Pick the board first, the tutor second
The single biggest mistake we see is families booking a “GCSE Physics tutor” without telling them the exam board. AQA Paper 1 covers Energy, Electricity, Particle Model and Atomic Structure — six-mark questions there tend to be application-of-formula plus an explain. Paper 2 covers Forces, Waves, Magnetism and (for triple) Space — and the maths gets heavier. OCR Gateway interleaves those topics differently and asks more synoptic questions. Edexcel includes a chunkier emphasis on units conversion and standard form. The required practicals are the same in spirit but the mark scheme wording differs — AQA wants the word “control variable” almost every time. A tutor who teaches AQA can teach Edexcel, but they’ll need to spend the first session re-reading the spec, and you’re paying for that.
So when you message a tutor through us, the first line should be: “AQA Combined, Trilogy” or “OCR Gateway Separate Physics, target 8”. You’d be surprised how many parents skip that and then blame the tutor four weeks in when the wrong textbook is on the desk. The good tutors will ask. The cheap ones often don’t.
What a sensible weekly session looks like
The pattern that works for almost everyone: 50 minutes of past-paper-question drilling, 10 minutes setting homework. Not a lesson on a topic. Not “let’s go through Chapter 7”. A printed AQA 2023 Paper 1 question on the desk, the student attempting it cold, the tutor asking “what’s the question actually asking you to do?” then walking through the mark scheme.
The reason this beats the textbook approach is that GCSE Physics marks are lost on phrasing more than on physics. A student who knows that current is conserved at a junction will still lose three marks on the six-marker if they don’t structure the answer with named components. That’s coachable in eight weeks. Re-teaching the whole spec isn’t.
A good tutor will also do these things:
- Mark the homework before the session, not during it
- Send a one-page summary of what was covered, with the next paper-question reference
- Push back when a parent asks for “more recap” instead of more practice
- Tell you honestly when the gap is bigger than tuition can fix in time
Where it goes wrong — and the cases that worked
The cases that fail tend to share one feature: the tutor is teaching, not exam-coaching. We had a Year 11 at a Surrey grammar last winter on Edexcel, mock grade 5, target 8. First tutor was a PhD physicist, lovely person, walked her through Feynman-level explanations of electromagnetism. Mock 2: still a 5. We swapped her to a working A-level teacher who’d marked Edexcel papers for three years. Same student, same number of weekly hours. June result: 8. Nothing changed except the focus moved from “understanding” to “what does the mark scheme reward”.
The other classic failure is over-tutoring. A Year 10 doing two sessions a week from October when mocks are in March is being trained to need a tutor, not to sit a paper alone. One session a week, with real homework, is almost always enough. If the tutor is recommending more without a specific weakness to address, push back.
Pricing, free trial and how the 5% fee changes things
Tutors on our platform set their own rates. Realistic GCSE Physics ranges right now: £25–£35 for a strong second-year undergraduate doing a physics or engineering degree, £35–£55 for a working secondary teacher, £55–£90 for the senior end (head of department, examiner). London skews £5–£10 higher across all bands. The free 20-minute introductory call is non-negotiable — every tutor on TheTutorLink offers one, and you should use it. Get the student on the call, not just the parent. Watch how the tutor explains a single past-paper question. If they spend the trial selling, walk away.
The 5% platform fee matters because the alternative is paying 20–25% to Tutorful, MyTutor or SuperProf. On £40/hr weekly for 30 weeks that’s a difference of around £180–£240 a year — money that either stays with you or stays with the tutor, neither of which is a bad outcome. We don’t take card fees on top, and there’s no monthly subscription.