AS and A Level · Years 12-13
A Level Chemistry tutors
The step up is steeper than in most subjects. Energetics, kinetics and equilibria demand real mathematical confidence, and organic becomes a mechanism-based subject where memorisation stops working. This is where most Chemistry tutoring is needed and where it pays off most.
- USD 28-34 per hour
- One-to-one, online
- Free 1-hour trial class
What AS and A Level actually demands
Three or four subjects studied in real depth, and the grades universities actually offer against. The jump from IGCSE is larger than most students expect: questions stop testing one topic at a time and start combining several.
Three subjects wearing one name: physical chemistry is applied maths, inorganic is largely patterns and recall, and organic is a language with its own grammar. Students are rarely equally strong in all three, and treating them as one subject is why revision underperforms.
Where A Level Chemistry students lose marks
- Moles and stoichiometry never made automatic, which then undermines every calculation question in the paper
- Organic mechanisms memorised as pictures rather than understood as electron movement, so unfamiliar reactions are unanswerable
- Marks lost on state symbols, conditions and balancing: small, repeated and entirely avoidable
- Practical and analysis questions under-revised because they feel like a separate subject
Is this the right subject at this level?
Students aiming at medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, engineering or the life sciences, where Chemistry is often the hard entry requirement, and students whose grade is being dragged down by one of the three strands rather than all of them.
What it costs
USD 28-34 per 60-minute one-to-one lesson at AS and A Level, the same rate in every city we teach in. Billed monthly against lessons actually taught, with no prepaid blocks and no minimum commitment.
Paired lessons (2 students) are USD 20-24 per student. Small group lessons (up to 6 students) are USD 14-17 per student. What each format is good for is here.
How we teach it
One-to-one, online, with a shared whiteboard. The first thing we establish is the exact syllabus the student is entered for: schools do not always publish the version they actually enter, and preparing for the wrong paper structure wastes a term.
After that the work is diagnostic: a past paper under timed conditions, marked together against the published scheme, to find out where the marks are genuinely going. That is almost always more useful than covering the syllabus again more slowly. The full process is here.
Chemistry: questions parents ask
Why does Chemistry get so much harder at A Level?
Because the skill changes rather than just the content. Organic stops rewarding memorised mechanisms and starts requiring reasoning about electron movement, while physical chemistry becomes genuinely mathematical. Students who succeeded at IGCSE through recall find their method stops working.
What is the single most useful thing to fix?
Moles. Stoichiometry underpins every calculation in the subject, and a student who is not completely automatic with it loses marks across all three strands without ever identifying the cause.
Should we revise Chemistry as one subject?
No, and treating it as one is a common mistake. Physical, inorganic and organic chemistry need different revision methods, and scoring a past paper by strand rather than in total nearly always reveals one of the three dragging the other two down.