What separates a working online physics setup from a frustrating one
The kit matters more than people think. A tutor without a graphics tablet trying to teach circuit analysis is going to type things into a document while the student watches — that’s not teaching, that’s narration. The minimum tutor setup for online physics is a Wacom or XP-Pen tablet, a whiteboard tool (Miro, Zoom whiteboard, Microsoft Whiteboard or BitPaper — most experienced tutors use BitPaper), and either a second monitor or split screen so they can show past papers while annotating.
Student side, a tablet with a stylus is ideal but not necessary. What helps most is the student also being able to write on the shared whiteboard, not just talk and watch. Capacitor charging curves, free-body diagrams, projectile motion vectors — physics is drawn before it’s solved, and a student who can only point and describe is missing half the work.
Recording matters too. Sessions recorded and saved to a shared Google Drive or Dropbox become a personal revision library. By April of A-level year, a student should have 30+ recorded explanations of past-paper questions, indexed by topic. That’s worth more than any textbook.
What good online physics teaching looks like
A model A-level physics hour for an Edexcel student in March, two months from the exam. First five minutes: recap of last week’s homework — the tutor pulls up the answers, the student talks through which questions they got and why. Next twenty: a focused topic — simple harmonic motion, say, with the tutor working two derivations live on the whiteboard, asking the student to predict each next step. Next twenty-five: three past-paper questions, student attempts each first, tutor stops them when method drifts. Final ten: homework set in shared doc and a brief recap.
That’s an hour that moves grades. What it isn’t: an hour of the tutor lecturing. If your child is silent for more than four or five minutes at a stretch they’re not learning, they’re watching. Push the tutor to ask more questions or find a different one.
For Oxford PAT, Cambridge NatSci interview prep, and Imperial physics applicants, online is genuinely better than in-person — most of the best PAT tutors live in Oxford or London, and online lets you grab their hours regardless of where you are. Expect £50–£90 an hour for that tier and look for tutors with named admissions experience (Magdalen, Trinity, Imperial Blackett Lab).
Pitfalls when picking an online physics tutor
The most common mistake is choosing on price alone. Tutors charging £20 an hour for A-level physics are often students themselves working through their own degrees. They’re fine for GCSE and lower KS3 but they don’t know the AQA mark scheme well enough for A-level. Conversely, the £80-an-hour tutors aren’t always twice as good as the £40 ones — past Year 14 of teaching the marginal returns flatten.
Second pitfall: tutors who don’t set or mark homework. An hour a week is nothing without practice between. The tutors worth keeping send three or four questions on Monday morning, the student does them by Wednesday, and the lesson Thursday focuses on what went wrong. If a tutor never sets work, that’s the cheap version of tutoring whatever they charge.
Third: not checking the exam board. Sounds obvious, easy to miss. A friend in Sheffield tutored her son through AQA last year and discovered in February that the school had moved to OCR A two years earlier. The tutor was excellent. He was just teaching the wrong syllabus.
Worked example. A Year 13 student last summer, predicted A in Edexcel physics, aiming for A* for an Imperial offer. Eight hours of online tuition across April-May, focused entirely on Paper 3 unified questions and the practical skills section (always undertaught in schools). She got the A*. Total spend was around £320 because the tutor was on TheTutorLink at 5% rather than the agency platforms at 20%+ — same tutor, would have cost £400+ elsewhere.
What it costs and how booking works
UK 2026 online physics tutor rates: £25–£40 GCSE, £30–£50 A-level, £45–£70 Oxbridge prep, £50–£90 PAT/NatSci interview specialists. Most families book either as weekly retainer (one hour a week through term, around 30 hours a year) or as exam-term blitz (six to fifteen hours across April-May). The first model produces steadier grade movement; the second is cheaper and works for students already on a B aiming at an A.
On TheTutorLink you message tutors directly, the first session is free, and we charge tutors a flat 5% commission rather than the 20–25% you’ll see on competitor platforms. There’s no monthly membership and no lesson-pack lock-in. Most students book one session at a time and decide week by week. If the tutor isn’t working out, find another — the platform doesn’t punish you for switching.
Practical filter for the listings: search by exam board, not just subject. Tick AQA, Edexcel or OCR (A or B) on the filter so you only see tutors who’ve taught the syllabus you’re sitting. That removes about 60% of generic listings and leaves the people who’ll actually help.