APD Tutors / A-Level Chemistry
A-Level Chemistry Tutor
One-to-one A-level Chemistry tutoring from a tutor who sat the same paper and got an A*. We target the exact places Chemistry marks disappear, and drill them until they hold under exam pressure.
No commitment · Places are limited
Where A-level Chemistry marks actually go
Chemistry rewards one thing above all: applying what you know to a molecule or a context you have never seen. That is where grades are won and lost. Most students revise by re-reading notes and redoing questions they can already answer. The exam asks for something harder, and the gap only shows up on results day. Three areas take the marks every year.
Organic mechanisms
Around a third of the A-level is organic chemistry, and it is where confident students still drop marks. They can recite a mechanism from their notes, then freeze when the paper swaps in a molecule they have never seen and asks them to draw the curly arrows themselves. Structure determination from mass spectra, infrared and NMR is the same story: fine in practice, shaky under time. We work from blank paper, not from a mark scheme they have already memorised.
Required practicals
The practicals are examined twice: inside the written papers, and in a separate practical endorsement your child has to pass. The written questions rarely ask what the result was. They ask why a step was done, what was controlled, and where the error came from. That precision is learnable, and it is the first thing a rushed revision plan skips.
The maths in physical chemistry
A fixed share of every Chemistry paper is maths. Moles and titration calculations, Kc and Kp, pH and buffers, Born-Haber cycles, entropy and free energy. A student who is strong on organic can still lose a grade here because the arithmetic falls apart under pressure, or because units and significant figures cost easy marks. We drill it until it stops eating time.
How the papers are structured
A-level Chemistry is three written papers with every major board: AQA, OCR, Edexcel and Eduqas. The content split and the mark weightings differ between them, so the first thing we do is pin down your child's exact board and specification, then work to that paper rather than a generic one. Some boards test recall in short multiple-choice sections. All of them save their hardest marks for extended questions that pull several topics together. Preparing for one is not the same as preparing for the other.
Where good students still lose grades
Plenty of students understand the chemistry and still miss the grade. The marks go on technique, and technique is coachable.
- Command words. "State", "explain" and "justify" want different answers. Students write a paragraph where one line scores, or a line where the marks needed the reasoning.
- Calculations without working. A wrong final answer with no method shown scores nothing; the same answer with clear working often keeps most of the marks.
- Significant figures and units. Easy marks are dropped by rounding early or leaving a unit off a final answer.
- Timing. Long calculations and multiple-choice questions eat the clock, and the extended questions at the end are left rushed. We practise the whole paper against time, not topics in isolation.
What we actually do
Every student starts with a diagnosis: current grade, target grade, exam board, and the specific topics leaking marks. From there the work is deliberate.
- Daily one-to-one tutoring, up to 5 hours a week, on the topics that actually move the grade.
- Predicted papers and exam questions written to sit at the difficulty of this year's real paper.
- Marked mock exams with examiner-style feedback, so the first full paper your child sits is not in the exam hall.
Parv, one of our founders, specialises in Chemistry and runs our Chemistry teaching and community. Like every tutor on the programme, your child's Chemistry tutor sat the same exam and got an A*, recently, not eight years ago.
92% of our students achieve A or A*. On average they move up two grades.
Related subjects
Many of our Chemistry students take one of these alongside it. We cover all six on the same programme.