Physics tutor — private physics tutoring across the UK
A-Level Physics is the subject where bright GCSE students most often hit a wall in Year 12 — mechanics gets formal, electricity gets abstract, and the maths suddenly matters. The right tutor turns it from the subject your child is quietly thinking of dropping into the one that opens engineering, medicine and physical sciences degrees. This is what physics tutoring on TheTutorLink looks like, what it costs, and how to choose well.
Why hire a private physics tutor
Physics is the subject with the steepest difficulty spike at the start of Year 12. A student who scored a 7, 8 or 9 in GCSE Physics can find themselves at a U or E after the first AS unit because the subject changes character — questions stop being "recall the formula and substitute" and start being "build the model, justify the assumptions, then solve". Schools rarely have time to slow down for the students who need an extra pass through it, especially when the maths a student needs is also being taught for the first time in a different lesson.
Four reasons parents and learners book physics tutors most often. First, the Year 12 difficulty cliff — resolving forces in two dimensions, suvat under non-uniform setups, moments and equilibrium, and the first proper electricity unit (Kirchhoff, internal resistance, potential dividers) are the topics that most often turn an A-grade GCSE student into a D-grade AS student. Tutoring through this in the autumn or spring of Year 12 reliably reverses the slide. Second, engineering, medicine, dentistry and physical-sciences entry — these courses require A or A* in physics and the medicine route depends on physics + chemistry + biology being treated as the same priority. Third, required practicals — the practical endorsement is non-graded but practical-skills questions appear in the written papers, and a tutor can talk a student through experimental design, error analysis and uncertainty calculations when school lab time was rushed. Fourth, retakes — if a student missed a grade they usually missed it on one or two specific topics, and a tutor can rebuild those in six to ten sessions.
One honest caveat: A-Level Physics is genuinely hard. Lower nationally than chemistry on raw A* rates, with a long tail of D and E grades that surprises parents. A tutor will not turn a student who isn\'t doing the homework into an A* — what they will do is turn an underperforming B into a clean A, or a borderline D into a safe C, by closing the two or three specific topic gaps that account for most of the lost marks.
GCSE Physics tutoring
GCSE Physics in the UK is sat either as a standalone GCSE (Triple/Separate Science — three GCSEs in Biology, Chemistry and Physics) or as one third of Combined Science (a double-award covering all three). The content overlap is substantial but Triple covers extra topics — most notably space physics, more depth in waves, and additional electromagnetism — and the higher-tier paper goes deeper into quantitative work.
Most students sit one of four boards. AQA is the most common in state schools and has the cleanest required-practical list. Edexcel uses slightly heavier maths and a longer Paper 2. OCR Gateway (A) is widely used and the topic order differs noticeably. OCR 21st Century (B) is the contextual/applied specification — different style of question, more case-study framing. Ask which paper your child sits and find a tutor who has taught it within the last two years. Topic-spotting from last year\'s specification is a fast way to lose marks.
The topics that most reliably benefit from one-to-one tutoring at GCSE are forces and Newton\'s laws (especially resolving in two dimensions and free-body diagrams), electricity (current, potential difference, resistance and the I–V graphs), waves (especially the refraction and lens topics in Triple), required-practical write-ups, and the extended-response questions where mark scheme phrasing matters as much as content. Eight to twelve weekly sessions in the run-up to the May/June mocks is the most common useful pattern. To find GCSE physics specialists directly, head to /find-tutor/ and filter by GCSE Physics.
A-Level Physics tutoring
A-Level Physics is the high-stakes one. It is required for most engineering degrees, physics, astrophysics, materials science, geophysics, and is a strongly-preferred third A-Level for medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and natural sciences. At Russell Group universities the offer is typically A or A*. None of that is accidental — the subject is genuinely hard and the A* rate sits stubbornly low.
The content splits across five main areas and a tutor will usually focus on the one your child is struggling with most:
Mechanics is where most Year 12 students lose the most marks. Resolving forces in two dimensions, suvat under non-uniform conditions, moments and equilibrium of rigid bodies, momentum and impulse, circular motion in Year 13, and gravitational fields. A tutor with recent mechanics teaching experience is non-negotiable here — this is the topic where bad teaching propagates fastest because students learn formulas without learning when each formula breaks down.
Waves and optics covers superposition, stationary waves, two-source interference (Young\'s slits), diffraction gratings, polarisation, and refraction. Less mathematically punishing than mechanics but heavy on conceptual understanding — students who can do the algebra still lose marks if they cannot picture what the wavefronts are actually doing.
Electricity covers Kirchhoff\'s laws, internal resistance, potential dividers, capacitors (Year 13) and electromagnetic induction. The Year 13 capacitor discharge content is calculus-heavy in spirit even when the spec uses an exponential equation directly — students without confident A-Level Maths find this section punishing.
Fields (gravitational, electric, magnetic) is conceptually the hardest unit for many students. The parallels between gravitational and electric fields, the introduction of vector field notation, and the link between magnetic flux and induced EMF require thinking that does not come easily from rote learning.
Nuclear and particle physics covers radioactive decay, fission and fusion, the standard model, conservation laws and (in some specs) astrophysics or medical physics options. More memorisation-heavy than the rest — most students find this the easier unit to fix in the final month.
The required practicals (12 across the two years) are not graded directly but they appear in the written papers as practical-skills questions worth roughly 15% of the marks. A tutor who has taught the practicals can talk a student through experimental design, percentage uncertainty, and mark-scheme phrasing without needing a school lab. Full breakdown of board differences (AQA vs Edexcel vs OCR A vs OCR B Advancing Physics) and tutor pricing is at /a-level-physics-tutor/.
Physics and maths tutors
One of the most common searches we see is for tutors who teach physics and maths together — and it is a sensible search, because A-Level Physics genuinely depends on A-Level Maths. The maths content embedded in physics — rearranging equations under exam pressure, logarithms in radioactive decay, exponentials in capacitor discharge, vectors in mechanics, small-angle approximations in waves, and SHM as a differential equation in disguise — is exactly the maths that A-Level Maths teaches in parallel. When the timing slips out of sync, students lose physics marks for maths reasons.
For students aiming for A or A* in A-Level Physics, a tutor who covers both subjects can spot when a "physics" mark loss is actually a maths gap and fix the right thing — usually in fewer sessions than two separate tutors would. Ask in the trial whether they teach both, what their A-Level Maths grade was, and how recently they\'ve taught the relevant maths units (especially logarithms, exponentials, vectors and basic calculus). Many of our physics specialists also teach maths — see our maths cornerstone at /maths-tutor/ and the A-Level breakdown at /a-level-maths-tutor/.
At GCSE the link is genuinely weaker — a maths-confident GCSE student usually does fine with a physics-only tutor, and the maths inside GCSE physics rarely goes beyond the foundation/higher overlap. If your child is in Year 10 or 11 and the maths is the bottleneck, fixing maths first is often the better order — see /gcse-maths-tutor/.
Online physics tutoring
Physics works well online for almost everything except the lab itself. Problem-solving — which is most of what a physics session looks like — is mostly diagrams, free-body force arrows, circuit sketches and equation manipulation, and a digital whiteboard with stylus support handles all of that as well as paper does, often more legibly. Screen-share lets the tutor annotate past papers and mark schemes paragraph by paragraph. Sessions can be recorded, which matters in physics because the moment a student understands a worked example of capacitor discharge or Young\'s slits is the moment they need to re-watch it.
The one place in-person still has a slight edge is the required practicals and the practical endorsement. A tutor in the room can hand the student a metre rule, demonstrate a parallax error, or walk through a circuit board with a multimeter. Online, this has to be done through video walkthroughs, simulator software (PhET, IOP) and shared lab manuals — workable, and most students get full marks on practical-skills questions this way, but a step less direct. For most students the gain from a wider pool of online specialist physics tutors outweighs this. We compare both formats in detail at /online-vs-in-person-tutoring/.
Physics tutoring near you
Most physics tutors on TheTutorLink teach online to students across the whole UK, but if you specifically want someone local — for in-person sessions, or a tutor who shares your school catchment — we have specialists in every major city.
The deepest pools are in London (the largest population of medicine-prep, engineering and Oxbridge physics tutors), Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow — Scottish cities have particularly strong Higher and Advanced Higher Physics representation. Smaller cities are covered too — search by postcode on /find-tutor/ to see who\'s within reach. You can also start from /find-tutor/ and filter by subject = Physics to see every available physics tutor across the country at once.
How to choose a physics tutor
The full guide is at /how-to-choose-a-tutor/, but for physics specifically four things matter more than the rest:
1. Recent paper experience. Mark schemes change, examiner reports highlight different errors each year, and a tutor still teaching the previous specification will quote phrasing that no longer scores. Ask which board, which paper, and how many students they\'ve taken through it in the last two years. "Two students last summer" is what you want.
2. Physics specifically — not general STEM. A maths or engineering graduate can usually cover GCSE physics confidently, but A-Level Physics rewards a tutor who has actually studied physics — someone who can explain why displacement current was added to Ampère\'s law, not just substitute into it. For A-Level upwards, look for a physics or astrophysics degree (BSc/MPhys/MSci) or a PhD student in a physics-adjacent field.
3. Medicine and engineering admissions awareness for sixth-form applicants. Tutors who know UCAT, BMAT (where still required), the engineering admissions tests (ENGAA, PAT, MAT) and the medical school cycle can structure sessions to double up — using physics past-paper questions that mirror the style of admissions tests. If your child is applying to medicine or to Oxbridge engineering, this is worth filtering for explicitly.
4. Use the free trial as a diagnostic. By the end of the 30-minute trial the tutor should have asked your child to actually do something — sketch a free-body diagram, derive a suvat result, calculate a percentage uncertainty — and named the specific topic they\'d work on first. If the trial was thirty minutes of "tell me about yourself", try a different tutor. Both trials are free on TheTutorLink.
How much does a physics tutor cost
UK private physics tutoring rates in 2026 break down by stage:
GCSE Physics: £25–£35/hr. Recent graduates and undergraduates with a strong A-Level physics record sit at the lower end; QTS physics teachers and specialists at the upper.
A-Level Physics: £30–£45/hr. Ex-examiners or A-Level specialists with consistent A/A* track records often charge £45–£55. Tutors who also cover A-Level Maths sometimes charge a small premium for the dual specialism — and it is usually worth it.
Higher Physics (SQA): £30–£45/hr. Smaller pool of specialists — expect to pay the upper end if you find a Scotland-based specialist with recent SQA marking experience.
Oxbridge / Medicine / Engineering admissions physics prep: £40–£60/hr. Tutors with admissions experience (PAT, ENGAA, BMAT physics sections), ex-academics, or physics graduates from the target university sit at the upper end. UCAT/BMAT-aware physics tutors often charge a small premium for the dual specialism.
Undergraduate physics (mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum, statistical, condensed matter): £35–£60/hr. PhD students and postdocs cover most of this band. Niche topics (advanced quantum mechanics, general relativity, particle physics) sit at the upper end.
Add roughly £5–£10/hr across every stage if you want a London tutor specifically, or an online tutor with a London medicine-prep or Oxbridge track record. The 5% platform fee on TheTutorLink comes out of the tutor\'s payout — the rate listed is the rate you pay. Full pricing breakdown across every subject is at /how-much-does-tutoring-cost-uk/, and our sibling cornerstone for chemistry is at /chemistry-tutor/ — many students book physics and chemistry tutors in parallel, especially for medicine and engineering routes. For the broader sciences view see /science-tutor/.
Frequently asked questions
Should my child have the same tutor for physics and maths?
For A-Level students aiming above a B in physics, yes — this is one of the highest-leverage choices you can make. A-Level Physics genuinely depends on A-Level Maths: rearranging equations under exam pressure, logarithms in radioactive decay, calculus in capacitor discharge, vectors in mechanics, and small-angle approximations in waves. A tutor who teaches both can spot when a "physics" mark loss is actually a maths gap and fix the right thing. At GCSE the link is weaker — a maths-confident student usually does fine with a physics-only tutor — but at A-Level, dual specialists save sessions.
Can my child take A-Level Physics without taking Further Maths?
Yes — A-Level Maths alone is sufficient for the syllabus, and most physics undergraduates arrive without Further Maths. The exam boards explicitly design the maths content to fit inside the A-Level Maths spec. Further Maths gives an edge on university physics applications (especially Oxbridge and Imperial) because mechanics modules and complex numbers map directly onto first-year content, but it is not a syllabus requirement. If your child is finding A-Level Physics maths-heavy and they've dropped or never took A-Level Maths, that is the actual problem to fix — and a tutor who covers both is the fastest route.
My child has dyspraxia and struggles with practical work — can a physics tutor help?
Yes. The required practicals at GCSE and A-Level can be talked through using diagrams, simulator software (PhET, IOP TalkPhysics) and shared-screen video — a student with dyspraxia or fine-motor difficulties can master the theory and the written practical questions even when the school lab is overwhelming. Mention SEN needs in the trial. Many physics tutors have worked with EHCP students and know which practicals (electrical circuits, projectile motion, simple harmonic motion, viscosity) are most likely to appear as written-paper questions versus pure lab skills.
What's the difference between AQA, Edexcel and OCR A-Level Physics?
All three cover the same broad content — mechanics, waves, electricity, fields, nuclear and particle physics — over two years with required practicals, but the topic order, optional units and exam style differ. AQA is the most-sat board and has a clean three-paper structure with no optional units. Edexcel uses a "Salters Horners" feel on its International spec and has a slightly heavier maths weighting. OCR A is the traditional academic spec — close to AQA in style. OCR B (Advancing Physics) is the contextual/applied specification with very different question framing and a substantial Practical Investigation. Ask which board your tutor has taught most recently; a tutor still using last-spec mark schemes is a tutor who hasn't kept up.
Does online tutoring work for physics problem-solving?
Better than parents expect. Physics is mostly diagrams, free-body force arrows, circuit sketches and equation manipulation — all of which work cleanly on a shared digital whiteboard with stylus support. Most physics tutors use a tablet shared via screen-share, or tools like Miro and Whiteboard.fi, so the tutor draws the setup live and the student can practise in parallel. Sessions can be recorded, which is unusually valuable in physics because re-watching a worked example of capacitor discharge or Young's slits at the point a student gets stuck is exactly when they learn it. The one place in-person still has an edge is the lab itself — the practical endorsement.
When should we start tutoring for A-Level Physics?
The most common useful window is the autumn half-term of Year 12 — early enough that early mechanics gaps (resolving forces, suvat, moments) get fixed before they compound into circular motion, gravitational fields and SHM in Year 13. By spring of Year 12, electricity has hit and that is the second wave of students looking for help. Starting in September Year 13 still works if your child had a B at the end of Year 12 and wants an A — there is time to redo Year 12 mechanics and waves alongside new Year 13 content, but the schedule is tighter.
Can my child retake A-Level Physics on its own?
Yes. Retake students are some of our most successful physics tutees because the diagnostic is unusually clean — a real exam paper showing exactly which topics lost the marks. Bring the breakdown to the trial. Tutors typically rebuild the weakest two units (most often electric/magnetic fields and nuclear physics, or capacitors) over six to ten sessions, then run timed past papers in the final month. Retake students booking only physics usually pay £30–£45/hr and finish with a grade improvement of at least one full band.
Can a physics tutor help with university-level physics?
Yes, and this is where you should pick the tutor carefully. Undergraduate physics splits into specialists — classical mechanics, electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, condensed matter — and a tutor who is excellent at A-Level may not have used Lagrangian mechanics or Maxwell's equations in vector form for years. Filter for tutors with a physics-specific degree (BSc/MPhys/MSci) or PhD students, and ask in the trial whether they've tutored the specific module before. Engineering, natural sciences and astrophysics undergraduates need the same level of specialism.
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