Eight questions worth asking before you choose a science tutor
Most families come to tutoring at the point where something has already gone wrong. Examples include: a set of mocks that didn't go to plan, a comment at parents' evening that landed badly, or a child who has quietly stopped mentioning a subject they used to enjoy. By the time you start searching, you usually want it sorted, and sorted quickly. I have taught GCSE Biology, Chemistry and Physics for twelve years, specialising in Chemistry, and currently lead a chemistry department at an Essex secondary school. I have seen students arriving in my lessons after months of private tuition that moved them nowhere, and students who made a year's progress in a term with the right person. The difference is rarely the price and is almost always the things nobody thought to ask about. So, here are eight questions to think about when choosing a tutor.
1. Who will be teaching my child, and are they a qualified teacher?
The word tutor can cover a sixth-former a year ahead of your child, an undergraduate who did well in the subject three years ago, and a current teacher with a decade of marking behind them. All three can help; however, they are not the same thing and will not cost the same. I have marked enough work, across enough students, to see the pattern clearly: what actually moves a grade is skilled delivery, not simply the presence of another adult. A tutor who understands how a topic is taught in school, what the exam actually rewards, and where students typically go wrong is doing something categorically different from someone without that experience. Ask directly: are they qualified and are they currently teaching?
2. Do they know your child's exam board?
This matters far more than people expect. AQA, OCR and Edexcel differ in how they phrase questions, what their mark schemes reward, and how they assess practical work. OCR B (Salters), for example, wraps almost every question in a real-world context, so a student has to identify the chemistry underneath before they can answer it. AQA states plainly in its own specification that it is written with minimal context. Those are genuinely different demands on a student. A tutor who knows your child's board can prepare them precisely.
3. Is this exam technique, or just more content?
A large share of the marks I see lost in science are not lost because the student did not know the chemistry. They are lost because the student did not answer the question that was asked. They explained when the question said describe, they gave one reason where the mark scheme wanted two, or they wrote a confident paragraph about collision theory and never mentioned activation energy. Your child already has five lessons a week of content. What they often do not know is how the marks are awarded.
4. How will I know whether it is working?
Ask what you will receive, and how often. You want something more concrete than a reassuring word. Specific feedback on what has and has not improved is not an administrative extra; research identifies it as one of the highest-impact, lowest-cost approaches available in education. If a tutor cannot tell you clearly what your child is getting better at, they may not know.
5. What happens in the other six days?
Is the real progress happening in the hour with a tutor, or in the six days either side of it? There is a strong and consistent research base here. In a review of ten common study techniques, Dunlosky and colleagues rated only two as high utility: practice testing, and distributed practice, which means spreading study out over time. Ask what supports your child between lessons, and whether it involves retrieval practice rather than passively reviewing it.
6. Are they DBS checked, and what are the safeguarding arrangements?
Non-negotiable. Anyone teaching your child should hold a valid enhanced DBS certificate, and any serious provider should be able to tell you plainly who to contact with a concern and what would happen next. If this information is vague, or hard to find on their website, treat that as information in itself.
7. What does it cost, and what is included?
Understand the whole picture: the per-session cost, what comes with it, and whether anything is extra. Cheaper is not automatically worse and expensive is not automatically better. A qualified teacher costs more than an undergraduate for reasons that are real. Whether that trade is right for your family is your decision, but it should be an informed one.
8. Would a small group suit my child better than one-to-one?
This one surprises people. EEF's own research shows small group tuition delivers around four months' additional progress, with a clear rule: the smaller the group, the better, up to about six or seven students. One-to-one shows a positive effect too, but the evidence for it isn't necessarily stronger. The honest answer is that neither format is automatically superior. One-to-one offers focus. A small group offers something different: the reassurance of watching someone else get it wrong first, without the pressure of performing solo for a whole hour.
A closing thought
Whichever of these matters most to you, it's worth taking the time to ask these questions. Your child will be spending real time, week after week, with whoever you choose; that's worth getting right before you commit, not after. If you'd like to talk through what your child needs, you're welcome to get in touch.
REFERENCES
Education Endowment Foundation, Teaching and Learning Toolkit: Small Group Tuition and One to One Tuition.
Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58.