How to Get the Most Out of GCSE English Tutoring
Two students walk into the exam hall...
Both had weekly GCSE English tutoring.
Both had access to top-level, personalised notes.
Both are of the exact same ability.
But on results day, Student 1 gets an 8 and exceeds their target grade by 2 grades, while Student 2 gets a 6.
What separated their performance wasn’t access to resources, but how they approached their tutoring sessions.
Here’s what you can do to be like Student 1.
Treat tutoring like a conversation, not a lecture
I ask students a lot of questions during sessions.
“Why does Banquo’s ghost come back in Macbeth?” “Why does the Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol look both child-like and elderly?” “What does Never Let Me Go tell us about hope?”
The students who make the fastest progress engage with these questions, even if they’re not sure. They say “I think…” and we figure out the rest together, piece by piece.
That’s what makes 1 to 1 tutoring different from classroom teaching. It’s a partnership.
My goal is to get you thinking aloud about the most relevant, deep and exciting ideas. It’s how Oxbridge has taught for centuries. This is harder to do if you go silent, give one word answers or quickly say “Uhh… I don’t know” before you’ve had a chance to stretch mental muscles you don’t yet know you have.
So do your best to answer the questions asked in tutoring. It’s a safe space designed to help you. It’s not an exam.
And if something doesn’t click or if you don’t agree with something, don’t just nod along or drift off. Interrupt your tutor and tell them!
It’s us thinking together, not just me teaching you.
2. Find something in every lesson worth caring about
It’s expected that you won’t enjoy everything you study. When I saw Maths or History on my GCSE timetable, I’d write them off as dull hours just to get through.
But I’d now encourage my 16 year old self to find something to enjoy about those lessons. Not only would learning be deeper and better retained between weekly lessons, time would go faster.
So instead of watching the clock, find a way to enjoy what you’re learning. Maybe it’s a quote in Macbeth that unnerves you. Maybe it’s an idea in Jekyll and Hyde that always goes down well with your teachers.
Even just seeing each session as a game where the goal is to do your very best every time can be enough.
This engagement shows up in your writing. Examiners describe top-band responses as showing "personal engagement" (Cambridge IGCSE) and "sensitive" readings (OCR). That doesn't mean writing about your feelings — it means your analysis sounds like you’ve genuinely thought about what you’ve read, and even enjoyed it.
If you enjoyed writing it, your examiner will enjoy reading it.
3. Understand the importance of independent work
Every year, I see the same thing happen.
The students who did more independent work — outside of their tutoring hours — improved the most. The students who’d come to me with self-assigned extra homework and ask for me to look over it.
This might seem obvious. But the fact it happens year on year is proof that exam-style practice yields better results. To become a better writer, you need to write. To excel in exams, you need to practice in exam conditions.
This is something we can do together (especially at the start of tutoring), but eventually, you’ll have to practice writing solo, just like in your exam. Then in sessions, we can go over what went well, what to improve, and make a plan for you to do better next time.
So use these tips to do your best in all tutoring scenarios — they won’t just help with GCSE English, but any subject you might be tutored in.
And if you’d like to put this advice into practice while working with me, get in touch.
