Anthony

I am a full-time, professional private tutor, specialising in economics, politics, history and philosophy. I have more than ten years’ experience with over 300 A-Level students.

I currently have availability, both online and in-person, with a few time slots available on most days.

I am friendly, enthusiastic, engaging, passionate and patient about the subjects that I teach.

For A-levels, I studied economics, politics, history and English. I then completed a joint honours degree in Politics and Philosophy at Bristol University. Outside of my academic interests, I play football a couple of times a week and I like to travel, when that’s possible.

Tutoring Experience

I have been a professional private tutor since 2010 and have over 10,000 hours of experience in one-to-one tuition. The majority of this has been with A-level students, spread fairly evenly across the three major exam boards: AQA, OCR and Edexcel. This has typically involved: covering content; troubleshooting and gap-filling; essay-writing; coursework advice; exam-preparation. I have also taught university course content for economics, politics and philosophy, as well as helping out and offering guidance on research projects, coursework and masters theses.

I have been fortunate enough to forge good relationships with many of my students, some of whom I have worked with from the start of their A-Levels through to the end of their time at university.

I have tutored mostly online since the start of the pandemic (on Skype and Zoom), but my whole experience has been close to an even split between online and in-person. I have predominantly worked with students based in Brighton and London, but also throughout the UK and abroad, especially in Commonwealth countries that use the major UK exam boards.

Sessions have typically been once a week – usually between 1 and 2 hours – and then more frequent in the build-up to exams (and, more recently, TAGs). But this is entirely up to the parents/students; I am generally very flexible when it comes to arranging sessions: I am just as happy to keep to a regular, weekly schedule, as I am fitting in shorter, troubleshooting sessions and emailed feedback, whenever that’s helpful.

More recently, I have been helping younger students prepare for 11+/13+ entrance exams to schools such as Wellington, Eton and Harrow.

Tutoring Approach

Every student will have different requirements, so essentially the structure of sessions will depend on what those requirements are. This is usually something that we will discuss and agree upon by the end of the first session, though of course there is no reason for any of that to then be set in stone. Ultimately it comes down to what works best for the student, which really is one of the major benefits of one-to-one tuition.

I would break my general approach down into three categories: content; essay writing; exam preparation.

Content: First and foremost is a focus on understanding and being able to recall the content – knowledge, its application, and evaluation. I live and breathe the subjects that I teach, and I enjoy explaining ideas and fundamental concepts, helping students to genuinely understand and feel comfortable with them. With economics and especially politics, there is also an emphasis on up-to-date examples and real-world context. Ultimately, I try to make sure that content has been learned in such a way that the student will then go onto confidently apply it in exam situations. When it comes to exam performance, content-recall is much more effective when it’s based on genuine understanding, rather than just relying on a series of shorthand acronyms and memorisation techniques (which do have some utility, but overall are not ideal). So, to this end, sessions will often involve lots of troubleshooting and active discussion. In general, this might be to stay a little bit ahead of ongoing class work, or to run alongside it. Or it could be focused on specific topics that have caused problems or not been fully covered in the past. This last point is especially relevant given the disruptions to education caused by the pandemic, which has in many cases required a greater emphasis on filling in gaps in content and getting through more exam-style writing practice.

Essay writing: The vast majority of students benefit immensely from being able to go into an exam confident not only in their basic knowledge and understanding, but also in how they will demonstrate that through their essay-writing and in their ability to give the examiners what they want. Confident, effective essay-writing has many different strands: planning and structuring; establishing coherent themes and factors; clearly presenting arguments; knowing what should go in the introduction and developing deeper arguments that build – throughout the essay – towards a conclusion; having reliable templates to deploy in response to different types of questions. Depending on what is required, sessions will often be spent providing feedback, discussing and developing essays that students have written – for me, or for class – as well as planning answers together, which can then be worked on in their own time.

Exam preparation: Appropriate exam-specific preparation is vital for turning good essay-writing skills and a strong understanding of content into actual results. Good exam technique is not always emphasised enough when it comes to learning content and writing essays; it helps so much to be familiar with mark schemes, so that when a student is learning content and practising essays, they are confident about exactly what will be getting them marks, what is less important, and generally what examiners are expecting to see in relation to different types of question. This could be expected themes, or examples, or key terms and ideas, or chunks of evaluation. To help build this confidence, I tend to integrate exam board-specific past papers, mark schemes and course specifications into content discussion and essay-writing practice.