Online GCSE Tutoring in Kentish Town
One-to-one lessons for Year 10, Year 11 and resit students, £30 per lesson
Online GCSE tutoring in Kentish Town across every subject we teach. The question underneath a lot of NW5 enquiries is not about a subject at all. It is how much a Year 11 should actually be doing in a week, and whether the answer their child gives is anywhere near it.
The numbers that circulate are useless in both directions. Some are impossible and produce guilt; some are so low they let a real problem hide. This page gives a shape that survives a term.
The first session is free and it is a real lesson. It is also a fair test of what an hour of concentration currently looks like.
What Kentish Town parents ask
- How many hours is normal for Year 11.
- Whether everyone else is doing more.
- Little and often, or long weekend sessions.
- What a holiday week should look like.
- What to do when the answer is none.
What does a realistic week look like?
Smaller than the plans people post and larger than most students are doing, and the gap between those two is where the guilt lives.
Through Year 11 up to Christmas, thirty to forty-five minutes on a school night and a couple of hours across a weekend is a reasonable baseline. From January, an hour on a school night and two to three hours at a weekend is the shape that most students can hold to the exams without collapsing.
That comes to roughly seven or eight hours a week. Written down it looks modest next to the twenty-hour plans that circulate in February, and it is far more than most Year 11s are actually doing, which is the part worth focusing on. A student genuinely doing seven focused hours a week from January is in good shape.
The word doing a lot of work there is focused. An hour with the phone in the room and the material being reread is not an hour. Our Camden Town page covers what that costs, and it is the single biggest reason a family’s hours and their results do not match.
The other reason to keep the number modest is that Year 11 is long. A plan that works in October and is abandoned in November has done less than a smaller plan still running in April.
A shape that holds
| When | School night | Weekend |
|---|---|---|
| Year 10 | 20 to 30 minutes | An hour, if that |
| Year 11, autumn | 30 to 45 minutes | Around two hours |
| Year 11, from January | An hour | Two to three hours |
| Study leave | Three to four hours a day | Same |
Focused time, not time in the room. The difference is usually about half.
Little and often, or long sessions?
Little and often, and this is one of the few questions in revision with a clear answer.
The same total spread across more days produces more retention than the same total concentrated. Five forty-minute sessions beat one three-hour session, even though the second feels more virtuous and is far easier to schedule.
Part of the reason is mundane: concentration degrades. The third hour of a session is not as good as the first, so the long block is not really three hours of work. The rest is that forgetting a little and retrieving it again is what makes memory durable, and that requires gaps. A single long session removes the gaps.
This is also the argument for weekly tutoring rather than intensive blocks. The Education Endowment Foundation notes that one-to-one tuition works best when sessions are short, frequent and sustained rather than long and occasional, which is the same finding from the other direction.
The practical version: if you have four hours available this week, that is four one-hour days, not one Sunday afternoon.
Same four hours
| One Sunday | Four weekdays |
|---|---|
| Feels productive | Feels like nothing |
| Concentration fades after 60 minutes | Fresh each time |
| No forgetting between | Retrieval practice built in |
| Easier to schedule | Harder to schedule |
| Retains less | Retains more |
What if the honest answer is none?
Then the hours question is the wrong one, and imposing a timetable on a student doing nothing produces a timetable rather than work.
A student doing no revision is not going to start doing seven hours a week because a plan says so. What tends to happen is that the plan is agreed, the first evening is missed, the plan becomes evidence of failure, and the whole thing is quietly abandoned by the second week.
The alternative is to start absurdly small and real. One twenty-minute block, on one subject, at a fixed time, four days a week. That is eighty minutes, which sounds like nothing and is infinitely more than nothing. It also establishes the only thing that matters at this stage, which is that the block happens.
From there it grows, and it grows on its own once a student experiences the specific feeling of a topic going from impossible to manageable. That experience is what motivates revision. Being told that revision is important never has.
If a term of that produces nothing at all, the problem is usually not motivation either. It may be that the work is genuinely inaccessible, which our Archway page covers.
Starting from zero
Twenty minutes, one subject
Not a timetable. One block.
Same time each day
The time matters more than the length.
Four days, not seven
Leave room to miss one.
Something with a right answer
So the block visibly ends in success.
Grow it only when it is habitual
Usually after two or three weeks.
Which GCSE subjects can your child get help with?
All of the below, one specialist to a subject.
Maths
Where short daily practice beats long sessions most clearly. See GCSE Maths tutoring.
English Language and Literature
Where one long block is occasionally the right unit, for a full essay. See GCSE English tutoring.
Combined and Triple Science
Three strands, three specialists. See GCSE Science tutoring.
Computer Science
Programming and the written papers. See GCSE Computer Science tutoring.
Business Studies
Case studies and evaluation marks. See GCSE Business Studies tutoring.
Humanities
History, Geography and Religious Studies, when a specialist has room.
How many hours for a resit?
Fewer than you would think, because a resit is one subject rather than ten and the arithmetic changes completely.
A Year 11 splitting seven hours across ten subjects gives each one about forty minutes a week. A resit student putting three hours a week into a single subject is giving it four times as much attention as they ever did the first time round.
That is the genuinely encouraging fact about resits, and most students do not notice it. Three focused hours a week over ten weeks is thirty hours on one paper, which is a great deal.
The 16 to 19 maths and English condition of funding, updated in July 2026, keeps the subject running after Year 11 where grade 4 was missed. Grade 3 means a GCSE; grade 2 or below allows Functional Skills level 2.
One subject, not ten
- November covers Maths and English Language.
- About ten weeks from August results.
- Three hours a week is thirty hours on one paper.
- That is more than the subject got in Year 11.
See GCSE resit tutoring and the exam dates page.
How does an online lesson run?
Video, a shared whiteboard, and paper, in sessions short enough to hold attention.
Tell us what is happening now
Including if the answer is nothing.
Free one-to-one session
A real lesson, no card details taken.
A weekly slot, not a block
Short and frequent is the evidenced shape.
Work sized for the week
Something that fits in forty minutes.
Reviewed at six weeks
Against marked work.
The full process is on how it works. Camden publishes its term dates, and academies set their own, which matters when planning a holiday week.
What does a GCSE tutor in Kentish Town cost?
One to one at £30, booked by the lesson rather than by the term.
One lesson a week is the usual pattern and the one the evidence supports. Two is occasionally right. Four is almost never right and we will say so.
Put the minutes beside the money before deciding which quote is better value. Our guide to GCSE tutoring costs covers the market.
What £30 covers
- A full one-to-one lesson with a subject specialist.
- A weekly rhythm rather than an intensive block.
- Work sized to fit a real school night.
- An honest view on how many lessons to book.
- A tutor change if the match is wrong.
Tell us what a normal week contains
Including the weeks where the answer is very little. We reply during the day.
- Year group and subject.
- Roughly how much work happens in a week now.
- Whether it is daily or all at the weekend.
- 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
How many hours of revision should a Year 11 do?
Fewer than the internet says and more than most are doing. Around an hour on a school night and two to three at a weekend is a sustainable shape from January. Anything much beyond that tends to be reported rather than done.
Is six hours a day realistic in the holidays?
No, and plans built on it collapse in about four days. Four hours of genuinely focused work in a day is a strong day for a sixteen year old, and most people cannot sustain it for a fortnight.
My child says everyone else is doing more. Are they?
Almost certainly not. Reported revision hours are wildly inflated in both directions, and the comparison does nothing except make a reasonable amount of work feel like failure.
Is it better to do a little every day or a lot at weekends?
A little every day, by some distance. Spacing the same total across more days produces more retention than concentrating it, which is one of the more settled findings in how learning works.
What if they genuinely will not do any?
Then hours are the wrong problem to solve first. Start with one twenty minute block that actually happens, on one subject, and build from something real rather than from a timetable nobody follows.
Which GCSE subjects do you cover?
The core is Maths and both English GCSEs, plus Combined or Triple Science, Computer Science and Business Studies. Humanities depend on cover.
What does it cost?
£30 a lesson, one to one, however many or few you book in a week.
Do you have a tuition centre in Kentish Town?
No centre, here or anywhere. Everything runs online from a Feltham-registered business.
Book a free GCSE session for your child in Kentish Town
One free one-to-one session, no card details and no obligation. Use it to find out what an hour of real concentration currently produces, which is a more useful number than any revision timetable.