We started out in 1997 offering predominantly science revision, hence the name. Physics being one of the more popular subjects we will have offered it on every course since the first. Currently roughly 5% of A level students sit Physics, figures from a 2024 Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) report. We currently have 80 tutors offering this subject, many have decades of experience.
Like all our courses our A level (& AS level) Physics revision courses are bespoke and exam board and paper specific as appropriate. All our exam-based courses are student-led – the student(s) in the class determine what is covered during the course. See our Student-led Revision Courses page for how this works in practice.
We cover all A level exam boards and do differentiate, for example, between OCR A and OCR B (Advancing). We also offer international A levels (IAL) Physics for AQA (also known as Oxford-AQA), CIE, and Edexcel International.
For our bigger courses the main three science subjects often will be taught in small groups, typically 2-4 students, with a maximum of 6. Physics A level is one of the more popular, currently the 9th most popular with 4.9% of A level students taking it – the most popular (at least numerically) is maths with 11.9%. See JCQ for Summer 2024 figures.
Although the content of all our courses is student-led the tutors will also have a list of topics that they know students often get wrong or struggle with. For example, almost all physics students think they know Newton’s 3rd law, however, in my experience, less than 1% actually do completely understand it.
From a tutor and student point of view the student-led approach is a huge advantage. Focusing on problem areas is the most effective use of the limited time on a revision course. For example, it may be the case that a tutor will spend a third of the course on magnetism if that is what the group dynamics dictate.
In the case of magnetism, at least for A level students, it’s useful to be able to explain that the underlying maths is essentially university level and what they are presented with is a bunch of rules designed as a shortcut passed the problematic maths. The “problematic maths” (Maxwell’s equations – see Wikipedia to see the problem) is the foundation for truly understanding electromagnetism (and hence magnetism) and unlike most other topics they will cover, these foundations are inaccessible to most A level students, even those doing Further Maths.
Getting the students to understand that, for the meanwhile, they just have some seemingly arbitrary rules, actually helps. Oddly the trick for this topic is to just accept these rules – this is counter to almost all of the rest of the syllabus, where understanding foundations is key.
The vast majority of revision has to be done at home – we are here, above all else, to speed up the revision process and clarify troublesome topics. Obviously, we would be delighted if lots of students signed up to do all their physics (or any subject) revision with us, but realistically, this is an absurdly expensive route. You could easily spend a small fortune to cover the estimated 150+ hours of revision per A level.
Also, all students need to learn the skill of revising on their own. It might seem like a nice idea to guide a student through every minute of their revision, but actually you would be doing them a disservice – they need to develop the skill of self-directed revision/learning.
Like playing the piano, practicing Physics (and Maths) is absolutely key – it may be tedious but sitting down and solving physics problems is vital to becoming good at doing these types of exams.
You can’t just read about Physics and magically become good at it – you have to do it. The music analogy holds well, after all I “know” how to play Beethoven’s Appassionata, I know which notes to hit, when to hit them, and how hard, but I can’t actually do it.
We are here to help students through problem areas, refine their exam technique, show them how to answer certain problematic questions. We can’t do the revision for them, but we can make it easier for them and speed up the process.
Many students do just revise for their physics A level at home, but we think they will do better, and the revision process will be slightly less painful and less time consuming with our help.
Also, rather obviously, if the student doesn’t understand how to (for example) apply equations of motion to projectiles, then they can’t ask themselves to explain. The easiest thing to do is to be able to ask an experience physics tutor. As helpful as forums, Google, etc., are, there are serious limitations – firstly, are the explanations A level appropriate, and secondly, are they correct.
AI is currently limited in its usefulness for revising A levels – I’ve tried a few key questions, and the answers are at best a little unhelpful and at worst just plain wrong. YouTube has some good resources (but you need to be able to judge if they are good or bad). TikTok I have to say is just plain useless for A level Physics, so just don’t use it; unless you want to see some wannabe Andy Tate use Newton’s 3rd Law to justify being a misogynistic racist.
During our residential course we also have study skills sessions <link>. Although these are not subject specific their aim is to provide some tools for making revision easier and improving exam techniques.