Reading comprehension, essay structure, creative writing and exam technique — taught one-to-one. Particularly useful for children who speak another language at home and read well but write below what they are capable of.
Most parents can check a maths answer. Almost nobody can look at a paragraph of their child's writing and say precisely why it would score 14 out of 24 rather than 19 — and that is doubly true in a household where English is not the language spoken at the dinner table.
This is the subject where a good tutor changes the most, because the feedback loop at school is so slow. A child writes an essay, waits two weeks, gets a grade and a comment saying ‘develop your points further’, and has no idea what that actually means in practice. In a one-to-one session they write a paragraph, the tutor rebuilds it with them on a shared screen, and they see the difference in the same hour.
Children who speak Urdu, Punjabi or Pashto at home very often read fluently and understand everything — then write in short, flat sentences that badly undersell what they actually know. The comprehension is there. The written register is not, because nobody has explicitly taught the difference between how you explain something out loud and how it needs to look on an exam paper.
That is a teachable gap and it closes faster than most parents expect. It is not a language problem; it is a form problem, and form can be taught directly.
From early reading through to GCSE Language and Literature.
| Level | What we teach | Assessed by |
|---|---|---|
| Primary (KS1–KS2) | Phonics and early reading fluency, reading comprehension, sentence construction, punctuation, spelling patterns, SPaG, narrative writing | KS2 SATs — reading paper, SPaG paper, teacher-assessed writing |
| KS3 (Years 7–9) | Analytical writing, quotation and evidence use, paragraph structure, wider vocabulary, introduction to poetry and Shakespeare | School assessments; the groundwork GCSE assumes is already in place |
| GCSE English Language | Reading unseen fiction and non-fiction, language and structure analysis, comparing viewpoints, descriptive and persuasive writing, technical accuracy | Two written papers, plus a spoken language endorsement |
| GCSE English Literature | Shakespeare, the 19th-century novel, modern texts, the poetry anthology and unseen poetry — all from closed-book memory | Two written papers, closed book, quotations memorised |
| Writing craft | Thesis statements, topic sentences, embedded quotations, analytical vocabulary, essay planning under timed conditions | The skill that carries the most marks across both GCSE papers |
‘The writer uses a metaphor’ scores almost nothing. Explaining the effect of that metaphor on the reader is where the marks live. We teach the move explicitly.
A reliable structure — point, evidence, analysis, link — turns a rambling answer into a marking-friendly one within a few weeks.
GCSE Literature is sat from memory. We build a short, flexible bank of quotations that stretch across multiple themes rather than a hundred that get forgotten.
Very common in bilingual homes. Fluent understanding, flat written expression. Teachable, and it improves quickly once it is named.
Students over-write the first question and abandon the last. Timed practice fixes it faster than any amount of content revision.
Nothing to memorise, so nothing to hide behind. We build a repeatable method for approaching a text they have never met before.
| Plan | Sessions | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 3 × 1-hour sessions per week | £60 / month | Steady support in one subject alongside school |
| Intensive | 5 × 1-hour sessions per week | £100 / month | Exam years, catch-up, or two subjects at once |
Meet the tutor, watch them teach your child for a full hour, then decide. No payment up front and no contract.