Maths and Science Tutors

Many STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) degrees are highly competitive and require good A-level grades to meet the entry requirements. This is especially true in the fields of medicine, dentistry and veterinary science, but applies to chemistry, physics and engineering and mathematics at Russell Group universities as well. To gain a competitive advantage, many students are seeking tutors in these subjects.

Our focus at Simon Horsnall Tutoring is on chemistry tuition and we have seen the full range of good, bad and ugly. Unfortunately, this often results in parents being overcharged for a service which does not quite meet their needs. The reason for this is that many parents, and indeed many students, don't know what it is they need in the first place. Some think they need a subject specialist who knows every aspect of chemistry in minute detail. We look at why that is rarely the case in this post here.

School teachers, on the whole, do an exceptional job of teaching the subject content. In very few cases are students not taught something which occurs on the exam specification. This is evident because some students perform better than others after receiving the same content delivery. It is rarely subject content that prevents a student from achieving good grades on an exam. There will always be a misunderstanding or a conceptual block which arises somewhere, but this does not make the difference between an A grade and an E grade, it makes the difference of a few percent.

Parents and students often don't recognise that they are losing marks, not through a lack of subject knowledge, but a lack of a systematic approach to answering exam questions. Not understanding the meaning of exam command words compounds across multiple questions on all three papers. Using vague language and poor logic loses marks on every explanation. Setting out calculations in a way that is impossible for the examiner to follow leads to multiple marks lost.

These issues point to an uncomfortable truth. Students and parents think they need their chemistry fixing. But fixing the chemistry will gain them a few extra marks and will not make the difference in grades to make them stand out in a competitive admissions market. Yet this gap between what they think they need and what they actually need, which is subject-specific exam training, means they are paying for tutors who cannot address the true problem. This is why I recommend neither undergraduates offering a cheap-fix solution nor an expert advertising solely on academic qualifications at inflated prices.

Away from the gloom, there are some bright flickers of light. Training exam skills is easier than learning chemistry. Memorising reams and reams of notes is a challenge which no A-level student relishes, but learning how to approach exam questions in a logical and systematic manner is learnable. This is the approach we take at Simon Horsnall Tutoring. We translate real teaching and examination experience into a programme of subject-specific training for exam success. This is where the true value of tutoring, and the competitive edge, lies. If you want to discuss how we can help you or your child prepare for exam success, get in touch.