Online GCSE Tutoring in Cricklewood
One-to-one lessons for Year 10, Year 11 and resit students, £30 per lesson
Online GCSE tutoring in Cricklewood across every subject we teach. Before anybody spends anything on revision, including on us, there are four documents published free by the exam board that most families have never opened. They are better than almost everything on sale.
This page says what they are, what each one is for, and where paid resources genuinely add something. Some of it argues against buying tutoring, which is a reasonable thing for a tutoring page to do.
The first session is free and it is a real lesson. If the honest answer is past papers and a timer, you will hear that in it.
What Cricklewood families ask
- Which revision guide to buy.
- Where to find the right past papers.
- Whether apps and videos actually work.
- What an examiner report is.
- How to know which exam board applies.
The four free documents worth having
The specification, the past papers, the mark schemes and the examiner reports. All published by the board, all free, and all specific to your child’s syllabus.
The specification is the contract. It lists everything that can be examined and, just as usefully, everything that cannot. A student revising from a general revision guide is often working through material their board does not assess, which is a slow way to waste February. The Department for Education publishes the subject content every board builds its specification from, and each board then publishes its own version.
Past papers are the practice. They are free, they go back years, and the only real trap is picking up papers written for the syllabus that ended in 2017, which still circulate and no longer match. Check the specification code on the front page.
Mark schemes turn practice into learning. A paper attempted and not marked teaches very little; a paper marked against the real scheme shows exactly which marks were available and why they were not awarded.
The examiner report is the one nobody reads and the most valuable of the four. After each series the board publishes a commentary on what candidates actually did, question by question: the misconception that cost most marks, the question most students skipped, the wording that was widely misread. It is a senior examiner telling you where the marks went, and it costs nothing.
What each one is for
| Document | Use it to |
|---|---|
| Specification | Know what is and is not examinable |
| Past papers | Practise under real conditions |
| Mark scheme | Find out where marks were lost |
| Examiner report | Learn what everyone got wrong last year |
All four are free from the board. Start with the specification.
Which board, and does it matter?
It matters enough to check, and a surprising number of families revise from the wrong one for months.
The content is broadly common across boards because it comes from the same national subject content, but the papers are not. Structure differs, the balance of question types differs, the set texts in English Literature differ entirely, and in science the required practicals are the board’s own choices. Revising AQA material for an Edexcel paper is not fatal, and it is not efficient either.
Finding out is a two-minute job: ask the subject teacher, or look at the front of any past paper the school has issued. Schools sometimes use different boards for different subjects, so the answer is per subject rather than per school.
Once you know, everything else follows. Download that board’s specification for that subject, its papers, its schemes and its reports, and ignore everything else. The narrowing is the point.
Our Hanwell page goes further into why the exam board matters and where the differences actually bite.
Two minutes, once
Ask the teacher which board
Per subject, not per school.
Download that specification
Free, from the board site.
Take three recent papers
Plus their mark schemes.
Take the examiner reports
Same series as the papers.
When is a paid resource worth it?
When it does something the free four cannot, which is a shorter list than the market implies.
A single revision guide per subject earns its place. It condenses content into a form that is easier to work through than a specification, and for a student who needs an overview before practising, that is a real service. A second and third guide for the same subject buy the same content again in a different font.
Videos and apps are good at explanation and weak at testing. Watching a topic explained clearly produces a strong sense of understanding that does not survive a blank page, which is why students who revise this way often feel prepared and then underperform. Used as a first pass before practice they are useful. Used instead of practice they are actively misleading.
And a tutor earns their place where there is a specific gap that free resources cannot close, because the student does not know what they do not know. A past paper shows you that a question went wrong. It does not always tell you why, and that is the part worth paying for.
Worth paying for, or not
- One revision guide per subject: reasonable.
- Three guides for one subject: no.
- Videos before practice: useful.
- Videos instead of practice: harmful.
- A tutor for a specific gap: worth it.
- A tutor to supervise past papers: buy a timer.
Which GCSE subjects can your child get help with?
Everything below, each with a subject specialist attached.
Maths
Where past paper practice pays back fastest. See GCSE Maths tutoring.
English Language and Literature
Where the set texts are board specific, so the right papers matter. See GCSE English tutoring.
Combined and Triple Science
Required practicals differ by board. See GCSE Science tutoring.
Computer Science
Programming and the written papers. See GCSE Computer Science tutoring.
Business Studies
Case studies, where examiner reports are unusually useful. See GCSE Business Studies tutoring.
Humanities
History, Geography and Religious Studies, when a specialist has room.
Do the same resources work for a resit?
Better, because a resit student can start from the paper they actually sat rather than from a general plan.
The examiner report for the series a student sat is unusually valuable to them. It describes the exact questions they faced and what went wrong across the country, which often includes what went wrong for them.
Under the 16 to 19 maths and English condition of funding, updated in July 2026, a student who leaves Year 11 without grade 4 carries the subject into post-16 study. Grade 3 sends them towards a GCSE, and grade 2 or below opens up Functional Skills level 2.
Dates for the series are published together by the boards, and the Joint Council for Qualifications lists the key dates and timetables for each one.
Two windows
- November covers Maths and English Language.
- Around ten weeks from August results.
- Everything else in the summer series.
- The centre controls the entry.
See GCSE resit tutoring and the exam dates page.
How does an online lesson run?
Video, a shared whiteboard, and paper. The tutor reads the method, not just the answer.
Tell us the board and the subject
Everything else follows from that.
Free one-to-one session
A real lesson, no card details taken.
Work from the real papers
Not from a generic worksheet bank.
Mark against the real scheme
Then look at what the examiner said.
Reviewed at six weeks
Against marked work.
The full process is on how it works. Term dates vary between community schools and academies, and the gov.uk term dates finder will point you at the right council for your address.
What does a GCSE tutor in Cricklewood cost?
One to one at £30, and everything we recommend alongside it costs nothing.
We do not sell materials, and there is nothing to buy before lessons start. Everything a tutor works from here is published free by the exam board.
Any price is worth checking against the length of the session it buys. Our guide to GCSE tutoring costs sets out the market.
What £30 covers
- A full one-to-one lesson with a subject specialist.
- Work from your child’s own board and specification.
- Papers marked against the published scheme.
- A steer on what is worth buying, including nothing.
- A tutor change if the match is wrong.
Tell us which board and which subject
With those two we can point you at the right free material the same day.
- Year group and subject.
- The exam board, if you know it.
- What has already been bought and tried.
- Current grade and target grade.
- Days and times that work at home.
Prefer to talk it through? WhatsApp us, or use the contact page.
Send an enquiry
Frequently asked questions
What are the best free GCSE revision resources?
The exam board specification, the past papers, the mark schemes and the examiner reports for your child’s own board. All four are published free, and between them they beat most things families pay for.
What is an examiner report?
A document the board publishes after each series describing what candidates did well and badly on each question. It is the closest thing to being told the answers in advance, and almost nobody reads it.
Are revision guides worth buying?
A single one for a subject can be useful for summarising content. Buying several is a way of owning the same information three times, and none of them tell you what the examiner said last summer.
What about revision apps and videos?
Useful for explanation, weak for practice. They are good at making a topic feel clear and poor at testing whether it can be produced from a blank page, which is the thing the exam checks.
Where do we get past papers?
From the exam board website, free, going back years. Make sure they are for the right board and the right specification, because papers from the pre-2017 syllabus still circulate widely.
Which GCSE subjects do you cover?
Maths, the two English GCSEs, Combined and Triple Science, Computer Science and Business Studies, with humanities where cover allows.
What does it cost?
£30 a lesson, one to one, and every resource we point you at is free.
Do you have a tuition centre in Cricklewood?
No. Online lessons only, from a company registered in Feltham.
Book a free GCSE session for your child in Cricklewood
One free one-to-one session, no card details and no obligation. Come with the subject and the board, and you will leave the session knowing which free documents to download whether or not you book anything else.