AS and A Level · Years 12-13
A Level History tutors
Long essays and a coursework element, assessed on sustained argument and engagement with interpretations. Historiography is where strong students separate themselves, and essay planning usually delivers more improvement than additional reading does.
- 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.
Not a memory subject. The marks are for argument supported by precise evidence and for handling sources critically: students who know the narrative thoroughly and cannot argue from it routinely underperform.
Where A Level History students lose marks
- Narrating what happened instead of arguing why the question's claim does or does not hold
- Source questions answered by summarising the source rather than assessing its provenance and utility
- Evidence used generally where dates, names and figures are what earn the marks
- No sustained line of argument, so paragraphs read as a list rather than as a case
Is this the right subject at this level?
Students heading for history, law, politics or international relations, and anyone whose essays narrate events well but do not answer the question that was set.
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.
History: questions parents ask
My child knows the history thoroughly but gets B grades. Why?
Because History does not reward knowing what happened. It rewards arguing a case about why a claim holds or does not, supported by precise evidence. A narrative answer, however complete, is answering a question that was not asked.
How are source questions marked?
On provenance and utility, not content. Summarising what a source says earns little; assessing who produced it, when, why, and what that means for its reliability and usefulness is where the marks sit. This is highly trainable and often the fastest route to a grade.
What is historiography and does it matter?
It is engagement with how other historians have interpreted the period, and at A Level and IB it is what separates the top band. Referencing named interpretations and weighing them is expected rather than optional.