What a history tutor actually does
Most parents picture a history tutor as someone who recaps the lesson. The good ones don’t. Recap is the cheapest part. A history tutor earns their fee by reading a student’s essay before the session, marking it the way the examiner will, and walking through the rewrite in front of the student. That’s where the grade moves. AQA’s Paper 1 markschemes are public — any tutor worth £35 has read them, knows the difference between a Level 3 and Level 4 answer, and can show your child the exact sentence pattern that crosses the boundary.
A tutor for GCSE Elizabeth I, for example, won’t just teach the Spanish Armada. They’ll rehearse the question stem (“How convincing is Interpretation A…”) until the student stops describing and starts evaluating. They’ll point out that “this is supported by…” beats “I agree because…” every time. For A Level, they’ll force essay plans before the essay — most students skip that step and lose 6–8 marks they didn’t have to.
The other job is filling content gaps. Schools cut corners on the second half of the spec, every year, because of timetable pressure. Weimar Germany gets four weeks; the Nazi consolidation gets two. By March, half the cohort can’t tell you who Papen was. A tutor closes that gap fast — usually with a one-pager per topic the student keeps and revisits.
What to ask in the first session
Don’t waste 60 minutes on introductions. Ask the tutor four things in the first ten minutes: which exam board, which paper, which topic, and how they’ll mark essays between sessions. If they can’t answer in the same vocabulary as the markscheme, find someone else.
- Board match. AQA, Edexcel, OCR and WJEC don’t share questions. Confirm the tutor teaches yours weekly.
- Paper specifics. AQA GCSE Paper 1 is period study + wider world depth study. AQA Paper 2 is thematic study + British depth study. They need different techniques.
- Marking turnaround. A tutor who marks essays in 48 hours doubles your child’s improvement rate. One who only talks through work in-session halves it.
- Topic depth. Ask about a specific event — Munich Putsch, say, or the Reichstag Fire. If they can give you three causes, three consequences and one historiographical debate in 90 seconds, they know it.
- Source technique. Ask how they teach OPVL or NOP. If they shrug, they don’t.
Where students lose marks (and what fixes it)
The same mistakes show up in every exam, year after year. Students describe sources instead of evaluating them. They write narrative essays when the question asked for an argument. They forget to use the interpretation’s provenance even when the question literally asks for it. They run out of time on the 16-marker because they wrote 14 paragraphs on the 4-marker.
A student we worked with at a Surrey grammar lost a full grade on a mock because she wrote a beautiful, detailed answer to the wrong question — she’d answered “how” instead of “to what extent”. The fix wasn’t more content. It was 20 minutes a week, for six weeks, of nothing but reading the question stem out loud and writing the first sentence three different ways. She moved from a 6 to an 8. Most fixes are this small and this boring.
The other recurring loss: students treat every source as equally trustworthy. A 1936 Nazi propaganda poster and a 1990 academic textbook get the same flat treatment. Five minutes on hierarchy of evidence saves three marks per question.
Getting started — pricing and trials
Tutors on TheTutorLink set their own rates. Most history tutors price between £28 and £45 for GCSE, £40 and £60 for A Level. Oxbridge HAT and interview prep runs higher — £70+ — and a former admissions tutor at Cambridge will charge the top of that range. Filter by board, level and price range, then read the profiles. The good tutors mention specific papers and topics; the weaker ones list “all of history” and “all boards”.
A free first session is normal on the platform. Use it properly — bring a marked essay, the most recent class assessment, and the spec sheet. If the tutor reads the essay before the call and turns up with notes, book them. If they wing it, don’t. The platform fee is 5% — taken from the tutor side, not added to your bill — so the £35 you see is the £35 you pay. No subscription, no minimum hours. Pay session by session and stop when the grade is where you want it.