GCSE Physics · Years 9–11 · Online or in person
GCSE physics tutor — equations that finally make sense.
A matched specialist physics tutor, a plan that takes equation rearrangement seriously, and an honest read on whether higher or foundation tier is the right fit. Free 30-minute trial before any commitment.
Free 30-minute trial · No card needed · AQA, Edexcel & OCR · Combined and Separate Sciences
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What your child gets — every week.
Three things that don't show up in generic online physics tutoring. Every weekly physics student at Legacy gets all three by default — not as a paid upgrade, not as a 'premium tier'.
A specialist physics tutor — not a general scientist.
GCSE physics is its own discipline. The tutor we match teaches it week in, week out — they know which equations students reliably forget to rearrange, which forces questions burn time at higher tier, and the recurring traps in each board's question style.
Equation rearrangement, taught explicitly.
Most students lose more marks on calculation questions than on recall ones, and the cause is almost always rearrangement. We drill it as a discipline: pick the equation, identify the unknown, isolate it, substitute, check units. Practised against past papers from the right board until it's automatic under pressure.
Required practicals as written-up methods.
Every AQA, Edexcel and OCR required practical is walked through as the exam asks about it: variables, source of error, the standard improvement, the expected results pattern. Schools often rush this. Online 1-to-1 is where it gets covered properly.
What we cover
Forces, energy, waves, electricity, magnetism, particle model, atomic structure (and space, on Separate).
GCSE physics is the most equation-dense of the three sciences — and it's the subject where a confident grasp of GCSE-level algebra makes the biggest difference. The shared topic blocks across AQA, Edexcel and OCR are: forces (resultant forces, Newton's laws, momentum, stopping distances); energy (kinetic, gravitational potential, elastic potential, conservation, efficiency, the national grid); waves (transverse and longitudinal, the electromagnetic spectrum, refraction); electricity (current, potential difference, resistance, series and parallel circuits, mains electricity, the IV characteristics); magnetism and electromagnetism (motors, generators, transformers); the particle model of matter (density, internal energy, specific heat capacity, latent heat); atomic structure and radioactivity (alpha, beta, gamma decay, half-life).
Separate Sciences (Triple) adds the space topic — orbital motion, the lifecycle of stars, red shift and the Big Bang — plus deeper material on electromagnetism, motors and the particle model. Combined Science (Trilogy) keeps the same framework with a reduced topic list per subject. Either way, we plan against the exact spec your child is sitting and the exact past papers from the exact board they'll see in May.
The two papers in each board cover roughly the first and second halves of the spec. Paper 1 leans on energy, electricity, the particle model and atomic structure; Paper 2 leans on forces, waves and magnetism. Both papers can pull recall from anywhere. We drill that paper structure explicitly.
A worked example
The misconception we see most often: students treating the equation sheet as a list to memorise instead of a toolkit to choose from.
The exam gives your child an equation sheet at the back of the paper — but only for some of the equations, and only for some of the boards. The trap is that students see a wall of formulae and try to remember which one to use, when what the exam actually rewards is the ability to read the question, identify what's given and what's asked, and then pick the right tool from the toolkit.
We drill the process explicitly: read the question, list what you have (mass, velocity, time), list what you need (acceleration), pick the equation that connects them (a = (v − u) / t), rearrange if needed, substitute, check units. That five-step procedure, applied consistently, turns the equation sheet from an intimidating wall into the cheat sheet it's meant to be. Small distinction in approach, large difference in marks.
Past-paper-led revision
What revision actually looks like with us — and why it's not just past papers.
Past papers are the single most reliable revision tool in GCSE physics. They show your child the exact question style they'll sit, train them under realistic time pressure, and surface the gaps that practice questions in a textbook can hide. We use them seriously — board-matched, mark-scheme-aligned, walked through line by line in lesson rather than left as 'do it at home and we'll mark it later'.
But past papers alone aren't a strategy. They're a diagnostic. Your child works the paper, the tutor marks it against the official mark scheme, and the next two or three lessons are built around the topics that paper exposed. That's where grade movement actually happens — not in the act of doing the paper, but in the targeted teaching that follows it. Most tutoring stops at 'doing past papers'. We use them as the starting point of a fix-cycle, not the end point.
In the run-up to mocks and finals, every weekly lesson is anchored to a past paper from the right board, the right tier, the right year. The tutor drills equation-rearrangement fluency explicitly, walks the standard force-and-motion problems, and rebuilds your child's confidence on the practical questions they were quietly avoiding.
GCSE physics tutoring — frequently asked.
Ready to see what a specialist physics tutor changes?
Thirty minutes, 1-to-1, online. No card needed. You'll know within one lesson whether this is the kind of tutoring that's going to move your child's physics grade.
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