth of understanding but speed of recall under exam pressure.
Essay practice runs across the year. By December the student has written four full timed essays. By February, eight. By April, twelve, with the last six approaching exam quality (level 4-5 marks). Each essay gets feedback against the actual board mark scheme — not a generic rubric, the real one. Most students see a one-to-two-band jump in essay scores between November and April with steady tutoring.
NEA — where students lose marks they shouldn’t
The Non-Examined Assessment is 60 marks of pure structure. Students choose a fieldwork question (river, coast, urban survey, micro-climate), collect primary data, run statistical tests (Spearman’s rank, Mann-Whitney, chi-square depending on data type), and write 3,000-4,000 words.
The standard mistakes: a question that’s too broad (“how does the Wye change downstream?”) rather than focused (“to what extent does the cross-sectional area of the River Wye between Hay-on-Wye and Hereford correlate with discharge?”). A sample size that’s too small (n<15 means most stats tests are unreliable). A literature review that cites only Wikipedia and one A-Level textbook. Evaluation that’s superficial — students write “my method had limitations” without naming which, why, and how a future investigation would mitigate them.
A tutor cannot write any part of the NEA. They can: review the question for focus, advise on appropriate stats tests, read draft sections and flag missing components against the mark scheme, push the student on weak evaluation. A four-session NEA package (around £200-£300) typically saves a grade. Schools moderate, then the board moderates the school’s marks — sloppy NEAs get adjusted down, sometimes brutally.
Fees, scheduling, and what a normal Year 13 looks like
Online A-Level Geography tutors charge £40-£60 an hour for experienced graduates, £55-£75 for ex-examiners or PGCE-qualified specialists. London in-person rates run £55-£85. A typical Year 13 student runs 25 sessions through the academic year (£1,000-£1,500 total) plus 4 NEA sessions (£200-£300). Total: around £1,200-£1,800 for the year.
TheTutorLink lists tutors at 5% commission with a free trial session — for a £50/hour tutor that’s £2.50 to the platform per session. Tutorful and Superprof take 20-25% of the same hour, which is why tutors there often quote higher to compensate. If you’re booking 25 sessions, the platform commission gap matters: 5% on £1,250 is £62.50; 25% is £312.50. Multiply across two children and three years and it’s a meaningful figure.
Most students start in September of Year 13 and run weekly to early May, with a two-week revision intensive in the Easter holidays. Past-paper marathons in late April, full timed mocks under exam conditions. Students who follow that pattern and put in the case-study recall work consistently land their target grade. The ones who don’t — who skip the case-study log, who write three essays not twelve, who leave the NEA till March — usually drop a grade from prediction. Tutoring helps but doesn’t substitute for the work.