A tutor is one of the larger lines in a family budget. This hub is for a UK parent weighing up whether to pay for GCSE or A-level tutoring, and what kind. Many children do not need one.
Does my child actually need a tutor?
Many GCSE students do not need a tutor, and a parent should rule out the free fixes first. A tutor is most likely to earn their fee in three situations: a specific gap that school lessons are not closing, confidence that has collapsed in one subject, or a target grade that needs more exam practice than a full class can give.
Tutoring is the wrong fix when homework is not being done, when marks swing from careless errors rather than missing knowledge, or when the real problem is attendance.
Decision rule: ask the class teacher to name the gap. If nobody can, a tutor will struggle, and the free revision guides here are the better first step.
What does the evidence say tutoring achieves?
Tutoring works on average, and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) publishes the most widely used figures in England. The EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit says one to one tuition can provide “approximately five additional months’ progress on average”, and small group tuition has “an average impact of four months’ additional progress over the course of a year” (both reviews last updated July 2021).
The averages hide the figures that matter most for GCSE. For one-to-one tuition the EEF reports secondary studies at +4 months against +6 in primary, and that “effects in mathematics appear to be substantially lower (+2 months) than in literacy (+6 months)”. For small group tuition it reports +2 months in secondary schools and +3 months in mathematics.
The EEF also says tuition “is more likely to make an impact if it is additional to and explicitly linked with normal lessons”. A tutor who never asks what the class is doing is wasting part of your money.
What are the three decisions a parent has to make?
A parent choosing a tutor makes three decisions: who teaches, how they teach, and how much to buy. Who means a student, a graduate, a qualified teacher or an agency; how means one-to-one or small group, online or in person; how much means hours per week and for how long.
Get “who” right first; the other two are cheap to change later.
How much does a tutor cost per hour in the UK?
Most private tutors in the UK charge roughly £15 to £60 an hour, with specialists charging more, and who is teaching explains most of the range. Tutorful’s June 2024 guide puts the average price for a tutor per hour at £37.45 across its marketplace, while Teachers To Your Home’s 2026 parent guide places qualified teachers at £40 to £60 or more, student tutors at £15 to £30, and highly experienced or specialist teachers at £50 to £100 or more.
The breakdown by tutor type and level is in how much tutoring costs per hour in the UK. Home-educating families should also read the cost of home-educating through GCSEs.
Is a qualified teacher a better tutor than a student?
A qualified teacher is not automatically a better tutor, but classroom experience changes what you are buying. Qualified teacher status (QTS) is, in the government’s words, “a legal requirement to teach in many English schools”; that requirement covers maintained schools, not private tutoring, so you have to check what a tutor actually holds.
The comparison, including how to check a tutor’s DBS certificate under guidance that went live on 21 January 2026, is in qualified teacher tutor vs student tutor.
Is small group tuition as effective as one-to-one?
Small group tuition comes close to one-to-one on the EEF’s all-age averages, at a lower price, though the gap is wider in secondary schools (+2 months against +4). The EEF notes that in some studies “tuition in groups of two or three has been equally or even more effective” than one-to-one, while in others one-to-one did better.
Group size, grouping by ability and the cost gap are covered in small group tuition vs one-to-one.
Does online tutoring work as well as in person?
Online tutoring shows no clear disadvantage in the evidence, provided the teacher and the set-up are good, but no definitive trial has compared the two. The EEF’s one-to-one review found that “studies involving digital technology show broadly similar effects”.
What works online, when in-person matters, and what to ask are in online tutoring vs in person.
How many hours of tutoring does a GCSE student need?
A common plan for a GCSE student who is a grade or two off target is one hour a week per subject across the school year, with more in the exam year if the gap is wide; this is a rule of thumb, not a research finding. The evidence base is a floor rather than a ceiling: under the National Tutoring Programme, NFER reports that “between 12-15 hours of tuition was recommended” to have meaningful impact.
The answer by starting point and goal, and when to stop, is in how many hours of tutoring for GCSE.
Who writes these guides?
These guides are published by Revision Sorted. Its tuition partner is Priority Education Ltd, a family-run business directed by Louise Finn and Steven Finn, who have both taught science for over 15 years in the classroom, with roles including Head of Science (Louise) and Deputy Headteacher (Steven). Priority Education’s site says it teaches students “locally, Nationally and Internationally”; whether a given lesson is online or in person is confirmed on the free call.
Its weekly lessons are one hour long, with twice weekly recommended in exam years, maths taught in small groups of similar ability and target grade, and 4-hour Revision Booster days before exams; details are on the tutoring page. These guides will also tell you when you do not need them.
If you want to talk it through with a qualified teacher first, book a free call.